Anyte of Tegea was an Arcadian poet. She is one of the nine outstanding ancient women poets listed by Antipater of Thessalonica in the Palatine Anthology. He called her the female Homer because her poetry was so admired. She was among the first Hellenistic poets to write bucolic poetry that praised life in the country. She was called "Anyte the lyric poet" in antiquity, although none of her lyric poetry has survived. Likewise, Pausanias refers to her epic poetry, but none of it has survived.
Life
Anyte was from Tegea in Arcadia, which is a mountainous region in the middle of the Peloponnese. No reliable information about her life survives, and she can only be approximately dated by the style of her work. By examining her work, scholars have determined that she was writing during the beginning of 300s BCE; her birth year is estimated to be between 340-320 BCE. Only one story about Anyte's life is preserved, in which Pausanias claims in his work Description of Greece that Anyte was once visited by the godAsclepius while she was asleep, and told to go toNaupactus to visit a certain blind man there. She had a sealed tablet with her, given to her by Asclepius, and she told the man to take off the seal and read the tablet. In doing so, the man realized he was cured, and he built a temple to Asclepius, and gave 2000 staters of gold to Anyte, which means she would have been wealthy. Though so little is known about Anyte's life, more of her poetry survives than any other ancient Greek woman, with the exception of Sappho.
Works
Anyte was known for her epigrams, and she introduced rural themes to the genre. Most unusually, the epitaphs she wrote were not actual inscriptions on tombstones and grave markers, but were published to be widely read. She was also one of the first to write epitaphs for animals; this then became an important theme in the 300s BCE. 24 epigrams attributed to Anyte survive today. One of these is preserved by Julius Pollux; the remainder are part of either the Palatine or Planudean Anthology. Of these, Kathryn Gutzwiller considers that 20 of these were genuinely composed by Anyte. It is likely that Anyte compiled a book of her poetry from her epigrams. Anyte's poetry is often interested in women and children, and Gutzwiller argues that it was deliberately composed in opposition to traditional epigrams, which were composed by an anonymous author from a masculine and urban perspective. Gordon L. Fain further states that Anyte was also among the first to write ecphrastic poetry, which concerns sculptures, paintings, and other such works of art. Accordingly, of five epitaphs written by Anyte which survive, only one marks the death of a young man, as was traditional in the genre; the remaining four all commemorate women who died young. She is also known to have written poetry celebrating war.
Examples
Here is a poem by her, referring to Aphrodite: Here is a poem about a young woman who died tragically young: One of her many bucolic works: :Oh rustic Pan by lonely thicket, say
Reception
She was widely admired in the ancient world for her style of poignant epigrams. As stated above, she was considered as great as Homer himself and regarded as one of nine best female poets in Ancient Greece, second only to Sappho. In the modern world, Anyte is recognized as one of the 999 women included on Judy Chicago's Heritage Floor; she also has a crater on Mercury named after her, called Anyte.
