Telesilla

thumb|right|Illustration of Telesilla by Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer, from Les Kitharèdes by [[Renée Vivien]] Telesilla () was an ancient Greek lyric poet from Argos, active in the fifth century BC. She is known for her supposed role in the defence of Argos in 494 BC, which is doubted by modern scholars. Only a few fragments of her poetry survive, several of which reference the gods Apollo and Artemis. The longest surviving fragment, only two lines, is quoted by the grammarian Hephaestion to illustrate the Telesillan metre, named after her. She was apparently famous in antiquity, included by Antipater of Thessalonica in his canon of women poets; in the twentieth century she inspired a poem by the imagist poet H.D.

==Life== Little is known of Telesilla's life. She was from the Peloponnesian city of Argos. A tradition reported by both Plutarch and Pausanias associates her with the defence of the city after the Battle of Sepeia in 494 BC; according to Eusebius her floruit was around 450 BC. If both these dates are correct, she would have lived a relatively long life. Alternatively, Maria Elisabetta Colonna has proposed that she was born . Plutarch says that Telesilla was from an aristocratic family; Martin Litchfield West suggests that she held a hereditary priesthood, as names beginning "Telesi–" were sometimes associated with such families.