A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Sulpitia
SULPITIA,
A Roman poetess, who lived in the reign of Domitian, in the first century after Christ. She has been called the Roman Sappho. There are none of her writings left but a fragment of a satire against Domitian, who published a decree for the banishment of the philosophers from Rome. This satire has usually been printed at the end of the Satires of Juvenal, to whom it has been sometimes falsely attributed. From the invocation, it would seem that she was the author of many other poems, and the first Roman lady who taught her sex to vie with the Greeks in poetry. Her language is easy and elegant, and she appears to have had a ready talent for satire. She is mentioned by Martial and Sidonius Apollinaris, and is said to have addressed to her husband Calenus, who was a Roman knight, "A Poem on Conjugal Love." The thirty-fifth epigram in Martial's tenth book refers to her poem on conjugal love.