Erinna

Erinna (Greek: Ἤριννα) was a Greek poet, a contemporary and friend of Sappho, a native of Rhodes or the adjacent island of Telos or even possibly Tenos, who flourished about 600 BC (according to Eusebius, she was well known in 352 BC^[1]). Her best-known poem was the Distaff (Greek Ἠλᾰκάτη), written in a mixture of Aeolic and Doric Greek and consisting of 300 hexameter lines, of which only four were extant until 1928. Three epigrams ascribed to her in the Palatine anthology probably belong to a later date, though some debate on the first epigram exists.

In 1928, a papyrus (PSI 1090) was found that contained 54 fragmentary lines by the poet, in six pieces^[2] now located in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. The poem is a lament (Greek θρῆνος) on the death of her friend Baucis (Greek Βαυκίς), a disciple of Sappho, shortly before her wedding.

Camillo Neri, in an Italian work assessing the surviving fragments and testimonies to her, reconstructs the poet's original name as "Herinna" (Ἥριννα).^[3] She is also sometimes named "Erina".

Notes

1. ^ Eusebius of Caesarea, Chronicle p. 203.
2. ^ Marilyn Arthur, "The Tortoise and the Mirror: Erinna PSI 1090," Classical World, 74 (1980)
3. ^ Luis Guichard, review of Camillo Neri's Erinna. Testimonianze e Frammenti. Eikasmos, Studi, 9 in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2004.07.24

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

External links

• A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology (ed. William Smith): Erinna (compare the same dictionary's entry on an alleged second poet with the same name)
• Poem about Erinna