Chiayi Lee (Princeton University)
My talk examines the epigrams attributed to Sappho (AP 6.269, 7.489, 7.505) and Erinna (AP 6.352, 7.710, 7.712) as ancient case studies in co-opting and re-defining female authorship in the genre of epigram, and as a demonstration of the unique conceptual possibilities of epigram as pseudepigraphon. No other genre in ancient Greek literary history welcomes attributions to authors as disparate as Plato and Sappho and Homer; epigram uniquely allows for certain kinds of fictionality surrounding authorship and fostered experimentation with attribution as an authorial signature, as these poems demonstrate.
Of all genres, Hellenistic epigram boasts the greatest number of female authors, inspiring ancient notions of a tradition of female epigram authorship that extended backwards in time to include Sappho and Erinna. Their membership in the pantheon of female epigrammatists is sealed by the Hellenistic creation and/or attribution of pseudepigraphic epigrams under their names, although both poetesses long predate the Hellenistic period and never composed in either the epigram genre or elegiac meter. Despite this anachronism, Meleager's Garland attributes three epigrams to each poetess, attesting to the Hellenistic perception of them as epigrammatopoioi. [Sappho]'s epigrams, however, have generally been dismissed as forgeries or mistaken attributions by modern readers who claim that they bear insufficient relation to her corpus (Page 1981, Neri 2021), while [Erinna]'s epigrams, which heavily reprise the themes of her known work, are accepted as genuine or labeled dubious at worst (Neri 2003). How and why do the only pseudepigrapha attributed to ancient Greek female authors appear in epigram? What accounts for the difference in the treatment of both poetesses' epigrams between modern and ancient (Hellenistic) readers?
Following the interpretative construct model of pseudepigrapha (Peirano Garrison and Najman 2019), I examine how these epigrams establish identification with their female authors — who are both known for writing on female themes — and with their corpora, and how they reshape them from the outside. My approach privileges the perspective of the Hellenistic reader who accepted the authorship of these poems by allowing epigram and attribution to mutually interpret one another. I observe that Sappho's epigrams, when read as hers, utilize Sapphic vocabulary and idiom, translate her known themes (hymn, lament) into epigrammatic subgenres (votive, epitaph), and reprise her focus on female relationships. [Erinna]'s epigrams establish explicit references to her work and biography, transforming the subject of her Distaff into multiple epitaphs for Baucis. Erinna is represented as both epigrammatist and tombcutter, exercising total authorial control as a female poet over her friend's afterlife. Authorized by both external signatures (attribution) and internal signatures (references to author and oeuvre), these epigrams supplement and reinforce certain elements of their authors' identities. Collectively, they articulate a set of characteristics — or readerly demands — associated with the female authorial voice, including insight into the world of relationships between women. Despite epigram's seeming insistence on attestation in the context of anthology, it is precisely this paratextual feature that allows for conceptual play with a poem's site of production and for transformative engagement with authors of the past.