Telesilla

Telesilla
Native name	Τελέσιλλα
Born	Argos
Died	Argos
Occupation	Poet
Language	Greek
Nationality	Argive
Period	Archaic Greece
Genre	Poetry
Subject	Ancient Greek religion
Literary movement	Greek lyric
Notable works	Fragmentary hymns to Apollo & Artemis
Years active	circa 510 BCE

Telesilla (Greek: Τελέσιλλα; fl. 510 BC) was an ancient Greek poet, native of Argos. She was a distinguished woman who was especially renowned for her poetry and for her leadership of Argos through a political and military crisis and subsequent re-building.

Only a few lines of Telesilla's poetry are extant, preserved in quotations by later authors. Various Greek writers have preserved various other single-word quotes from Telesilla, many of which are hapax legomena that preserve a unique word or a unique use of a word that would otherwise be unknown to modern scholars. This is helpful in improving modern understanding of ancient Greek, especially the Argolic Doric Greek dialect in which Telesilla wrote.

One line is preserved by the grammarian Hephaestion, apparently from a parthenion, or song for a chorus of maidens:

«ἐστὶ τοίνυν ἐπίσημα ἐν τῷ ἰωνικῷ ἑφθημιμερῆ (πενθημιμερῆ ci. Edmonds) μὲν τὰ τοιαῦτα, οἷς ἡ Τελέσιλλα ἐχρήσατο·

—ἁ δ᾿ Ἄρτεμις, ὦ κόραι, φεύγοισα τὸν Ἀλφεόν—»

cf. Ench. 4. 4(p. 14 Consbruch), epitom. (p. 361) 1 ἁ δ᾿ bis cod. I: ἅδ᾿ vel ἅδε rell., nisi οὐδ᾿ epitom. κόρα 4. 4 cod. D

17 Hephaestion, Handbook on Metres (on the ionic a maiore)

"Remarkable among the ionic metres are the three-and-a-half foot lines of the following type,(1) used by Telesilla:

'And Artemis, girls, fleeing from Alpheus' . . ."(2)

1.The metre (‒ ‒ ⏑ ⏑ ‒ ⏑ ‒ ). is called telesillean; perhaps read ‘two-and-a-half foot lines’ with Edmonds.

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