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Erinna's Distaff

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Averil  and
Alan Cameronm
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Extract

Suidas tells us that Erinna wrote a poem of 300 lines, in Aeolic and Dorian dialect, called . There happens to be preserved on papyrus part ofa hexameter lament for Erinna's friend Baucis, the subject of two epigramsalso by Erinna, AP 7. 710 and 712. ‘Distaff’ is a strange title for a lament, it would seem, and there have been various attempts both to explain it and to explain it away.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , December 1969 , pp. 285 - 288
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1969

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References

1 s.v. Erinna:

2 Most conveniently, see Bowra, C. M., Greek Poetry and Lift, Studies presented to Gilbert Murray, Oxford (1936), 325–42.Google Scholar Partial text in Page, D. L., Greek Literary Papyri, i (1942), 486–9.Google Scholar See also Latte, K., Nachr. Gott. Ges., phil.-hist. Kl. 3 (1953),79–94Google Scholar, and Scheidweiler, F., Philologus, c (1956), 40–51. For bibliography up to 1962Google Scholar cf. Levin, D. N., ‘Quaestiones Erinneanae’, HSCP lxvi (1962), 200–1.Google Scholar Most recently, Gow, and Page, , Hellenistic Epigrams ii (1965), 285–2.Google Scholar

3 Line 39.

4 Lines 22–3.

5 R.E. 6. 456 f.

6 Cf. 9. 590. 3–4:

7 Hermes lxix (5934), 206–9.

1 AP 7. 12–13 and 713, and 9. 190 use very similar language, e.g. the images of honey and bees, of the chorus of the Muses, the mention of Erinna's age, and the image of the swan. So too Christodorus, AP 2. 108–10 (quoted below).

2 Art. cit. 340.

3 So too Levin, art. cit. 199, Lesky, A., Hist. of Greek Lit. 2 (1966), 640 n. 2.Google Scholar

4 Levin, art. cit. 199–200, advances all the hypotheses with apparently equal conviction.

5 7. 283 D. AP 9. 190. 7 may possibly imply that Erinna also wrote lyrics; see Gow and Page, ii. 282.

6 For Erinna's date cf. Gow, and Page, , ii. 28,, associating her with the generation of Theocritus. But we see no reason not to accept the mid-fourth-century date given by Eusebius, Ol., 06. 4, 107. 1.Google Scholar See Luck, G., Mus. Helu. xi (1954), 170.Google Scholar

7 Cf. also 7. 12. 2.

1 Bowra, art. cit. 338. But there is no possible connection between the titles of Erinna's poem and Theocritus, Id. 28, also called . Theocritus' poem has that title simply because it accompanied the gift of a spindle.

2 See p. 286 n. / above.

3 7.7120 1–3:

4 Cf., for example (from LSJ), Od. 3. 208, 4. 208, etc., Bacch. 5. 143, Aesch. Eu. 335,

1 See Gow, and Page, ad loc. (ii. 283–4).Google Scholar

2 Levin, art. cit. 200.

3 Bowra, , art. cit. 337.Google Scholar

4 e.g. Theocr., Id. 1.64 ff., 8 ff., Bion 15 ff., and cf. Catullus 64. 327 (a different exploitation of the Fates spinning motif), Virg. Ecl. 4. 46–7.