Aristodama of Smyrna () was a 3rd century BCE itinerant

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

of ancient

Ionia Ionia ( ) was an ancient region encompassing the central part of the western coast of Anatolia. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Greek settlements. Never a unified state, it was named after the Ionians who ...

. None of her works have survived to the present; we know of her only through inscriptions found in the mainland Greek cities of

Lamia Lamia (; ), in ancient Greek mythology, was a child-eating monster and, in later tradition, was regarded as a type of night-haunting spirit or "daimon". In the earliest myths, Lamia was a beautiful queen of ancient Libya who had an affair with ...

and Chaleion. There she and her brother were granted citizenship and other privileges in recognition of her poetic skill and performance. Chaleion honoured her for several readings of an epic (that they may have commissioned from her) narrating the traditions of their

Aetolia Aetolia () is a mountainous region of Greece on the north coast of the Gulf of Corinth, forming the eastern part of the modern regional unit of Aetolia-Acarnania. Geography The Achelous River separates Aetolia from Acarnania to the west; on ...

n ancestors. The earliest known such honour granted to a woman, it provides evidence of the opportunities of education and advancement for women in the

Hellenistic period In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

. That Aristodama must have lived sometime after 217 BCE is deduced because the contemporary Agetas of Callipolis is mentioned in the Lamia inscription as an Aetolian general.M. M. Austin, ''The Hellenistic World from Alexander to the Roman Conquest'', Cambridge University Press, 2006
pp.264-5

References

External links

* - the two inscriptions in French translation by M.Dana {{Authority control Year of death unknown 3rd-century BC Greek poets Ionic Greek poets Ancient Greek women poets 3rd-century BC women writers 3rd-century BC Greek women