Dion informs ns, in her husband’s defence as well as her own.
In poetry too, women have sometimes been known to win admiration, as Paiisanias relates. Coriima was highly celebrated in the art of versification; and Eustathius, in the enumeration which he gives of the ships of Homer (as does also Eusebius in his Book of the Times), makes mention of the honoured and youthful Sappho, who of a verity, although she was a woman, was nevertheless such a one that she surpassed by very far all the eminent writers of that age. So also doth Varro, with all unwonted and yet wellmerited praise, exalt Erinna, who with three hundred verses, opposed herself to the glorious fame of the brightest luminary of Greece, and with a small volume of her own making,[1] called Elecate, counterpoised the Vv^idely-grasping Iliad of the great Homer.[2] Aristophanes has celebrated Carissena as most accomplished in the same art, upholding her to be a most learned and most eminent lady; and as much may be said for Theano, Mirone, Polla, Elpis, Cornisicia, and Telisilla, to the last of whom a very beautiful statue was erected in the Temple of Venus, as a testimony of the admiration in which she was held for her extraordinary abilities.
But, to say nothing of the many other poetesses who might be enumerated, do we not read that in the difficult studies of philosophy. Arete was the teacher of the learned Aristippus? and were not Lastenia and Assiotea the disciples of the divine Plato? In the art of oratory, the Roman ladies Sempronia and Hortensia were muqh renowned; in grammar, according to Athenaeus, Agallis attained to high distinction; and in the prediction of things future, or if you please to call it so, in astrology and magic, Themis, Cassandra, and Man to acquired the greatest fame in their day, as did Isis and Ceres in matters connected with agriculture;
- ↑ “Of her own makinghear ye that, my masters!
- ↑ “If ever,” exclaims an angry critic; jealous, without doubt, of the honours so justly paid to ladies by the excellent Messer Giorgio; “if ever such a judgment wns pronounced in ancient Greece, we may safely affirm it to be the greatest as well as oldest literary wrong ever committed,” Another opines that no one will give any weight to our poor Vasari’s affirmations in this matter; a third declares the story of Erinna surpassing Homer to be “all but ” ridiculous. What made him put in his “all but?”
