Anyte of Tegea (original) (raw)
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Updated 01-21-07
Anyte of Tegea (fl. c.300 BCE)
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"THIS PLACE IS SACRED TO THE GODDESS."
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Anyte is believed to have been from Tegea, a city in southwest Arcadia, a mountainous area of the Peloponnese. By 307 BCE, the area was governed by a king, one of Alexander the Great's successors; before that, Tegea had been a free city-state, often allied with Sparta. Tegea was not an isolated spot: in about 350 an important temple of Athena and a theater had been built there.
Much of the poetry we have from the Alexandrian period comes from what we call the Greek Anthology, a collection that grew out of a "garland" of epigrams collected by Meleager of Gadara (c.90 BCE). The poems of Anyte are from that original collection. Epigrams are usually described as short poems with a point; they appeared first as actual epitaphs for the dead, carved on stone stele, and as dedications inscribed on objects offered to the gods. By the later 300s, the epigram was often autonomous, and the idea that the words would be carved or inscribed was sometimes a literary fiction. So we don't know the actual uses to which these epigrams would be put, but that doesn't affect the voices that we hear in the poems.
In the Greek Anthology, 24 epigrams are attributed to Anyte; three of these are sometimes disputed. Still, more complete poems are extant by Anyte than by any other Greek woman (because almost all we have of Sappho's work is fragmentary). Anyte's epigrams are of four kinds: dedications of objects, epitaphs for humans, epitaphs for animals, pure landscape. In her period, the first two were conventional subjects for epigram; the last two were not.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from translations in print.
Information about secondary sources.
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Online
1. Several sites have Anyte's poems; it is interesting to compare alternative translations of the same poem (you can see yet other versions below, under "In print"):
(a) In this collection of translations by Kenneth Rexroth, Anyte is the third poet listed, with three poems: "I, Hermes, have been set up"; "Kypris keeps this spot"; and "The children have put purple reins on you."
(b) In Norman Douglas' 1927 study, Birds and Beasts of the Greek Anthology, Use your browser's search function to go to the uses of "Anyte" for three poems, translated by Douglas and by W.H.D. Rouse: "No longer as of old shalt thou so early stir"; "Thou'rt dead then, Locrian Maera, by the brake"; and "For her cicada, who the oaks clung near."
(c) From individual sections of J.W. Mackail's 1890 Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology: first,go to "Anyte" for "To Pan the bristly-haired"; at another page of the same site, go to the two uses of "Anyte" for two poems,"I, Hermes, stand here." and "This is the Cyprian's ground." (At another site, the whole of Mackail's book, which includes references to Anyte and a brief biography, as well as the three poems above.)
(d) "This is the site of the Cyprian," translated and with commentary by Marilyn Skinner (Anyte is the second poet given).
(e) Go to "Hermes" for "I, Hermes, by the grey sea-shore," translated by Rennell Rodd.
2. At a Dutch site, links to the Greek originals of 20 of Anyte's epigrams.
3.Go to "Anyte" for a story told by the 100s CE writer Pausanius;one of Pausanius' translators, Peter Levi, finds it "likely that she [Anyte] wrote a prose account of this miracle which was engraved on stone and from which Pausanius worked" (Guide to Greece, 1971, Vol 1, p. 513).
4. Essays:
(a) N.S. Gill's "Anyte and the Muses," which quotes commentary by Jane McIntosh Snyder.
(b) A brief 2002 essay on Anyte as a "female viewer."
5. Reviews of translations (for excerpts, see below, under "In print"):
(a) Judith de Luce on Snyder's 1991 The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome.
(b) Armand D'Angour on Josephine Balmer's 1996 Classical Women Poets.
(c) Richard Hunter on Kathryn J. Gutzwiller's 1998 Poetic Garlands: Hellenistic Epigrams in Context.
5. A 2006 bibliography of editions, translations, and studies.
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In print
[In addition to translating 22 of Anyte's poems, Jane McIntosh Snyder has translated all of the Greek and classical Latin women poets and selections from the Latin prose writers. This book is perhaps the most valuable for the general reader because of its detailed analysis of each poem:]
Snyder, Jane McIntosh. The woman and the lyre: women writers in Classical Greece and Rome. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991. (xiii, 199p.)
LC#: PA3067 .S69 1991; ISBN: 0809317060
Previously published: Bristol: Bristol Classical Press; Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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(Diane J. Rayor has translated all of the Greek women poets, including 23 by Anyte. The notes are a bit sketchy, but the introduction places the women poets in the larger setting of the Greek lyric.(See the book's table of contents online.):]
Sappho's lyre: archaic lyric and women poets of ancient Greece / translations, with introduction and notes by Diane J. Rayor; foreword by W.R. Johnson. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1991. (xxi, 207 p.: map)
LC#: PA3622 .R39 1991; ISBN: 0520073355, 0520073363
Includes bibliographical references (p. 197-201).
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[Josephine Balmer's anthology includes most of the Greek and selections from Latin women poets; she gives 21 poems by Anyte. Balmer's introduction and notes try to show an alternative "literary tradition" of classical women poets; her points are not always convincing, but they are thought-provoking:]
Classical women poets / translated & introduced by Josephine Balmer. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1996. (158 p.)
LC#: PA3625 .C57 1996; ISBN: 1852243422
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[Kathryn J. Gutzwiller's study includes a section on Anyte (pp.154-74). Gutzwiller looks at the individual epigrams as part of a whole collection and discusses the persona the collection reveals. She gives the Greek original and her translation of 20 poems. The notes are thorough and will lead you to earlier studies. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Gutzwiller, Kathryn J. Poetic garlands: Hellenistic epigrams in context (Hellenistic culture and society; 28). Berkeley: University of California Press,1998. (xiii, 358p.)
LC#: PA3123 .G88 1998; ISBN:0520208579
Includes bibliographical references (p. 333-339) and indexes.
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"No longer will I take delight...."
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[A dolphin speaking his own epitaph:]
No longer will I take delight in floating seas,
and toss up my head, raising it from the depths,
Nor will I snort and leap about the ship's beautiful beak,
delighting in the figurehead, my likeness.
The purple swell of the sea cast me upon the shore,
and I lie along this narrow beach. [Snyder, p.71]
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"...to watch the sea... and ensure the comfort of sailors."
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[Three dedications; the first to Aphrodite:]
This place is sacred to the goddess.
Here her constant pleasure
is to watch the sea as it shimmers from the shore,
and ensure the comfort of sailors;
all around the ocean
trembles as it gazes on her statue, oil-smooth. [Balmer, p.73]
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"...this memorial for his steadfast horse."
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Damis erected this memorial for his steadfast horse
when Ares struck its tawny flanks;
Black blood boiled up through the thick hide,
and amidst the slaughter it smeared the earth with gore. [Snyder, p.70-71]
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"No longer drip enemy blood...."
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Stay here, murderous staff, and no longer drip
enemy blood around your baneful bronze cup.
But rather, lying in the lofty marble house of Athena,
announce the manliness of the Cretan Echecratidas. [Gutzwiller, p.57]
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"He perished covering a comrade...."
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[Three epitaphs:]
This Lydian earth covers Amyntor, Philip's son,
who often engaged his hand in iron battle:
no painful disease led him to the House of Night,
but he perished covering a comrade with his round shield. [Rayor, p.129]
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"...so you are greeted even though dead."
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Instead of bridal bed and holy wedding songs
for you, on this marble tomb your mother
set a virgin your image in size and beauty,
Thersis; so you are greeted even though dead. [Rayor, p.130]
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"...swiftest of pups, especially to bark...."
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You met your fate like those great dogs of old
by the curling roots
of a coward's bush; Loci, of Locri,
swiftest of pups, especially to bark,
into your light paws he sank harsh poison
that speckle-necked snake. [Balmer, p.75]
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""Why, rustic Pan...?
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[A pastoral dialogue; Pan is god of flocks and shepherds and inventor of the flute:]
"Why, rustic Pan, do you sit in a lonesome, shady wood
and play on this sweet-sounding reed?"
"So that my calves may pasture on this dewy mountain,
culling the fertile grasses." [Gutzwiller, p.69]
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A secondary source
[This collection includes Ellen Greene's essay, "Playing with Tradition: Gender and Innovation in the Epigrams of Anyte," analyzes five of Anyte's epitaphs to show the poet's blending of the "masculine" heroic and the "feminine" domestic. Although not indicated in acknowledgments or notes, the essay is substantially the same as a 2000 article by Greene (see in brackets below); here, a few of the notes are updated.(See the book's table of contents online.):]
Women poets in ancient Greece and Rome / edited by Ellen Greene. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, c2005. (xxi, 234 p)
LC#: PA3067 .W66 2005; ISBN: 0806136634, 0806136642
Includes bibliographical references (p. [199]-217) and index
[Or see: Helios, 27:1 (2000), 15-32. LC#: PA1 .H44; ISSN: 0160-0923]
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Updated 01-21-07