Erinna

Erinna was an ancient Greek poet, most likely active in the first half of the fourth century BC, although some ancient traditions place her in the circle of Sappho, centuries earlier. She wrote in Greek in a literary form of Doric mixed with Aeolic features, and she matters because she is one of the few women poets of antiquity whose work survives, even if only in fragments.

Little is known about her life, and the ancient sources often contradict one another. Her birthplace remains disputed: Telos is the most widely accepted choice, but Teos, Tenos, Mytilene and Rhodes are also named. She probably came from a wealthy family that gave her access to reading and writing poetry, and she is said to have died young. The age of nineteen appears only in late sources, so it should be treated with caution.

Her best-known work is The Distaff, a lament of around three hundred hexameter lines of which only fragments survive. It mourns Baucis, a childhood friend of the speaker who died shortly after her marriage. The poem recalls shared games, childhood fears such as Mormo, a spirit used to frighten children, and the speaker's inability to see the dead woman's body. It draws on the female funeral lament known as the goos and on Homeric models, and it shows the influence of Sappho. A papyrus found at Oxyrhynchus in 1928 allowed modern readers to recover a substantial part of its text.

In antiquity she was highly admired; Antipater of Thessalonica counted her among the "nine earthly muses". Later she fell into relative obscurity, and in modern literature she reappeared mainly alongside Sappho, who many writers imagined as her friend or mentor. Today she is little read, but she is regarded as a distinctive voice in the Greek tradition of women's lament.