1188: Erinna of Telos
Ancient Greek Poet
Lived: c. 4th Century BC, Telos, Ancient Greece (Present-day Tilos, Greece)
Also Known As: Herinna
Erinna is most remembered for her long-form poem entitled “The Distaff” which is a lament on the loss of her friend. While the original work is supposed to have been 300 lines long, sadly today the poem survives in fragments (with sources claiming anywhere from four to fifty-four lines survive). She may also have written a poem entitled “The Tortoise and the Mirror,” as well as several other shorter works as well.
There is very little information about Erinna surviving on the internet today. Her name is found on Judy Chicago’s famous “Dinner Party” art installation and is therefore listed on the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s website about the art installation, and she also has one of the most well-sourced and fleshed out Wikipedia articles I have ever seen for an ancient person, so I have linked that article below as well.
According to several sources, Erinna was a contemporary and friend of the most-famous Ancient Greek Female Poet, Sappho, but whether or not this is true is unverifiable. Because of the contradictory nature of ancient sources, various sources list Erinna as having been born anywhere from the 600s to the 400s BC, and that she could have been born on any number of ancient Greek islands, including Telos and Lesbos. Most historians usually attribute her birthplace to Telos because of the Doric dialect her poems are written in, but this is far from a conclusive theory.
Historians have also speculated she died around the age of nineteen, because the writing in the Distaff seems to indicate she was nineteen at the time of writing it—however again this does not necessarily indicate she died at nineteen, soon after her famous poem was written.
All we really know about Erinna is that she was widely lauded for her poetry during Antiquity, and that she was Greek. Hopefully someday more information about her is uncovered, but for now, her life is a bit of a mystery.
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Erinna
https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/dinner_party/heritage_floor/erinna