When they married, she wrote their bridal odes. These she sang with the lyre, and one of her minor claims to fame was her invention of the plectrum, which brought out the full resources of this instrument. For Timas, who died unmarried, she wrote a touching elegy, which was sung at her tomb by the maidens, who cut off their curls as a token of sorrow. The most gifted of Sappho’s friends was Erinna, who died at nineteen, leaving among other things a poem of three hundred verses, which was said to deserve a place beside the epics of Homer. She sang of the sorrows of a maiden whose mother compelled her to spin when she wished to serve the Muses. There is also a tradition that she wrote an epitaph for a companion of “birth and lineage high,” who died on her wedding day, and “changed bridal songs to sound of sob and tear.” She was thought to surpass her teacher in hexameters. Sappho reproved her for being so scornful, and this is all the trait we have of this precocious child of genius, who preferred poetry to spinning. Her own epitaph speaks for itself: These are Erinna’s songs; how sweet, though slight! For she was but a girl of nineteen years. Yet stronger far than what most men can write: Had death delayed, whose fame had equaled hers? The only thing about Andromeda of which we are sure is that she dressed badly. “What woman ever charmed thy mind who wore a graceless dress, or did not know how to draw her garments about her ankles?” says Sappho to this formidable rival who stole away from her the fickle heart of Atthis. Of the brilliant Gorgo she grew tired. It is supposed that these two were at the head of other clubs or schools. Damophyla wrote a hymn to Artemis, the patron goddess of pure-souled maidens, which was modeled after Sappho and had great praise in its day, but no fragment of it is left.