Telesilla

Telesilla (

Little is known of Telesilla's life.[1] She was from the Peloponnesian city of Argos.^[2] A tradition reported by both Plutarch and Pausanias associates her with the defence of the city after the Battle of Sepeia in 494 BC;^[2] according to Eusebius her floruit was around 450 BC.^[3] If both these dates are correct, she would have lived a relatively long life.^[2] Alternatively, Maria Elisabetta Colonna has proposed that she was born c. 490 BC.^[4] Plutarch says that Telesilla was from an aristocratic family;^[1] Martin Litchfield West suggests that she held a hereditary priesthood, as names beginning "Telesi–" were sometimes associated with such families.^[5]

Plutarch reports that Telesilla was sickly; on the instructions of an oracle she became a poet, and was cured.

Five of Telesilla's surviving fragments relate to the gods Apollo (left) and Artemis (right)

Nine fragments of Telesilla's poetry survive in quotation or paraphrase,^[11][12] with only one being longer than a single word.^[1] What little survives suggests that, like Corinna, Telesilla concentrated on local legends.^[1] Both Pausanias and Plutarch state that she was well regarded by women in particular,^[13] and her surviving fragments suggest that she was interested in women's lives.^[1] Five fragments of her poetry relate to the gods Artemis and Apollo,^[14] and one apparently comes from a poem about the wedding of Zeus and Hera.^[15] According to Maximus of Tyre, Telesilla's poetry inspired the Argives. Umbertina Lisi suggested that this referred to war poetry, though Telesilla's surviving fragments are religious rather than martial.^[16]

A glyconic meter, the Telesillan, was named for her.^[17] The longest surviving fragment of Telesilla is two lines quoted by the grammarian Hephaestion to illustrate this meter, about the myth of Alpheus.^[18] It is addressed to "maidens" (κοραι), and was possibly a choral poem written for performance at a local festivals,^[14] used in the education of girls of noble families.^[19]

Telesilla's poetry was apparently admired in antiquity.^[21] According to Eusebius she was as famous as Bacchylides, and Antipater of Thessalonica included her in his canon of nine women poets.^[2] According to Pausanias, there was a stele to Telesilla in front of the temple of Aphrodite in Argos which depicted her holding a helmet and with her poems on the ground around her,^[14] and Tatian reports that Niceratus sculpted her.^[2]

In the modern world, Telesilla inspired H.D.'s poem "Telesila",^[22] and she is included in Judy Chicago's Heritage Floor, accompanying the place setting for Aspasia in The Dinner Party.^[23]

References

Works cited

• Balmer, Josephine (1996). Classical Women Poets. Bloodaxe Books.
  ISBN 1-85224-342-2
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• Bowman, Laurel (2004). "The 'Women's Tradition' in Greek Poetry". Phoenix. 58 (1).
  JSTOR 4135194
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• "Telesilla". Brooklyn Museum. Retrieved 1 December 2022.
• Campbell, D. A. (1992). Greek Lyric Poetry IV: Bacchylides, Corinna, and Others. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
  ISBN 978-0-674-99508-6
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• Carey, Christopher (2012). "Telesilla". Oxford Classical Dictionary (4th ed.).
• Davies, Malcolm, ed. (2021). Lesser & Anonymous Fragments of Greek Lyric Poetry: A Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  ISBN 978-0-19886050-1
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• Ingalls, Wayne B. (2000). "Ritual Performance as Training for Daughters in Archaic Greece". Phoenix. 54 (1): 1–20.
  JSTOR 1089087
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• Martinez Morales, Jennifer (2019). "Women on the Walls? The Role and Impact of Women in Classical Greek Sieges". In Armstrong, Jeremy; Trundle, Matthew (eds.). Brill's Companion to Sieges in the Ancient Mediterranean. Leiden: Brill.
  ISBN 9789004413740
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• Plant, I. M. (2004). Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome: an Anthology. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
  ISBN 9780806136226
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• Rayor, Diane J. (1991). Sappho's Lyre: Archaic Lyric and Women Poets of Ancient Greece. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  ISBN 978-0-520-07336-4
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• Robbins, Emmet (2006). "Telesilla". Brill's New Pauly.
  doi:10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e1202980
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• Scott, Lionel (2005). Historical Commentary on Herodotus Book 6. Leiden: Brill.
  ISBN 978-90-47-40798-0
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• Snyder, Jane McIntosh (1991). The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome. Carbondale: SIU Press.
  ISBN 9780809335961
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• Tomlinson, R. A. (1972). Argos and the Argolid: From the End of the Bronze Age to the Roman Occupation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
  ISBN 0-8014-0713-3
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• West, M. L. (2011). "The Greek Poetess: Her Role and Image". Hellenica: Selected Papers on Greek Literature and Thought. Vol. III. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  ISBN 9780199605033
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• Project Continua: Biography of Telesilla Project Continua is a web-based multimedia resource dedicated to the creation and preservation of women's intellectual history from the earliest surviving evidence into the 21st Century.