SOURCE: West, M. L. “Dating Corinna.” The Classical Quarterly 40, no. 2 (1990): 553-57.

In the following essay, West reasserts the position that Corinna belongs to the third century b.c. and offers a rebuttal to various claims that she flourished two centuries earlier.

In CQ [Classical Quarterly] 20 (1970), 277-87 [see Further Reading], I argued for dating Corinna to the third century b.c. In my Greek Metre (1982), p. 141, I continued to assume this date, observing that not everyone accepted it but that I knew of no attempt to answer my arguments. I must confess to having overlooked at least one such attempt, by A. Allen in CJ [Classical Journal] 68 (1972/3), 26-8; and now M. Davies has mounted another in SIFC [Studi Italiani di filologia classica] 81 (1988), 186-94, largely repeating Allen's points but with some new touches. Allen upholds the traditional fifth-century date. Davies has yet to come to a decision, but meanwhile he...