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Elizabeth A.Sackler Center for Feminist Art

Erinna

Flourished circa 600 B.C.E., ancient Greece

The Greek poet Erinna, whose original name was probably Herinna, was a friend and contemporary of Sappho. Of her poems, written in the Doric dialect, only two survive, and these in fragmentary form. Traditional sources describe The Distaff as a 300-line epic poem (only four lines survive), seemingly about a woman who dies before getting married. The second extant work, The Tortoise and the Mirror, was discovered in 1928.