Corinna and the Daughters of Asopus

Abstract

Recently, the question of Corinna’s date has been raised yet again by Andrew Stewart, who observes that Tatian’s list of statues of the female poets, including one of Corinna by the fourthcentury sculptor Silanion, is supported by archaeological evidence. In his Oratio ad Graecos (33–4), the Christian apologist Tatian provides a list of thirty-six statues and their sculptors that, in his opinion, demonstrates the moral inferiority of the pagan Greeks. Art historians have long suspected that these statues, especially the fourteen female subjects whom Tatian groups together at the beginning of chapter 33, once stood in the area of Pompey’s theater at Rome. Literary historians, on the other hand, have followed Kalkmann’s 1887 essay in arguing that Tatian’s list is a complete fabrication, in spite of his claim to have seen the statues first-hand.1 In 1972, however, Coarelli published a statue base from the theater complex, inscribed with the title “Mystis” and the name of the artist, Aristodotos. This corresponded exactly to one of Tatian’s statues. But because neither Mystis nor her sculptor were known from other sources, editors of Tatian, including Whittaker (1982) and Marcovich (1995), have emended the manuscript reading of Mystis to Nossis, ignoring Coarelli’s discovery. They