WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 7 



and the laurel-crowned hills of Greece around "the fair- 

 haired Lesbian ' ' in her island home, which was, at the same 

 time, a school of poetry and music. The most gifted of 

 these were Danophila, the Pamphylian, and Erinna, whose 

 hexameters were said by the ancients to reveal a genius 

 equal to that of Homer. She died at the early age of nine- 

 teen and has always excited a pathetic interest because, 

 like so many others of her sex since her time women and 

 maidens of the loftiest spiritual aspirations, she was con- 

 demned to the spindle and the distaff when she wished to 

 devote her life to the service of the Muses. The following 

 is her own epitaph: 



"These are Erinna's songs, how sweet, though slight! 

 For she was but a girl of nineteen years. 

 Yet stronger far than what most men can write; 

 Had death delayed, whose fame had equaled hers?" 



Never before nor since did suck a wave of feminine 

 genius pass over the fragrant valleys and vine-clad plains 

 of Greece. Never in any other place or time shone so bril- 

 liant a galaxy of women of talent and imagination; never 

 was there a more perfect flowering of female intelligence 

 of the highest order. According to tradition, there ap- 

 peared in the favored land of Hellas, when the entire popu- 

 lation of the country was not equal to that of a fair-sized 

 modern city, within the brief space of a century, no fewer 

 than seventy-six women poets. When we remember that 

 the Eenaissance produced only about sixty female poets, 

 though in a more extended territory and with a much 

 larger population, and that none of them could approach 

 the incomparable Sappho, or even many of her pupils, in 

 the perfection of their work, we can realize the splendor 

 of the achievements of the female intellect in the Hellenic 

 world during the golden age of feminine poetic art. 1 



iCf. Poetriarum octo, Erinnce, Myrus, Mytidis, Corinncs, Telesil- 

 ICB, Praxillw, Nossidis, Anytce fragmenta et elogia, by J. C. Wolf, 



