#telesilla

The seven most important ancient greek poetesses:

Telesilla of Argos, known for having helped in defending her hometown from a spartan army;

Corinna of Tanagra, known for her focus on Boeotian legends;

Nossis of Epizephyrian Locris, known for her epigrams centered on the lives and world of women;

Sappho of Lesbos, known for her love poetry, both lesbian and heterosexual, and her talent that lead people to call her "The Tenth Muse";

Anyte of Tegea, known for her pastoral poems and epitaphs for pets that became both standard genres in Hellenistic poetry and may have influenced Theocritus;

Moero of Byzantium, known for her epic poem "Mnemosyne" and her epigrams;

Erinna (birthplace unknown); known for "The Distaff", a hexameter poem in what the poetess laments the early death of her friend Baucis shortly after her marriage

Telesilla of Argos was a fifth century lyric poet famed for her work and her brave deeds. Named by Antipater among one of the nine lyric poets (though differing from the generally accepted list of nine) she was also responsible for creating the metre of poetry named after her, the Telesillean Metre.

These are the divinely tongued women who were reared on the hymns of Helicon and the Pierian Rock of Macedon: Praxilla, Moiro, Anyte the female Homer, Sappho the ornament of the fair-tressed Lesbian women, Erinna, renowned Telesilla, and you, Corinna, who sang of Athena’s martial shield, Nossis the maiden-throated, and Myrtis the sweet-voiced, All of them fashioners of the everlasting page. Nine Muses Great Ouranos bore, Nine likewise Gaia, to be a joy undying for mortals. (Antipater, Anthologia Palatina 9.26)

From a young age Telesilla was often sickly and so consulted the gods on how to restore her to health. An oracle declared she should devote herself to the Muses, which began her study and love of poetry and music.

Only one direct fragment of her work remains consisting of more than one word:

Now, girls, when Artemis

was fleeing from Alpheus...

According to Pausanias, in 494-493BCE when the Spartans attacked and slaughtered all the Argive fighting men, Telesilla rallied the too-old and too-young as well as the slaves and sent them to the walls of the city to stand in defence. She then armed all the women and stood ready to fight off the invading Spartans, saving Argos.

Herodotus (6.77) recorded an oracle of Apollo that king Kleomenes I received regarding the battle:

When woman wins the victory and drives out man, she shall have glory in Argos and women tear their cheeks.

Plutarch (Moralia, 245c-f) recounts the story of Telesilla leading the women in battle as well, but also:

After the city was saved, they buried the women who had fallen in battle by the Argive road, and as a memorial to the achievements of the women who were spared they dedicated a temple to Ares Enyalius.

Pausanias describes a statue of Telesilla outside the sanctuary of Aphrodite in Argos. The poet is standing, looking down at a helmet she holds in her hands, readying for battle, with the books of her poetry at her feet. Some say this is actually a statue of Aphrodite Areia, but this does not explain the books. One could perhaps say that the statue was built to show that Aphrodite of War inspired Telesilla and the women of Argos to take up arms against Sparta.

While scholars don’t doubt that the battle took place, and perhaps the remaining people of Argos did what they could in a last ditch effort to save the city, there is some doubt whether Telesilla herself defended the city with the women, or if perhaps it was her poetry that inspired the people. This is partially because Herodotus, who loves to spin stories, made no mention of Telesilla when recounting the Spartan assault on Argos.

Though only two fragments and a handful of quotations exist of her poetry now, Telesilla’s work and her fantastical tale of defending Argos with the women was still in circulation by the second century AD, 700 years after her death.

A Reversal of Gender Roles

In memory of the battle and the lives lost, the Argives celebrated the solemn festival Hybristica at the new moon in the Argive month Hermaes. Plutarch called this a “sacred rite of incivility” where women would wear men’s clothes and cloaks, and men wore veils and petticoats. Supposedly the women would also insult the men and treat them with inferiority for the entirely of the festival. The festival was said to be in honour of Aphrodite as a goddess, a god, or both, to represent the reversal of classic gender roles and dress.

As all the men of prime age in Argos had been slain, there was a significant change in the gender and social roles in the city immediately following the battle. Plutarch goes on to say:

To restore the balance of the sexes in the city, they did not (despite Herodotus' claim) marry the women to slaves, but to the best men in the surrounding towns, whom they made citizens of Argos. The women appeared not to show respect for their husbands and despised them when they slept with them as if they were inferior, so they made a law that says that women who have beards must spend the night with their husbands.

“Women who have beards” likely refers to the women who followed Telesilla into battle, thereby taking on the role of a man.

📜

Sources:

Timeline

Project Continua

Plutarch

Wiki Hybristica

Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome by Ian Malcolm Plant, pg 33-35

New article from Philomαtheia! (available in multiple languages, just press “Translate” and select yours)

Telesilla: The female general that led Argos to victory at 494 BC.

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In the first volume of the Loeb Classical Library’s Description of Greece by Pausanias, the author of the notes and English translation, W.H.S. Jones, gives us “A Few Synonyms,” as they call the section. The edition is from 1928, so “synonym” is a bit broader of a term in that it means “functionally similar words with nuance.” Anyway, in the section for graven image synonyms, he notes that Pausanias uses the word ἕδος (hedos,“seated statue”) exactly once. Naturally, I had to check it out and according to Pausanias (2.20.8) it’s one of Aphrodite in Argos, looming above a stele (essentially an aesthetic, non-supporting column) featuring the lyric poetess Telesilla, who Pausanias goes on to say that, after Argos was depopulated of fighting men, armed the Argive women to successfully defend the city against the Spartans (2.20.9-10).

A lot of the literature calls her an “Antique Joan of Arc,” and for good reason—she and the women she arms:

“were not fear-struck by their war cry (ἀλαλαγμῶ, alalagmō, onomatopoeic; fun fact, Ares was called Alalaxius, “god of the war cry”) but received their attack and fought valiantly (ἐρρωμένως, errōmenōs, implies both inner and outer strength and good health, meaning that Telesilla and the Argive women were, if not winning, at least successful in repelling the siege).” Of course, male Greek author that he was, Pausanias had to hedge and say the Spartans withdrew from a lose-lose situation in which they would either ingloriously slaughter the women fighters or, inconceivably worse, lose to women.

Herodotus tells a more Spartan-friendly story in which, under the lead of Cleomenes, the Spartans killed most of the Argive fighting force, burned a very sacred grove, and went home without sacking Argos. Herodotus says he didn’t capture the city either because he was bribed or, according to Cleomenes himself, basically felt he’d done enough, but Herodotus refuses to commit to any explanation in particular.

Of issue is also the Delphic oracle that predicted the outcome of the battle, interpreted differently by Pausanias and Herodotus, even though Pausanias says he’s quoting Herodotus when he writes, “But when the woman having defeated the man drives him out and great glory is won in Argos, there will still be at that time many women of the Argives with both cheeks torn in grief.” So the women led by Telesilla are victorious, but many of them lost their husbands in the battle preceding the siege. But the text of Herodotus that we have adds “And someone from the men born afterward will say, ‘a terrible, three-coiled snake was destroyed, tamed by a spear.’” In Herodotus, it’s not that woman beats man, but that the grammatically feminine “Sparta” defeats the grammatically masculine “Argos.” As for the snake thing... it’s complicated. Pausanias himself describes the area around Argos as having a shrine to “Pythian Apollo,” that is, Apollo who killed the serpent Python, literally “Rotter.” He also says he was excited to see the tomb of Aepytus, a former sovereign of Arcadia (right next door to Argos), mentioned in the Iliad by Homer (2.604) as being right beside Mount Cyllene. Pausanias says that Aepytus was killed by a sēps, some kind of snake, and that a nearby mountain was named Sepea for it (8.4, 15, 16). Now if there’s a local shrine of Pythian Apollo, I’d say the word sēps is related to sēpō, from which we get sepsis, meaning it’s a local Argive translation and tradition of “Rotter.” It would be massively ironic to have Apollo’s Delphic oracle, named the Pythia after Python, to call Argos a “snake” in reference to their own Pythian tradition. W.W. How and J. Wells in their notes on the oracle in Herodotus explain the word for “three-coiled” as being metrically easier to work with than the intended “coil-less,” but it could refer to any three of the mountains of northern Arcadia bordering on Argolis.

We are told by W.H.S. Jones, W.W. How/J. Wells, and A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (ed. William Smith) that Telesilla, though rad as hell, is probably a later addition to the story, as Herodotus is a much earlier source than Pausanias. We also know from his later treatment of Artemisia—a Greek commander fighting for Persia and played by Eva Green in the inane second 300 movie—that although being a male Greek author he isn’t unwilling to portray women in fighting roles. Of course, the story of Telesilla is in the context of Greek-on-Greek warfare, whereas Artemisia’s being with the Persians would be a betrayal of Greece. Just as Romans thought the Greeks were effeminate, the Greeks thought the Persians were effeminate and Herodotus may have been more willing to tell of Artemisia as evidence of Persian effeminacy in contrast to Greek manliness. Either way, Telesilla appears to be a blend of the historical Argive poetess and some ancient and long-forgotten war goddess (pre-Greek or eastern), invented to account for how Sparta and Argos both technically won and thereby fulfilled the Delphic oracle—all because Sparta pulling a drive-by without capturing or at least sacking Argos sounds rather improbable. Until, of course, you consider one of the modern sources above, ADG&RB&M, which notes in the entry for Cleomenes that “we must remember the Spartan incapacity for sieges.”

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