Myrtis of Anthedon

Myrtis of Anthedon (6th Century, B.C.) was an Ancient Greek poet and is purported to be the teacher of Pindar of Thebes and Corinna of Tanagra.^[1] Scholars believe that she was the earliest in the line of lyric poets who emerged from the district of Boeotia (Anthedon was a small town in the district of Boeotia, which adjoins Attica to the north-west).

Of Myrtis’ poetry, all we know is what can be surmised from Plutarch's (himself Boeotian) paraphrase of one of her prose poems.^[1] Plutrarch cites Myrtis as the source for the story that explained why women were forbidden to set foot in a sacred grove dedicated to a local hero, Eunostos, in the Boeotian town of Tanagra. Evidently Myrtis’ poem related how a woman named Ochna, Eunostos’ cousin, was rejected by him and, in a fit of anger and in despair over her unrequited love, she told her brothers that Eunostos had raped her, whereupon they killed Eunostus but were then taken captive by his father. Ochna, pitying her brothers, confessed her lie; they were allowed to go into exile, and Ochna ended her life by jumping from a cliff.

According to the Suda, Myrtis was called “sweet-sounding” by Antipater of Thessalonica and “clear-voiced” by Corinna.^[1][2] Apparently, Corinna also criticized Myrtis, as a woman, for venturing to compete with Pindar.^[3] Tatian, a 2nd Century A.D. travelling rhetorician and Christian apologist, said that a bronze statue of Myrtis was made by the sculptor Boïscus, otherwise unknown.^[1]

References

1. Snyder, Jane McIntosh (1970). The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome. Carbondale, Ill: Southern Illinois University Press.
2. Ian Michael Plant, ed. (2004). Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome: An Anthology. London: University of Oklahoma Press & Equinox Publishing.
3. Segal, Charles (1985). PE Easterling and Bernard MW Knox, ed. The Cambridge History of Classical Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 222–44.