Corinna and Sappho Study Questions
Corinna was from the region of Greece called Boeotia, as was Hesiod, but wrote some 150 years
later. Her work, unlike Sappho’s, was not wildly popular in the ancient world, but a bit of it has
been preserved for us on papyrus from the 2nd century B.C.
1. Do you think it likely that Corinna was writing in the same society that Hesiod was? In other
words, did Boeotian society become more open for women? Or do you think their poetry could
coexist in the same society? Be prepared to point out the lines in Corinna’s poetry that support
your view.
2. What does Corinna’s poem about Cithaeron and Helicon describe? Is there anything in it that
strikes you as particularly feminine?
3. Pindar was a male poet who composed epinikiai, victory poems for the winners of pan-Hel-
lenic games. He was a near-contemporary of Corinna. Myrtis was a female poet and, according
to later tradition, Corinna’s teacher. What does the fragment about Myrtis suggest about female
poetry in Corinna’s day?
Sappho was a female poet from 7th-century Lesbos and one of the most celebrated writers of the
ancient world. It is saddening that so little of her voluminous work has survived. Barnard’s little
book contains essentially all of Sappho’s surviving works.
4. Poem 53 is a justly famous description of Eros, erotic love incarnate. What do you make of it?
Might a man have written it?
5. Contrast poem 38, which is a prayer to Aphrodite. What is Sappho’s relationship to love? Is it
peculiarly feminine?
6. Poem 39 is the most famous of Sappho’s poems, not only for its own beauty but because the
Roman male poet Catullus wrote a version of it in Latin (which we will read later). What scene is
Sappho describing?
7. Choose one other poem from the collection to discuss. Be prepared to explain why it is your
favorite one.