“My friend, look out for a scorpion under every stone…”
Praxilla was a famous lyric poet who wrote hymns and drinking songs (scolia). She was enough of a celebrity that a bronze bust was sculpted in her honour, and her songs were sung at parties for over three hundred years.
Praxilla was so well known that the playwright Aristopanes parodied her poetry in two of his plays – indicating that he both knew her work and expected his audiences to be familiar enough with Praxillion verse to laugh at his spoofs.
Of course, everyone is a critic, and Praxilla was later mocked for her hymn to Adonis which read:
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, apples and pears.
Comparing the beauty of the night sky to cucumbers was considered somewhat misplaced, giving rise to the proverbial expression ‘Sillier than Praxilla’s Adonis’. However, when it is considered that the Greek for cucumber ‘sicyos’ is very similar to the name of Praxilla’s hometown of Sicyon, a case can be made that this was actually a clever pun.
Strange and silly or clever and original, Praxilla achieved fame and praise for her writing across the Greek world for centuries.
Girls and Women in Classical Greek Writing – Matthew Dillon
Selected fragments of Praxilla’s writing on Stoa.org