Telesilla

Name(s)

Telesilla

Date and place of birth. Argos; date of birth uncertain: c.520 BCE (6th century BCE)

Date and place of death

uncertain: after c.450 BCE

Telesilla’s dates are uncertain. Eusebius says she was well known in the second year of the 82nd Olympiad (Chronicle 82.2) = 451/50 BCE. However, this is problematic if we accept, with Plutarch( Bravery of Women 245C) and Pausanias (2.20.8-10) that she was active in the war with Sparta after the battle of Sepeia in 494 BCE.

Family

Parents not attested. 

She is described as being of a family of high standing (Plut. Bravery of Women 245C) although no other details are provided.

Education

Telesilla is said to have been sickly and so asked ‘the god’ (Apollo, implied) how she might get better; the god told her she had to devote herself to the Muses. So she devoted herself to song  and music (ie lyric poetry) and her illness disappeared (Plut. Bravery of Women 245C). As biographical details about Greek poets were regularly drawn from their own works, it is possible that this anecdote reflects something she wrote about herself. 

Religion

Pagan: extant fragments of Telesilla’s work mention Artemis and Apollo.

Transformation(s)

Telesilla was remembered in antiquity as the greatest poet of the city-state of Argos and as a military hero who saved the city when it was attacked by the Spartans, bravely leading the women of the city into battle. Both achievements were astonishing for a woman who lived in Classical Greece. Cultural barriers to women participating in public activities mean few literary works by women have been attested from this period and recognition of women’s literary works was not at all common. For her to be considered the most highly regarded Argive lyric poet was therefore extraordinary. As military leadership was the sole preserve of men in ancient Greece, the story of Telesilla’s courage and success has been dismissed by modern scholars as fictional, though it was accepted in antiquity as historical and added to the lustre of this remarkable woman.

Works/Agency

Nine fragments of Telesilla’s poetry are extant; the longest is only two lines; the other fragments are single words or indirect citations. One fragment addresses young women (F1) and appears to have been composed for choral performance by young women: such a performance would have taken place as part of a religious festival. 

Contemporaneous Identifications

Hays, Mary. 1803. “Telesilia,” in Female biography or memoirs of illustrious and celebrated women, of all ages and countries, vol. 6, London, p. 424.

H.D. 1924. “Telesila” in Heliodora and Other Poems, Boston and New York, pp. 76-85.

Telesilla was listed along with eight other female Greek lyric poets as one of the nine ‘immortal’ Muses (Antipater Greek Anthology 9.26): Sappho, Myrtis, Praxilla, Erinna, Anyte, Moero, Nossis and Corinna. 

As a   military leader, she can be considered alongside such women as: Artemisia, Queen of Halicarnassus (5th century BCE); Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni (1st century CE); Khawlah bint al-Azwar (7th century CE); Joanna of Flanders (c. 1295 – September 1374); Joan of Arc (c. 1412 – 30 May 1431); Jeanne Laisné known as ‘Jeanne Hachette’ ('Joan the Hatchet') (born c. 1454). 

Reputation

Telesilla was highly admired in antiquity for her poetry. Pausanias said that she was both a distinguished woman and that she was revered for her poetry (Paus. 2.20.8).  Antipater of Thessalonica, who lived about four hundred years after Telesilla, listed her as one of the nine ‘earthly Muses’: nine women with ‘divine voices’ who had brought everlasting joy to mortals through their lyric poetry (Greek Anthology 9.26). He calls her ‘glorious’.  Maximus of Tyre (late second century CE) names Telesilla as the poet of Argos (Orations 37.5), comparable to Pindar in Beotia and Tyrtaeaus at Sparta. The longevity of her reputation is further demonstrated by the fact that she was remembered by Eusebius in the fourth century CE (Chronicle 82.2). We have no direct evidence from her own lifetime of the reception of her work, but Plutarch says that she was admired by women for her poetry, implying that this was in her own day (Plut. Bravery of Women 4.245C). However, he is unlikely to have any evidence for this assertion; it may reflect circumstances in his own time and is a narrative device by which he voices approval of her work. 

As a poet, Telesilla was remembered for an innovation in the metre of lyric poetry. A two and a half foot glyconic line (technically an acephalic glyconeus:  ——◡ ◡ — ◡ — ),  was called a ‘telesillean’ after her (Hephaestion, Handbook of Metres 11.2, p. 35 Cronsbruch). There is an example of the metre in an extant fragment of her work (Telesilla, F 1). She also appears to have been inventive in her poetic vocabulary, coining words such as philēlias (sun-lover) and oulokikinnos (curly-haired) (F 2, 8).

Plutarch and Pausanias both tell a story in which Telesilla led the women of the city to save Argos from an attack by the Spartans. In antiquity, it was not normal for women to take on any combat role (except gods or Amazons in myth). However, when King Cleomenes attacked Argos in 494 BCE after earlier slaughtering its fighting men at the battle of Sepeia, Telesilla was said to have rallied the women of the city (or the women alongside men too old or young to normally serve in the phalanx, and slaves), armed them and led them to victory in the defence of Argos (Paus. 2.20.8-10; Plut. Bravery of Women 4.245C-F and Spartan Sayings 223B). Plutarch cites Socrates, an historian from Argos (who probably dates from the Hellenistic period) in his account. We can conclude that the narrative of the heroic defence of the city by the women led by Telesilla was an Argive tradition passed on by Socrates. Herodotus, who gives an earlier account of the invasion by Cleomenes and his victory at the Battle of Sepeia (6.77-83), does not mention an attack on the city itself nor the heroic defence by the city’s women led by Telesilla.  Yet for Plutarch, no community action by women was more famous (Plut. Bravery of Women 4.245C). Although modern scholars dismiss this Argive story largely because it is not mentioned by Herodotus, in antiquity it was celebrated as a heroic achievement by Telesilla and the women of Argos.

The Argives honoured Telesilla with a depiction of her on a stele in front of the seated statue of the goddess Aphrodite in her temple (Paus. 2.20.8). Pausanias describes the image: Telesilla was shown with her books scattered at her feet, holding a helmet which she was about to put on. If he is right, then we have further evidence for the Argive community’s respect for her as a poet and the local currency of the story of her martial heroism. The date for this sculpture is unknown. Tatian attributed a statue of her to Niceratus, an Athenian sculptor of the second half of the third century BCE (Tatian Against the Greeks 33); this is likely to be a different sculpture as Niceratus is known to have worked in bronze. Nicertus’ statue attests to the ongoing popularity of this account of Telesilla’s heroics over time. Plutarch says that the women who survived the battle also erected a memorial votive statue to Enyalius, a god of war. 

 Maximus of Tyre states that the Argives were roused by the lyrics of Telesilla, much as the Spartans were by their martial poet Tyrtaeus (Orations 37.5). The comment suggests an alternative interpretation of her military reputation by crediting Telesilla with martial poetry. However, there are no hints of martial themes in the extant examples of her poetry.

Controversy

No controversy is known from her own time. Tatian, a Christian apologist (c. 120 – c. 180 CE), criticises the Greeks (as pagans) for their honouring of female poets with statues, naming Telesilla as one such example among many (Against the Greeks 33). His argument is levelled at Greek women writers generally. He characterises their work as immoral, concluding from the subject matter of their works that Greek women were not worthy of being honoured with statues. Nevertheless, that a Christian writer would know of Telesilla’s work over 500 years after her lifetime speaks to the ongoing appreciation of her poetry. He is believed to have seen Telesilla’s statue in Rome in the Theatre of Pompey, built in 55 BCE (Against the Greeks 33).

The testimonies from Plutarch and Pausanias on Telesilla’s role in the battle to save Argos have been rejected by modern scholars as unreliable; the consensus view is to prefer Herodotus’ description of the battle of Sepeia and its aftermath in which there is no mention of Telesilla or combat by women (Hdt. 6.77-83). 

It has been argued that the account of the battle in which women take on the role of men is aetiogical, invented to explain a ritual performed at Argos during a religious festival called the Hybristica. At the festival, women wore men’s clothes and men women’s. Plutarch tells us that some of his sources placed the day of the battle on the same date as this annual festival, implying that the festival’s odd custom celebrated the women taking on the appearance of men in the battle, although he acknowledges that other sources put the battle on a different day. In Pseudo-Lucian (Affairs of the Heart 30), a character draws a connection between the worship of a god of war at Argos by women, which was in itself unusual, and the actions of Telesilla in fighting against the Spartans. These aetiological explanations, invented to account for unusual female religious practice, testify to the acceptance in anqtiquity of Telesilla’s martial exploits as historical.

So while the story of Telesilla’s heroic defence of Argos is taken to be fictional by modern historians it was taken as fact in antiquity. There are other accounts from antiquity of women who take to the field of battle at Tegea and Sparta, which are also not considered to be reliable nowadays. Herodotus’ cites an oracle that predicted a victory of female over male at Argos in reference to the battle in which Telesilla participated (Hdt. 6.77.2): the meaning of the oracle is not clear, but it is seen as a possible inspiration for the development of a story in which the women of Argos and Telesilla play a leading role. Pausanias cites the oracle from Herodotus to substantiate his version of the battle.  

The idea of women participating in the last-ditch defence of their city is not without some historical parallels and there are some realistic elements in the narrative that should not be dismissed out of hand. In Pausanias’ version, Telesilla leads the men left in the city who were too young or old to serve as hoplites. These men would normally be required to take on guard duties for their city. Plutarch notes that the women’s courage was ‘divinely-inspired’. Joan of Arc provides a later example of a divinely-inspired saviour figure who was successful in battle.

Primary (selected):

Antipater. Greek Anthology.

Eusebius. Chronicle.

Herodotus. Histories.

Pausanias. Description of Greece. 

Plutarch. Bravery of Women (Moralia 242E-263C)

Tatian. Against the Greeks

Secondary (selected):

DeRose Evans, Jane, 2009. “Prostitutes in the Portico of Pompey? A Reconsideration.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 139.1, pp. 123-145.

Facella, Margherita. 2017. “Beyond Ritual: Cross-Dressing Between Greece and the Orient,” in  TransAntiquity: Cross-Dressing and Transgender Dynamics in the Ancient World, ed. Domitilla Campanile, Filippo Carlà-Uhink, Margherita Facella, London, pp. 108-121

Graf, Fritz. 1984. “Women, War and War-like Divinities,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 55, pp. 245–54.

Lefkowitz, Mary. 1981. The Lives of the Greek Poets, Baltimore.

Loraux, Nicole. 1985. “La cité, l’historien, les femmes,” La Femme Dans L’ Antiquité Grecque. Pallas 32, pp. 7-39. 

Machado, Dominic. 2016. “Sokrates of Argos (310),” in Brill’s New Jacoby, ed.  Ian Worthington

Page, Denys. 1962. Poetici Melici Graeci, Oxford.

Plant, Ian. 2004. Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome, London.

Scott, Lionel. 2005. Historical Commentary on Herodotus Book 6, Leiden.

Stadter, Phillip. 1965. Plutarch’s Historical Methods: An Analysis of the Mulierum Virtutes, Cambridge.

Wintjes, Jorit. 2012. “ ‘Keep Women Out of the Camp!’: Women and Military Institutions in the Classical World” in A Companion to Women’s Military History, ed. B.C. Hacker and M. Vining, Leiden, pp. 36-37. 

Issues with the sources

It is difficult to assess Telesilla’s poetry from the fragments that remain. Only one fragment is a quotation of more than one word; the others are single words only or indirect quotations.