Hellenistic Women Poets Author(s): Sylvia Barnard Reviewed work(s): Source: The Classical Journal, Vol. 73, No.

3 (Feb. - Mar., 1978), pp. 204-213 Published by: The Classical Association of the Middle West and South Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3296687 . Accessed: 15/05/2012 03:54
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HELLENISTICWOMEN POETS canonof ninelyric poets includesonly one Althoughthe famousAlexandrian woman, Sappho, and, in some late versions, Corinna,thereis a separatelisting of nine outstandingGreek women poets, drawnup by a male poet in imitation of the canons of the scholars, but in the form of an epigram. (Anthologia PalatinaIX, 26). It is not known what moved this poet, Antipaterof Thessalonica, who lived in the Romanperiod, to drawup a list of this kind. Possibly to his sophisticatedRomanfriendsthat Greece it was an effort to demonstrate had had women of learning,even if they had lacked the social freedomof their laterRoman sisters. Of the nine women whom Antipaternames, at least four aregenerallyagreedto fall withinthe HellenisticAge, even if we do not include Corinnain this category. These four women all appearin the GreekAnthology and reflect the widening of the Greek world in their geographicaldistribution.Moero was an epic poet, whose son was also a poet. The son went to Alexandriaandbecame part of a quasi-canonicalgroupingof thirdcenturypoets too modernto have been included in the proper canons drawn up by their scholarly contemporaries.1 However, Moero herself spent her life and wrote all her poetryin Byzantium, so far as we know. Anyte wrote several types of poetry and carriedon from of women poets in the Peloponnese. She was Telesilla andPraxillathe tradition a native of Tegea in Arcadia, one of the most ruraland conservativeareas in Greece, but, becausesome of herpoems referto the sea, people assumethatshe travelledout of Arcadiaat least as far as the Peloponnesiancoast.2 Nossis was a poet from Locri in southernItaly and representsthe importanceof the western Greeks in the periodjust before Rome and Carthagefought over their countryside. Erinna,the most fascinatingbut in many ways the most mysteriousof these poets, seems to have come from the island of Telos near Rhodes, since that is the one of her several traditionalbirthplacesof which the local dialect best fits the language of her poetry. It is all very well to have the names of a numberof women poets handed down to us but what of their actualworks? One can summarizeratherbriefly some of the main sources for fragments and short preserved poems. One place to look is Athenaeus, the source of a numberof fragmentsof important value lies and othereminentpoets of bothsexes, althoughhis particular Sappho in being the only source for some of the obscurerwomen, such as Hedyle and the ratherquestionablePhilaenis. A ratherlarge numberof complete but short collection epigramsby women have been preservedin the largeandamorphous of Greekpoetryknownas the GreekAnthology. This anthologygives us a very respectablenumberof poems for Anyte andNossis anda few examplesof other this"Pleiad,"see AlbinLesky,A History Literature, London,1966, of Greek 1For
p. 743 ff. 2Gow, A.S.F. and Page, D.L., The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams, Cambridge, 1965, Vol. II, p. 89.

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women's poetry. The third source has been the fragmentsof literarypapyri, which have been discovered and edited in the twentiethcentury, for the most part. Papyriarenot normallyfound in good enoughconditionto yield complete poems with certain texts, but we owe to the papyri many long fragmentsof Sappho, the long fragmentof Corinnawhich has given us some idea of her style, and a fragmentof the mysteriousErinna,often thoughtto come from her long poem, "The Distaff."3 fame and Leaving Sapphoout of considerationbecause of her extraordinary her very earlydate, the classical women poets do not, from whatlittle we know of them, have anything especially feminine in their subject matter. In the Hellenistic period, women seem again to have written about matterswhich concerned them as women. In examining this phenomenon,one might begin with one long fragmentof Erinna's hexametres Withuncontrolled feet you leaptintothe sea, "I haveyou." I called, "My friend." Andplayingtortoise you ranalong the yardof the greathall. thesethings,poorBaucis, Remembering I grievefor you, theseimagesof you still warmin my heart,girl. Thethingsthatwe once tookpleasure in arenow hot coals of memory.

As little girls we slept with dolls in our rooms like women without their worries, but in the morning your mother, who had to assign the wool-working to her maids, came calling you about the salted meat. What fear the monster Mormo gave us then as children! With big ears on its head, it walked on four feet and constantly made faces. you forgot all that you learned from your mother as a baby, dear Baucis; Aphroditeput forgetfulness into your heart, so, weeping over you, I must still omit your funeral. My feet are not so impure as to leave the house, it is not right for my eyes to see a corpse, nor for me to lament with loosened hair

But whenyou wentto the couchof a man,

butthe shameof my blushing tearsme in two. (My own translationof the decipherablepart of the text, published in D.L.
Page, Greek Literary Papyri, 1942, p. 486-9.)

The subject matterof this fragmentis explained in partby two of Erinna's poems in the GreekAnthology and by a poem in thatcollection, writtenabout

Latini,IX, 1929, no. 1090, editedby Vitelli-Norsa.

, passim;PapyrusHaun; Corinna,BerlinPapyrus, edited 3Sappho,Papyri Oxyrynchi by Wilamowitz,Berliner Klassiker-Texte,V, 2, 1907, no. 284; Erinna,Papiri Greci e

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her by Asclepiades of Samos. The two poems by Erinnaherself (Anthologia Palatina, 7, 710, 712) are both funeral epigrams for Baucis, described as a friend of Erinna's, and tell us that Baucis came from the island of Tenos or Telos-Telos is preferablein view of Erinna'sdialect-and that she died so soon after marriagethat the marriagetorches were used to light her funeral pyre, an interestingreversalof Hamlet'slines abouthis father'sfuneralmeats.4 The poem about Erinna (A.P. 7, 11) by Asclepiades tells us that she died unmarried at the age of nineteen;this poem is followed by two others (A.P. 7, 12 and 13) which are less informativebut add to one's feeling of this young poet's importance. In other parts of the Palatine Anthology there are other poems about or references to Erinna. One might particularlycite Christodorusof Coptus's early sixth century hexametre listing of the statues in the gymnasium of which tells us thatErinna'sstatuewas includedin Zeuxippusin Constantinople this group. (A.P. 2, 11, and 108-110). In any case, the long fragment which we have of Erinna's poetry is of enormous importanceto us for its description of the lives of little girls in antiquity. We find that they went swimming in the sea and that, as we suspected, the courtyardsenclosed by upper-class Greek houses were the scenes of vigorousphysical activity. These lines parallelthe potteryoil flasks which are decoratedwith pictures of girls and young women swinging and spinning tops, presumably in their courtyards. The reference to the sea, however, suggests that at this date and place girls were not restrictedto play within the house walls, but the lines at the end of the fragmentwhere Erinna regretsher inabilityto attendherfriend'sfuneralsuggest the familiarnotionsof women being confined at home. Certainly even under the most restricted to attendfunerary conditionswomen were ordinarily rites, as we know permitted from the admonitionto the women present at the end of Pericles's funeral speech for the first casualtiesof the PeloponnesianWar. (ThucydidesII, 45). it is clear thatthe referenceto "lamentationwith loosened hair" Furthermore, the ordinary sort of feminine mourning from which Erinna finds signifies herself barred. The suggestion has thereforebeen made that the adult Erinna was a certainkind of priestess who would incur impurityfrom the sight of a corpse and perhapseven from any form of travel.5Such religious taboos have many parallelsand are not imposed solely on women, since, for example, the chief priest of Jupiterat Rome was subjectto these kinds of restrictions. The fragment,brief as it is, also gives us glimpses of the activitiesof the house, the doll play, the earlyrising, the mother-daughter closeness, the assigningof wool of to the maids againwith overtonesof the Romanmatron,and the preparation sun. meat which must, of course, be heavily salted againstthe Mediterranean The game "tortoise" is a girl's name otherwise known to us through the Hellenistic lexicographer Pollux.6 Thus in a few words a greatmany images of the daily feminine round are drawn. ClassicalReview,March "An Epigram of Erinna", 4See Giuseppe Giangrande, 1969,p. 1-3. New SeriesVol. XIX, Old SeriesVol. LXXXIII. 6Ibid.,p. 328.

5See discussion by C.M. Bowra in Greek Poetry and Life; Essays Presented to Gilbert Murray on his SeventiethBirthday, Oxford 1936, p. 334-335.

WOMEN POETS HELLENISTIC 207 Many questions about Erinnaare still left unanswered. Her ancient biographicalnotices aremost confusing. Suidasgives fourpossible nationalitiesfor her: Telian, probablythe true one; Tenian, based perhapson the same sort of manuscriptreading which makes Baucis a Tenian7in A.P. 7, 710; Rhodian, which is a way of defining her in terms of the nearestmajorculturalcentre (a Telian being called a Rhodian in the same way that Corinnamay have come from Tanagra and still have been called a Theban), and finally and most interestingly,Lesbian. The last statementrepresentsa persistentnotion about Erinna,which seems not to be borneout by her dialect. Suidasrecognises this problemand says thatshe wrote in Aeolic and Doric dialect, but the poetrywe have of hers is in Doric except for a few Aeolic forms and could hardlyhave been written on Lesbos. The manuscriptsof the Greek Anthology also frequentlyrefer to her as Erinnathe Mytilenianas if she had been a native of the capitalcity of Lesbos. The last sentence of Suidas's entryunderher name says thatshe was a friendof Sapphoandlived at the same time, a possibilitywhich is given no credencetoday. The two reasonabledatesfor herarethe middleof the fourth century, the date given by the chronicler Eusebius8who makes her "floruit" three years after Alexander's birth, and the beginning of the fourth century.9In neithercase could her connexion with Sapphobe explainedby her dating. Another question is the natureof her poetic corpus. Other than the three epigrams in the Greek Anthology, we have no evidence for any work except a long hexametrepoem, presumablythe one from which we now have a fragment. Suidas says that she wroteepigrams, and "The Distaff". Although he does not specify thatshe wrote hexametres,he suggests it by saying thather verses were comparedto Homer's. This remarkcomes from one of the anonymous epigramsto Erinna(A.P. 9, 190) whereit is specified thatshe wrotethree hundred verses equal to Homer's. This epigramsays thatshe wrotelyrics as far inferior to Sappho's as her hexametres were superiorto Sappho's. Here we have a statementthatshe did indeedwrite hexametres-in fact threehundred of them. They are not here said to have been called "The Distaff", but it is said that "she stayedby her distaff andloom for fear of her mother", an ambiguous sentence in which the poem ratherthanthe implementmay be meant. Another of the epigramsabouther says thatshe was drivento the underworld by "Fate, the mistressof the distaff", (A.P. 7, 12) andthe Greekwordfor "distaff" even appearsin the fragmentwhich we now have of her long work althoughnot in the of Byzantium, does makeErinna herselfa source,Stephanus Byzantine 7Another Tenian. 9Averil andAlanCameron Eusebius's dateintheir article accept "Erinna'sDistaff," ClassicalQuarterly, 6. Donald Levin 1969,Vol. XIX, New Series,p. 286, footnote
("QuaestionesErinneae"in HarvardStudies in Classical Philology, 1962, Vol. 66, p. "St. Jerome, InterpretatioChronicae Eusebii Pamphili, Olymp. 106.

poets in the Hellenistic era (S.B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves, New York, 1975, p. 137-139.)

oneslightly earlier. GowandPage(op.cit., p. 282) 194)likesthisdateorwouldaccept include intheir Erinna Hellenistic onlinguistic evidence.SeealsoBowra, Epigrams op. editedby G. Pfohl,Darmstadt, cit., p. 337-339,andGeorgLuck,inDas Epigramm, choosesErinna to represent there-emergence 1969,p. 86. Sarah of women Pomeroy

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decipherableportionof it. Thus the conclusion seems to be thatthe long poem about her girlhood with Baucis is the chief thing she wrote before her early death,10 augmentedby a few epigramsandperhapsby a few lyrics, althoughthe mentionof the latterprobablyonly comes fromherassociationwith Sappho. In the case of Erinna,this association, which seems to be madewith otherwomen since she did focus her life upon a poets as well, may be peculiarlyappropriate herby marrying and relationshipwith anotheryoung womanwho then betrayed then afterwardsby dying, a circumstancethat Erinnaparallels with the circumstanceof her marriage. As far as we can visualise Erinna'spsychological makeup, she seems to have been a Lesbian in the modem sense, if not physically, at least psychologically. If the fragmentpreservedin the CollectaneaAlexandrina(J.V. Powell, editor, Oxford, 1925, p. 186) is hers, thenshe in which case her identificationwith may have been a priestess of Demeter,11 the feminine would be even more pronounced. Unlike Erinna,Anyte is the authorof at least nineteenextantpoems, andthey cover a wide rangeof topics. Fourareepitaphsfor girls who died young. (A.P. 7, 486; A.P. 7, 490; A.P. 7, 646; A.P. 7, 649). Threeof these epigramsreferto the fact thatthe girls died before marriage,and in no case is marriageviewed unfavourably.In A.P. 7, 490, thereis referenceto manysuitorswho had begun to frequentAntibia'sfather'shouse and to how the hopes of all were dashedby to by the femininename "Moira". Since "Moira" is doom fate, here referred personifiedas a female and is thereforea sinister aspect of woman, she takes Antibia away from her naturalmale suitors in this case. In A.P. 7, 649, the languagebecomes more directlylike that used by Erinnaand Hamlet, and the anddeathis moreexplicit. Thersis'smothergives oppositionbetweenmarriage her, insteadof a marriagechamberand bridalhymns, an elaboratemonument, apparentlyincluding a tomb-statue. Whetheror not one wants to say literally thatthe money intendedfor Thersis'sdowryandmarriage festival went into this monument,marriageand death are herejuxtaposedwith the definite idea that is the desirableandnaturallot of women. In Erinna'spoem, Baucis's marriage marriagewas, on the contrary,a lesser death, followed by a greaterone. The forgettingof herhappychildhoodwhich was inducedby Aphroditeis paralleled by the forgetfulness that descends upon the dead when they drink from the River Lethe. In Anyte, there may indeed be the notion that Thersis's mother would have lost her teen-age daughterby the one means or the other, but the vocabularyleaves no doubtof the pleasantassociationsattachedeven to loss if it be by reason of marriage. Anyte, like Erinna, describes the activities of children. The difference, however, is that Anyte treats of them as an impartialobserver. There is in Anyte none of the overt yearningfor the lost Eden of childhoodthat pervades Erinna's writing. There are no reliable clues to the length of Anyte's life. deathis usuallynoted in biographicalsources, as However, a poet's premature in Erinna'scase, and so we may assume that Anyte lived to an average age. havefound thetitleodd,AverilandAlanCameron, art.cit. defend people 1oAlthough it sensibly andsuggest thatthedistaffreferred to is theoneon whichtheFatesspun the
life of Baucis. This agrees with Levin's conclusion, art. cit. p. 200. "1Bowra,art. cit. p. 334.

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Thus we may also assumethatin writingof childrenshe is watchingthem from the vantage point of comfortablematurityratherthan tormentedadolescence. Indeed, her interest in them may stem from having been a mother herself. What may be the best of Anyte's poems about children is quite unlike any other poem known to us and gives a vivid image of Greek village life at this period. The children haveputpurple reinson you, goat, anda noseband around yourshaggyface, andtheyareplayinghorsegames around the god's temple wherehe can watchthem themselves. enjoying (My translation) These lines show immense sympathy for the small goat-riders. We have an of the naturalaffinity of childrenfor natureand animallife, and understanding we have a perceptiveview of the relationshipof children, even more helpless than otherhumanbeings, to the gods. Here the relationshipis benevolent, but in A.P. 7, 190, cruel Hades steals the pets of a girl called Myro and demonstratesthe randomhostility of the gods. Although we have more of Anyte's poems than of any other woman poet's afterSappho, we have no reliableinformationabouther life. Her approximate date comes only fromthe style andnatureof herpoetry.12 Besides referencesin her writingto Tegea and to the Arcadiangod Pan, we have, includedin Pollux, the epigramwhich she wrote to her dog Locris, and the declarationthatit was writtenby "Anyte of Tegea" but we have no otherprecise statementsas to her birthplace. We have no recordof her family and only one anecdote abouther life.13 This one tale connects her with Naupactus across the Corinthiangulf fromthe Peloponnesebutdoes not imply thatshe lived there. She is said to have received in her sleep a sealed tabletfrom the god of healing Asclepius, telling her to go to Naupactusanddeliver it to a blind man called Phalysius. When she did so, his eyesight was restoredand he rewardedAnyte and built Asclepius a temple at Naupactus. This story is like many of the miracle tales told about poets of which the most famous is probablythat of Arion being rescued from drowningby a dolphin. Anyte has one poem abouta templeof Aphroditewhich overlooks the sea and is sited thereforein a coastal town like Naupactus(A.P. 9, 144). This temple has an ancientwooden statuelike the one on Aphrodite's precinctat Patrae,across the CorinthianGulf from Naupactuson the Peloponnesian side. The late travel writer Pausanias saw the statue at Patrae and remarked upon it,14 so thatit is an easy conclusion to makethatthis is the statue thatAnyte is talkingabout. However, Pausaniaslived four hundred years after Anyte, and theremust have been many more such wooden statuespreservedin
12Seediscussion in G. Luck,art.cit. p. 89. "3Pausanias X, 38, 13. 14Ibid. VII, 21, 10.

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her day than in his. Moreover, the anecdote about Naupactusmight reflect a real connexionof the poet with thatcity. In Pausanias'saccountof Naupactus (X, 38) wherehe speaksof Anyte going thereto curePhalysius,he speaksof the worship of Aphroditein a cavern there and of an actual temple of Aphrodite close by at Oeanthea. By his day the statue at Oeantheawas of stone, but at some point it had probably replaced a wooden one. Thus Anyte's wooden statue might actually have been in the Naupactusarea. Unfortunately,it is impossible to say anythingaboutAnyte's statusin daily life. Nothing indicatesthat she was, like Erinna,a priestess, or, like Sappho, in music. Nothingpreventsus from thinkingof her as a some sortof instructor wife and mother, and nothing in her poetry indicates that she would not have welcomed thatrole. In any case Anyte representsa stablekind of world where children, animals, fountains, trees, and gods live in harmony. The other late Greek woman poet of whom we have a considerableliterary corpus extantis Nossis, the authorof twelve epigramspreservedin the Greek Anthology. Two-thirds of her poems concern women, and her lineage is recorded in the female line, her mother being Theophilis and her maternal Cleocha. This seems to have been the custom in her home city, grandmother a southernItaliancolony of one of the Greekcities called Epizephyrian Locri,15 Locri. The ItalianLocri has been the subjectof a greatdeal of discussion about its matriarchal practices.16 This paper is not concerned as to whether these fromthe nativeItalianswho lived on the site or whetherthey customsoriginated were connected with the temple prostitutionwhich also went on at this Locri, but it is importantto realise that Nossis came from a city where the status of women was in a numberof ways radicallydifferentfrom theirstatusin the rest world. Her nationalorigin is not in doubt, because one of the Greek-speaking of herown poems, (A.P. 7, 718) althoughit is one whichhas been the subjectof a greatdeal of discussion, does clearly seem to say thatshe is a nativeof Locri. Her date is also not in very much doubt since she writes an epitaphfor another earlythirdcenturypoet, Rhinthon,whose "floruit"is given by Suidas.(A.P. 7, 44; Suidas, s.v. Rhinthon).17 The details of her life are again not concretely known, but interestingsuppositionscan be made, based on her poems and the peculiaritiesof Locrian society. Like Erinnaand Anyte, Nossis is occasionally comparedto Sappho, and, unlike them, she herself fosters the suggestion. In the very corruptepigram to and (A.P. 7, 718) whichtells us thatNossis was a Locrian,Sapphois referred the sense seems to be that a voyager sailing towards Mytilene is to take a message of respect to Sappho. This has, of course, given rise to the idea that Nossis and Sappho were contemporaries,that a literal message is being sent from Nossis to her friendSappho, but this seems not to be the case. It is rather

canon who themselves appearin the Greek Anthology. G. Luck, art. cit., p. 102.

to the this fact, whichhe attributes 15The late historian Polybius(XII, 5) records noteof thefactthata girlheldthesacred Locrians race,andtakesspecial beingof mixed office of cup-bearer. in T.V. Dunbabin, TheWestern 16Seediscussion Greeks,Oxford,1948,p. 183ff. s of thefourpoetsof Antipater' Luckremarks thatsheseemsto be theyoungest 17G.

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that a woman poet concernedwith women's lives is saluting anotherwoman poet with similar preoccupations. One clue to Nossis's self-identificationwith Sappho is that she seems to be devoted to Aphroditeand speaks of love as the most importantof all human activities. In one of her poems, (A.P. 5, 170) obviously modelled upon Sappho's long fragmentin which she says thatlove is far finer thanchariotsof war,1"Nossis tells us that thanlove. Nothingis pleasanter come Wealth andeverything secondto it. Frommy mouth I havespateven honey. Nossisdeclares this. Whomever has not loved Aphrodite does not knowthe flowering of herroses. (Mytranslation) Sappho speaks of love and specifically of the cult of the goddess Aphroditein many other works. While one cannot say what the natureof the cult was in archaic Lesbos, we do know a certain amountabout the cult of Aphroditein fifth century Locri. Justin, who summarised the lost histories of Trogus Pompey, tells us that in 477 or 476 of Leophron of Rhegion, Whenthe Locrians wereattacked they by theaggression if they toprostitute were their onthefeast vowed, victorious, virgins dayof Aphrodite. Justin 21, 2. (Mytranslation) This sacredprostitution did not continuefor a long time but was revived in the mid-fourthcenturyby the tyrantDionysius II of Sicily, when Locri was partof the Sicilian Empire. Although Nossis writes after the loosening of the ties with Sicily, when the native Bruttii were attacking the Southern Italian the revival of sacredprostitutionwould probablyhave been no more Greeks,19 thanfifty yearsbeforeherbirthandthe notionof the sacrednessof physicallove would still have been prevalentin the atmosphereof the town. This poem, in the contextof Locriansociety, might mean thatNossis herself was a prostitute. Gow and Page discuss this possibility, noting however that Wilamowitz objected to it.20 Another of Nossis's poems (A.P. 9, 332) shows that even if she was not herself a prostitute, she would not be shocked at the suggestion, for it is a dedicatorypoem for a statueof Aphroditeerected by the prostitutePolyarchis
18Sappho, fragment 16, in Lobel and Page, Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta,

Oxford,1955. 190ne of her poems (A.P. 6, 132) commemorates a victoryof Locri over the Bruttians. 20Gow andPage, op. cit., p. 436.

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from the earningsof her profession. If Polyarchiswas not a personalfriendof Nossis, she was certainlya memberof the communitywhom Nossis respected enough to write a poem for her. This poem is attributedin its manuscript to "Nossis of Lesbos", here clearly with no referenceto love introduction between women, but apparentlybecause of the praise of Sappho's favourite goddess. Polyarchis dedicates her statue at a temple of Aphrodite. Gow and Page express puzzlementat the referenceto the temple21 and say that nothing was known of such a temple at Locri, although presumablythere was one. One would indeed assume that the sacredprostitutesfunctionedin a cult building, butthereis muchmoreto be saidon the subjectthanthat. Archaeologistsareat presentattemptingto determinewhich Locrian temple can be assigned to the attributesto her the so-called Marasa love-goddess and Helmut Pruckner22 like sea the Anyte's Aphroditetemple.23The Marasa Temple, overlooking the seventh to back centurybut was rebuiltin the fifth at aboutthe Templegoes time the sacredprostitution began. Pruckner'sbook associates with the cult of plaques which Aphroditemany of the fifth century "Pinakes" or terra-cotta the site of the on in numbers have found great city. Manyof these archaeologists are of them but some of are uncertain surelyconnectedto the subjects, plaques Nossis's of evidence and the of poems bearsout the literary worship Aphrodite, importanceof this goddess. Apart from the two poems just referredto, two other poems are writtenfor dedicationsof objects to Aphrodite. In one case (A.P. 9, 605) Callo dedicates a portraitof herself, reminiscentagain of the "Pinakes" and in the other (A.P. 6, 275) Samythadedicates a head-dress. It since she is has been thought that Callo cannot have been a prostitute24 is describedas someone "of blamelesslife", butin a society whereprostitution not a sourceof shame, this does not seem an impossibleepithetfor one. In any case, she is a votary of the goddess of the "Pinakes" and the evidence of Nossis's poetryis doubly interestingsince it comes two centurieslaterthanthe thatthe cult plaqueswe have foundandin a periodwhen it has been conjectured of Persephonewas overtakingthat of Aphroditeat Locri.25 No mention of Persephoneappearsin what is left of Nossis's work, and, indeed, the only epitaphby her is that dedicatedto her fellow poet Rhinthon. Most Hellenistic poets representedto the same extent in the Greek Anthology give us a wide range of epitaphs, a favourite genre of the day, so that it is curious that Nossis's work is so free from this preoccupationif she lived in a city where Persephonewas becoming the majordeity. Two goddesses other than Aphrodite do appear, however, Hera and Artemis. These goddesses representrespectivelyfamily life and childbirth,and the poems in which they appearcarry out these motifs.
21Ibid.,p. 438. 22HelmutPruckner,Die LokrischenTon-Reliefs, Mainz, 1968, passim. templesoften overlookedthe sea, becausethe goddess was supposedto 23Aphrodite's

24Gowand Page, op. cit., pp. 437, 439. 25Russell Scott and Brunilde Ridgeway, "Notes on the Locrian Pinakes," Archaeology, New York, January1973, p. 47.

havebeenbornfromsea foam.

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The poem to Heraaccompaniesa robe dedicatedby the poet and her mother at the great temple of Hera at Croton. This temple had a long and colourful history and was the place where Hannibal left an inscriptiondescribing his forces andhis exploits,"6and where Hannibal,accordingto legend, massacred those of his southernItaliantroops who took sanctuarythere in orderto avoid retreatingwith him into Africa.27The Roman historian Livy describes this temple as "revered by all the people of the region" in the late thirdcentury28 and the evidence of the two Locrian women going there a half centuryor so before Hannibal's day shows us that the worship of Hera was paramountin southernItaly long before the coming of the Carthaginians.The offering of a new robe to a statueis, of course, part of a very ancient Greektradition. The womenof the Trojanroyalfamily makesuch an offeringto TrojanAthenain the Iliad and the real offering of a robe to Athena which took place annually in Athens is, of course, depicted in the Parthenonfrieze. Such offerings seem rarely to be made by private people, however, particularlyat such a famous temple as that of Herain Croton, and the fact thatNossis and her motherwove and dedicatedsuch a garmentseems to point to a high statuson theirpart. The fact thatthey madethe robe togethermay point to its being an offeringin behalf of their family or household, perhapsmade to Hera as patronof the family. The poem to Herastressesthe closeness of a motherandan adultdaughter.A brief poem describing the portraitof someone called Melinna (A.P. 6, 353) stresses her resemblanceto her motherand by implicationpraisesthe motherdaughterrelationship. The poem to Artemis is connected to these in that it remindsus of the painfulbeginningsof every mother-daughter relationship,for in elegant language it summons the goddess: Artemis of Delos andlovely Ortygia, leaveyoursacred bow in thecareof theGraces. cleanseyourself fromInopusandcome to freeAlketisfromherfearfulpains. (My translation) One can say in conclusion that Anyte, Erinna and Nossis, three major post-classicalwomen poets of ancientGreece, followed the tradition of Sappho in writing with the elegance and learning of their male colleagues, while including among their themes a numberof mattersof interestto women of all classes and centuries. SYLVIA BARNARD The State Universityof New Yorkat Albany

26Polybius,III, 33, 18; Livy XXVIII,46. XXX, 20. 27Livy, 28Ibid., XXIV, 3.