Praxilla

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Praxilla, of Sicyon, was a Greek lyric poet of the 5th century BC. According to Athenaeus (xv. 694), she was famous as a composer of scolia (short lyrical poems sung after dinner), which were considered equal to those of Alcaeus and Anacreon. She also wrote dithyrambs and hymns, chiefly on mystic and mythological subjects, genealogies, and the love-stories of the gods and heroes. A dactylic metre was also called by her name.

She composed a hymn to Adonis from which one fragment survives, in which Adonis, in response to a question from the shades in the underworld ("What was the most beautiful thing you left behind?"), answers:

κάλλιστον μὲν ἐγὼ λείπω φάος ἠελίοιο, δεύτερον ἄστρα φαεινὰ σεληναίης τε πρόσωπον ἠδὲ καὶ ὡραίους σικύους καὶ μῆλα καὶ ὄγχνας· (747 PMG)

Finest of all the things I have left is the light of the sun, Next to that the brilliant stars and the face of the moon, Cucumbers in their season, too, and apples and pears. (trans. Bernard Knox)

This fragment survives because Zenobius quoted it to explain the proverbial expression "sillier than Praxilla's Adonis" (because the inclusion of cucumbers alongside the sun and moon could seem incongruous).

Testimonia and fragments in David A. Campbell, Greek Lyric, vol. 4, pp. 374-381 (Loeb Classical Library, 1992).

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• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.