Erinna

Who is Erinna?

Erinna was a Greek poet, a contemporary and friend of Sappho, a native of Rhodes or the adjacent island of Telos or even possibly Tenos, who flourished about 600 BC. Her best-known poem was the Distaff, written in a mixture of Aeolic and Doric Greek and consisting of 300 dactylic hexameter lines, of which only four were extant until 1928. Three epigrams ascribed to her in the Palatine anthology probably belong to a later date, though some debate on the first epigram exists.

In 1928, a papyrus was found that contained 54 fragmentary lines written by her, in six pieces now located in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. The poem is a lament on the death of her friend Baucis, a disciple of Sappho, shortly before her wedding.

Camillo Neri, in an Italian work assessing the surviving fragments and testimonies to her, reconstructs the poet's original name as "Herinna". She is also sometimes named "Erina".