Born: Unknown, Greece
Died: Unknown
Country most active: Greece
Also known as: Herinna, Ἤριννα
Erinna was an ancient Greek poet, who was in her time considered one of the great women poets, second only to Sappho.
Today, she is best known for her long poem “The Distaff”, a 300-line hexameter lament for her childhood friend Baucis, who died shortly after her marriage. Though little of her poetry survives today, a large fragment of The Distaff was discovered in 1928 at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. In addition to The Distaff, three Doric dialect epigrams have been ascribed to Erinna.
There is little ancient evidence about Erinna’s life, and the testimony that has survived is often contradictory. Scholars believe she lived in the first part of the 4th century BC, though some sources place her as a contemporary of Sappho (who lived circa 630-570 BC). Her birthplace was most like Telos, though ancient sources also mention her home being Tenos, Teos, Rhodes, and Lesbos. It is likely she was born into a wealthy family, and would have been taught to read and write poetry – Teos is one of the few places in the ancient Greek world where evidence survives that girls were educated.
Three epigrams preserved in the Greek Anthology suggest that Erinna died young, though this is a source of debate among scholars. According to the poet Asclepiades, she dies shortly after composing the Distaff at age 19, though the earliest source to explicitly set her date of death at age 19 is the 10th-century AD encyclopedia the Suda.