Anyte

▪ Greek poet

flourished 3rd century BC, Tegea, Arcadia

      Greek poet of the Peloponnesus who was so highly esteemed in antiquity that in the well-known Stephanos (“Garland”), a collection compiled by Meleager (early 1st century), the “lilies of Anyte” are the first poems to be entwined in the “wreath of poets.” Anyte's fame persisted, and Antipater of Thessalonica, writing during the reign of Augustus (27 BC–AD 14), called her “a woman Homer” and placed her in a list of nine lyric poetesses. Of 24 extant epigrams assigned to her, 20 are believed to be genuine. In her dedicatory epigrams her verse is akin to that of Theocritus and Leonidas, her contemporaries. Her dedications for fountains and to the nymphs of the springs show the Greek feeling for a quiet landscape that is so often illustrated in the Greek Anthology. She wrote epitaphs, perhaps literary rather than for actual use, on various animals. She gives no suggestion of herself in her poems and never employs the theme of love. Her love of nature and interest in animals mark her as typical of the early years of the Hellenistic period.

Additional Reading

Kathryn J. Gutzwiller, Poetic Garlands: Hellenistic Epigrams in Context (1998); Marilyn B. Skinner, “Playing with Tradition: Gender and Innovation in the Epigrams of Anyte,” chapter 7 in Ellen Greene (ed.), Women Poets in Ancient Greece and Rome (2005), pp. 139–187; Diane J. Rayor (trans.), Sappho's Lyre: Archaic Lyric and Women Poets of Ancient Greece (1991).

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