No recipe today. Instead, three fragments of ancient Greek poetry written by women. Sappho is the most famous of the three. Nossis was from Locris ( now called Locri, a town in southern Italy), where it seems that they had a women’s cult for the goddess Aphrodite (“Kypris” is another name for Aphrodite, the goddess of love). Nossis was widely recognized for her poetry in antiquity. However, only 12 epigrams have survived from her work. Praxilla of Sycion was also quite famous during her time but only eight fragments of her work have survived. They are all brilliant and I wish we had more works written by women in the antiquity…Let’s celebrate creative women! So many centuries have passed during which women’s voices have been silenced or ignored. It’s time to change that.
I want to dedicate this post to my dear friend Laura who is writing the most brilliant thesis about women during the communist regime in Romania. I suspect she doesn’t like poetry much but perhaps she could reconsider her position, at least in what concerns talented ancient poetesses.