CORINNA AND THE SHIELD OF ATHENA

Abstract This article analyses an underappreciated testimonium for Corinna’s literary corpus to reconsider how female poetic production fits within the wider poetic tradition of archaic and classical Greece: namely, Antipater of Thessalonica’s report that Corinna ‘sang of the impetuous shield of Athena’ ( Anth. Pal . 9.26.5–6 = 667 PMG ). After locating Corinna in a fourth-century context, the article proceeds in three stages: first, it focusses on Antipater’s epigram and argues that Antipater is responding to the distinctive poetry of the different female authors he lists (including Sappho’s hair-centric poetics); this strengthens the likelihood that the ‘shield of Athena’ was indeed the subject of one of Corinna’s poems. Second, it considers the possible nature of a poem that treated ‘Athena’s shield’, exploring how Corinna’s poem might have foregrounded Athena and Medusa as distinctive emblems of female power, set against the masculine shield ecphrases of the epic tradition. This strategy would complement Corinna’s practice elsewhere in her extant fragments, where she attentively reworks the male epic tradition from a female perspective. Finally, it considers the possible narrative context of a poem featuring Athena’s shield, exploring connections with the known titles of Corinna’s poetry, as well as possible links with the importance of shields to Boeotian identity, with the cult of Athena Itonia at Coroneia and with the myth of the petrified priestess Iodama.