Praxilla

Praxilla of Sicyon (Greek: Πράξιλλα), was a Greek lyric poet of the 5th century BC, from Sicyon on the Gulf of Corinth.[1] Eusebius dates her floruit to 451/450 BC (the second year of the 82nd Olympiad).[lower-alpha 1][3] Five quotations and three paraphrases from her poems survive. Three of the poems attributed to her are drinking songs, two are religious, and the three paraphrases are all versions of myths. Various social contexts have been suggested for Praxilla based on this range of surviving works, including that her poetry was in fact composed by two different authors; that Praxilla was a hetaira (courtesan); that she was a professional musician; or that the drinking songs derive from a non-elite literary tradition rather than being authored by a single writer.

Painting of a profile view of Praxilla, a woman with brown curled hair, a yellow headband with a green decorative pattern, and a pink necklace and Greek chiton. She stands in front of a granite backdrop.
An artistic interpretation of Praxilla's appearance by John William Godward, painted in 1922.

Poetry

Little of Praxilla's work survives – five fragments in her own words, and three paraphrases by other authors.[4] These vary in style: three are skolia (drinking songs) one is a hymn to Adonis, and one is a dithyramb.[4] One of the skolia is in a metre named the Praxilleion after her. The three works known only in paraphrase are all versions of myths.[5] In the second century AD, Athenaeus reports that Praxilla was particularly known for her skolia.[6]

Three lines of Praxilla's hexameter hymn to Adonis are quoted by Zenobius. In them, Adonis is asked in the underworld what he will most miss from the mortal world. He replies that he will miss the sun, stars, and moon, cucumbers, apples, and pears. Maria Panagiotopoulou argues that both the structure of these lines and Praxilla's use of the word kalliston allude to Sappho 16.[7] The reference to cucumbers, apples, and pears may allude to the vegetables used in the Adonia, a festival commemorating the death of Adonis, and the poem may have been performed there; alternatively as all three had sexual connotations in ancient Greek literature it may have been performed at symposia.[8]

Because three of the works attributed to Praxilla are drinking songs, and respectable women in classical Greece would normally have been excluded from the parties where such songs were performed, there has been some scholarly debate about Praxila's social position. Martin Litchfield West suggests that there were two Praxillas, one writing the skolia; the other, the more "respectable" choral songs and hymns.[9] Other scholars have argued that, based on the attribution of skolia to Praxilla, she must have been a hetaira (a type of prostitute), though Jane McIntosh Snyder notes that there is no external evidence for this thesis.[10] Ian Plant suggests the alternative hypothesis that she was a professional musician, composing songs for symposia because there was a market for such works.[4]

Alternatively, West suggests that the skolia were not written by Praxilla at all.[11] Gregory Jones agrees, and argues that all of the surviving skolia attributed to particular poets are in fact derived from a non-elite oral literary tradition.[12] Marchinus Van der Valk, who also endorses this theory, allows for the possibility that some skolia were "derived from" Praxilla's poetry and published in antiquity attributed to her.[13]

Reception

Praxilla was well regarded in antiquity. Antipater of Thessalonica lists her first among his canon of nine "immortal-tongued" women poets, and the sculptor Lysippus (also from Sicyon) sculpted her in bronze.[4] She was sufficiently well-known in classical Athens that two of Aristophanes' surviving plays (The Wasps and Thesmophoriazusae) parody her work,[4] and part of one of her poems is inscribed on a red-figure cup dating to about 470 BC.[14][15] Her poetry was still remembered many centuries after her death: in the second century AD, her name was remembered in the proverb "sillier than Praxilla's Adonis", and the author Tatian cites her in his Address to the Greeks.[4]

Praxilla was included in Judy Chicago's Heritage Floor.[16] Cy Twombly includes text from a poem by Praxilla in his 1960 painting Untitled (at Sea).[17] One of her fragments was adapted by Michael Longley in his poem "Praxilla", from the 2004 collection Snow Water.[18]

Notes
  1. Vanessa Cazzato questions the reliability of Eusebius' chronology, noting that Eusebius also names Telesilla and Bacchylides in connection with this year, though both were likely earlier.[2]

References
  1. Snyder, Jane McIntosh The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome. Southern Illinois University Press, 1989 p.54
  2. Cazzato, Vanessa. "The Look of Praxilla Fr. 8 (PMG 754)", in Cazzato, Vanessa, and Lardinois, André, The Look of Lyric: Greek Song and the Visual 2016. Leiden: Brill. p.191
  3. Eusebius, Chronicle Ol. 82.2
  4. Plant, I.M. Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome. Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004 pp 38-39.
  5. Snyder, Jane McIntosh The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome. Southern Illinois University Press, 1989 p.58
  6. Natoli, Bartolo A.; Pitts, Angela; Hallett, Judith P. Ancient Women Writers of Greece and Rome 2022. p.177
  7. Panagiotopoulou, Maria. "Praxilla's Adonis and the Female Voice: An Erotic Reverse Priamel in Sappho's Shadow and Nossis's Light". Illinois Classical Studies 47:1 2022. pp.25–26
  8. Panagiotopoulou, Maria. "Praxilla's Adonis and the Female Voice: An Erotic Reverse Priamel in Sappho's Shadow and Nossis's Light". Illinois Classical Studies 47:1 2022. p.29
  9. West, M.L., Greek Lyric Poetry: A new translation. Oxford University Press 1993 p.xix
  10. Snyder, Jane McIntosh The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome. Southern Illinois University Press, 1989 p.56
  11. West, M.L., Greek Lyric Poetry: A new translation. Oxford University Press 1993 p.xix
  12. Jones, Gregory S., "Voice of the People: Popular Symposia and the Non-Elite Origins of the Attic Skolia". Transactions of the American Philological Association, vol.144 issue 2, Autumn 2014. p.234.
  13. Van der Valk, Marchinus, "On the Composition of the Attic Skolia", Hermes Vol.102, Issue 1, 1974. p.7
  14. West, M. L., "The Greek Poetess: Her Role and Image". Hellenica: Selected Papers on Greek Literature and Thought. Vol. III. Oxford University Press 2011. p. 323
  15. Davies, Malcolm, ed. (2021). Lesser & Anonymous Fragments of Greek Lyric Poetry: A Commentary. Oxford University Press. p.68
  16. Brooklyn Museum, "Praxilla". Accessed 6 December 2022
  17. Greub, Thierry. Das ungezähmte Bild: Texte zu Cy Twombly. Brill 2017. p.199; p.211 n.22
  18. Balmer, Josephine. Piecing Together the Fragments: Translating Classical Verse, Creating Contemporary Poetry. Oxford University Press 2013. p.114
  • Project Continua: Biography of Praxilla Project Continua is a web-based multimedia resource dedicated to the creation and preservation of women’s intellectual history from the earliest surviving evidence into the 21st Century.
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