Biographies of the famous and not so famous

Anyte of Tegea

When did they live?	Early 3rd century BC
What are they known for?	Arcadian Poet
Period	Greek

Example

Background

Anyte lived in the early 3rd century BC and was an Arcadian poet, admired by her contemporaries and later generations for her charming epigrams and epitaphs. Anyte is believed to have been from Tegea, a city in southwest Arcadia, a mountainous area of the Peloponnese. By 307 BCE, the area was governed by a king, one of Alexander the Great’s successors; before that, Tegea had been a free city-state, often allied with Sparta. Tegea was not an isolated spot: in about 350 an important temple of Athena and a theatre had been built there.

Much of the poetry we have from the Alexandrian period comes from what we call the Greek Anthology, a collection that expanded from a garland of epigrams collected by Meleager of Gadara (c.90 BCE). The poems of Anyte are from that original collection. Epigrams are usually described as short poems with a point; they appeared first as actual epitaphs for the dead, carved on stone stele, and as dedications inscribed on objects offered to the gods. By the later 300s, the epigram was often autonomous, and the idea that the words would be carved or inscribed was sometimes a literary fiction. According to some sources, Anyte was the leader of a school of poetry and literature on Pelopponesus, which also included the poet Leonidas of Tarentum. Antipater of Thessalonica listed Anyte as one of the nine earthly muses. At least eighteen of her epigrams, written in the Doric dialect, survive in the Greek Anthology; an additional six are doubtfully attributed to her. Even so, we have more complete poems by Anyte than by any other Greek woman. Anyte’s epigrams are of four kinds:

1. dedications of objects,
2. epitaphs for humans,
3. epitaphs for animals,
4. pure landscape.

In her period, the first two were conventional subjects for epigram; the last two were not. She was the first to write epitaphs for animals, and one of the first known to write vivid descriptions of untamed nature.

What else did they do?

Anyte also had a secondary reputation in the art of healing. Located at Naupaktos, Lokris Iived a man called Phalysios. He had a complaint of the eyes, and when he was almost blind the god at Epidauros sent Anyte to visit him, and she brought with her a sealed tablet. Anyte thought that the god’s appearance was a dream, but it proved at once to be a waking vision. For she found in her own hands a sealed tablet; so sailing to Naupaktos she bade Phalysios take away the seal and read what was written. He did not think this would be possible with his eyes in such a bad condition, but hoping to get some benefit he took away the seal. When he had looked at the wax he recovered his sight, and gave to Anyte what was written on the tablet, two thousand slaters of gold.