Anyte of Tegea (Encyclopedia of the Ancient World)
Life
Named by Antipater as one of “nine earthly Muses,” Anyte (ahn-EE-tay of TEE-jee-uh) was born, lived, and composed epigram in Tegea in southern mainland Greece. Twenty-one surviving poems have been identified as hers, and three appear falsely attributed. She composed both traditional epigrams as tombstone dedications and epigrams as poems commenting on life. Her subjects included both people and pets and show a strong valuation of domestic life by using “heroic language.”
Influence
Her work is perhaps the foundation of the very popular pastoral and animal epigrams of the Hellenistic period, and it was copied by later male writers. Her style and language has been both praised and criticized by modern scholars, who often cite her as one of only a few women poets of the ancient world whose works survive.
Additional Resources
Balmer, Josephine. Classical Woman Poets. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England: Bloodaxe Books, 1996.
Rayor, Diane. Sappho’s Lyre: Archaic Lyric Women Poets of Ancient Greece. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
Snyder, Jane McIntosh. The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989.
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