Corinna

Corinna was an ancient Greek lyric poet from Tanagra, a town in Boeotia, in central Greece. She wrote in Greek, using a literary dialect with features of her local speech, and her work is one of the few surviving examples of a woman poet from ancient Greece. The date of her life is still disputed. Ancient tradition places her in the fifth century BC, but many scholars argue for a later period, around the third century BC.

According to ancient tradition, she was a contemporary of Pindar and defeated him in poetry contests, although sources differ on how many victories she won. The Suda, a tenth-century Byzantine encyclopedia, records that she was the daughter of Acheloodorus and Procratia and was nicknamed Myia, “the fly.” Her work survives only in fragments: about forty, of which three are substantial, preserved on Egyptian papyri from the second century AD.

Corinna wrote choral lyric about local Boeotian legends. She often reworked myths by adding details unknown from other sources, and she tended to portray gods and heroes more favourably than the common versions did. Her style is clear, simple and largely unadorned, and her tone is often ironic or humorous, in contrast with the seriousness of Pindar. A story told by Plutarch shows her rebuking Pindar for filling his odes with mythical allusions. Her advice, “Sow with the hand, not with the sack,” became famous.

Her legacy is mainly historical. She was admired in Rome and cited by ancient grammarians, and Lope de Vega gave the name “Nueva Corina” to the poet Ana de Castro Egas, showing that her name stayed alive in later literature. Modern critics have sometimes found her parochial and dull, yet her work remains valuable as one of the few female voices in Greek lyric to survive.