ERINNA  ,

Greek poet, contemporary and friend of Sappho, a native of Rhodes or the adjacent island of Telos, flourished about 600 (according to Eusebius, 350 B.C.) . Although she died at the early age of nineteen, her poems were among the most famous of her time and considered to rank with those of Homer . Of her best-known poem, 'HXaxhrr7 (the Distaff), written in a mixture of Aeolic and Doric, which contained 300 hexameter lines, only 4 lines are now extant . Three epigrams in the Palatine anthology, also ascribed to her, probably belong to a later date . The fragments have been edited (with those of Alcaeus) by J . Pellegrino (1894) .