Erinna
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- For the plant genus, see Erinna (genus)
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 of Myndus, she lived circa 350 BC). Of her best-known poem, the Distaff (Greek Ἠλᾰκάτη) written in a mixture of Aeolic and Doric Greek, which contained 300 hexameter lines, only four lines of which 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 [1] 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).[2] She is also sometimes named "Erina."
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- Poem about Erinna
- ^ Marilyn Arthur, "The Tortoise and the Mirror: Erinna PSI 1090," Classical World, 74 (1980)
- ^ Luis Guichard, review of Camillo Neri's Erinna. Testimonianze e Frammenti. Eikasmos, Studi, 9 in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2004.07.24
