Praxilla (Greek: Πράξιλλα), was a Greek lyric poet of the 5th century BC from Sicyon on the Gulf of Corinth. Five quotations and three paraphrases from her poems survive. The surviving fragments of her work come from both religious choral lyric and drinking songs (skolia); the three paraphrases are all versions of myths. Various social contexts have been suggested for Praxilla based on this range of surviving works, including that her poetry was in fact composed by two different authors; that Praxilla was a hetaira (courtesan); that she was a professional musician; or that the drinking songs derive from a non-elite literary tradition rather than being authored by a single writer. Praxilla was apparently well-known in antiquity: she was sculpted in bronze by Lysippus and parodied by Aristophanes.
Praxilla was from Sicyon on the Gulf of Corinth.[1] Eusebius dates her floruit to 451/450 BC (the second year of the 82nd Olympiad).[a][3]
Little of Praxilla's work survives – five fragments in her own words, and three paraphrases by other authors.[4] The longest surviving fragment is three lines.[5] These vary in style: two are skolia (drinking songs), one is in the metre named the Praxilleion after her,[b] one is a hymn to Adonis, and one is a dithyramb.[7] The three works known only in paraphrase are all versions of myths.[8] In the second century AD, Athenaeus reports that Praxilla was particularly known for her skolia.[9]
Three lines of Praxilla's hexameter hymn to Adonis are quoted by Zenobius. In them, Adonis is asked in the underworld what he will most miss from the mortal world. He replies that he will miss the sun, stars, and moon, cucumbers, apples, and pears. Maria Panagiotopoulou argues that both the structure of these lines and Praxilla's use of the word kalliston allude to Sappho 16.[10] The reference to cucumbers, apples, and pears may allude to the vegetables used in the Adonia, a festival commemorating the death of Adonis, and the poem may have been performed there; alternatively as all three had sexual connotations in ancient Greek literature it may have been performed at symposia.[11]
A couplet quoted by Hephaestion to illustrate the metre called the Praxilleion, which was believed to have been invented by Praxilla, is attributed to her on that basis.[12] This fragment is usually thought to have been from a skolion,[13] and commonly interpreted as being about a prostitute or hetaira.[14] More recently, Vanessa Cazzato has argued that it is in fact a wedding song.[15]
Because some of the works attributed to Praxilla are drinking songs, and respectable women in classical Greece would normally have been excluded from the parties where such songs were performed, there has been some scholarly debate about Praxila's social position. Martin Litchfield West suggests that there were two Praxillas, one writing the skolia; the other, the more "respectable" choral songs and hymns.[16] Other scholars have argued that, based on the attribution of skolia to Praxilla, she must have been a hetaira, though Jane McIntosh Snyder notes that there is no external evidence for this thesis.[12] Ian Plant suggests the alternative hypothesis that she was a professional musician, composing songs for symposia because there was a market for such works.[4]
Alternatively, West suggests that the skolia were not written by Praxilla at all.[17] Gregory Jones agrees, and argues that all of the surviving skolia attributed to particular poets are in fact derived from a non-elite oral literary tradition.[18] Marchinus Van der Valk, who also endorses this theory, allows for the possibility that some skolia were "derived from" Praxilla's poetry and published in antiquity attributed to her.[19]
Praxilla was well regarded in antiquity. Antipater of Thessalonica lists her first among his canon of nine "immortal-tongued" women poets, and the sculptor Lysippus (also from Sicyon) sculpted her in bronze.[4] She was sufficiently well-known in classical Athens that two of Aristophanes' surviving plays (The Wasps and Thesmophoriazusae) parody her work,[4] and part of one of her poems is inscribed on a red-figure cup dating to about 470 BC.[20][21][c] Her poetry was still remembered many centuries after her death: the Hellenistic epigrammatist Asclepiades imitated one of her poems;[23] in the second century AD, her name was remembered in the proverb "sillier than Praxilla's Adonis", and the author Tatian cites her in his Address to the Greeks.[4]
Praxilla was included in Judy Chicago's Heritage Floor.[24] Cy Twombly includes text from a poem by Praxilla in his 1960 painting Untitled (at Sea).[25] One of her fragments was adapted by Michael Longley in his poem "Praxilla", from the 2004 collection Snow Water.[26]
