Sappho, the queen? These suggest the honors paid to heroes. In the face of death, Sappho seems to claim for herself what Homer creates for his heroes: fame and honors in response to lives lived at the extreme of intensity, lives in which the gods take an interest and that make more mundane humans wonder. Her performative words turn the present into that festivity for the audience of the poem.
For readers, too, she is always still alive and marveled at, while hoping that the wonder will persist. And that brings us back, finally, to Tithonos. I said earlier that what is left implicit in this poem is that Eos abandoned Tithonos and that Sappho was once the intimate of Aphrodite. In the version of the myth found in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite Tithonos becomes a singer in his old age — There has been debate over whether we should assume that Sappho is alluding to that conclusion of the story.
Tithonos becomes a singer when he loses the attention of Eos and drops out of the myth, and likewise Sappho presents herself as a singer who in old age can no longer experience the indefinite, mythic past of erotic plenitude.
Thalia now and Tithonos in the past and future beloved beauty and eternal singer comprise the trajectory Sappho envisions for herself and the place of her poetry in it. Boedeker, D. Knox ed. Bowersock, W. Burkert, M. Putnam 40— Brown, C. Di Benedetto, V. Bernsdorff, H. Ferrari, G. Geissler, C. Gosetti-Murrayjohn, A. Greene, E. Hardie, A. Hutchinson, G. Luppe, W. Page, D. Rabinowitz, N. Auanger, eds. Rawles, R. Rosenmeyer, P. Segal, C. Skinner, M. Stehle, E. Reprinted in Greene — West, M. Winkler, J.
New York and London. Worman, N. See Gronewald and Daniel a and b for the new fragments. I accept the Cologne text as a complete poem. Edmunds shows that it is rare in archaic monody, but Sappho is an innovative poet, and she draws the moral before adducing the myth. It may be that the relevant idea was in 23—24, but the few extant words do not encourage that thought. See also Rawles for a nuanced view, di Benedetto —63 for an older one. Gronewald and Daniel a:3—4 suggest a reference to Phaon.
Gronewald and Daniel a:2—3 point out the thematic associations between the two poems. See also Clayman, this volume. See Most on Sappho as exemplum. Stehle ; Worman — An altar appears in 2. See esp. Greene on this poem. See also n. See also 2 lines 13—16 V for the image of Aphrodite pouring nectar.
On this poem see Snyder —55, esp. Hutchinson also favors the proper name. Page ad loc. Since, as he points out 89 ad 4—5 , the name does not appear among those known later from her poems, I adopt his view.
The word is used of Artemis in Od. Hutchinson ad 7—8. See 2. See Williamson —52 on this effect. In the prayer or memory; see Voigt ad loc. In line 11, with nun , she shifts from myth to her present concern, whatever that was. For an interesting study from the perspective of rhetorical theory see Jarrett Stehle — and — Di Benedetto —12 notes the connections among nun , singing, and beauty.
IV, including Aristides Or. Conceivably a lost noun is the subject of the feminine accusative participles and adjective in 5—7. See Hardie —27 for the idea of immortality in the underworld here. In 95 V Sappho recounts a past interchange with Hermes?
While we know little that is certain of her life, we do know Sappho was born in the city of Mytilene on the Greek island of Lesbos, off the coast of Turkey in the late 7th Century BC. Mytilene appears to have been an enlightened society compared to other communities in Archaic Greece. Her estimated birth date places her sometime after the composition and transmission of the works of the Homeric poets , which told the stories of the Trojan War and are preserved in the epics known as the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Read more: Guide to the classics: Homer's Iliad. But Sappho was no epic poet, rather she composed lyrics: short, sweet verses on a variety of topics from hymns to the gods, marriage songs, and mini-tales of myth and legend. She also sung of desire, passion and love — mostly directed towards women — for which she is best known. Was Sappho a lesbian? An answer depends on how one is defined. If love of women, even in a non-sexual sense, and an exclusive focus on the needs and lives of women define a woman as a lesbian, then — yes — Sappho was a lesbian.
However, if a lesbian is defined more narrowly as a woman who has sex with another woman, then evidence to define Sappho as one is harder to establish. Of course, these two binaries are inherently artificial and without nuance. They are also ignorant of social constructionism, which insists on understanding an individual in her or his historical environment, its values, and its cultural specificities.
And, in the society of Archaic Mytilene, Sappho was not defined as a lesbian. That began with the Greeks and Romans of later centuries, who tended to interpret her skill as stemming from a perverted form of masculinity, which sometimes found expression in representations of her through the lens of a hyper-sexuality.
The Sappho mystique is further confounded by later testimonies such as the 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia called the Suda or the Stronghold , which chronicled the history of the ancient Mediterranean. In one of two entries on Sappho, readers are informed that she was in love with a ferryman by the name of Phaon whose rejection of her caused her to leap to her death from the Leucadian Cliff.
This apocryphal history, which emerged in antiquity, went on to inspire artists, poets and playwrights for hundreds of years, despite the strange origins of Phaon as a figure of myth and legend.
In the second entry on Sappho in the Suda, it is stated that Sappho was married, had a daughter by the name of Cleis, and was also a lover of women. In Fragment , for example, Sappho sings of Cleis:. Sappho, following the poetic traditions of Archaic Greece, tended towards floral and natural imagery to depict feminine beauty and youth.
Elsewhere, she evokes images of garlands, scents and even apples to convey feminine sensuality. Hers was largely a world of beauty, caresses, whispers and desires; songs sung in honour of the goddess Aphrodite , and tales of mythical love. Some say a host of cavalry, others of infantry, and others of ships, is the most beautiful thing on the dark earth, but I say it is whatever a person loves. It is perfectly easy to make this understood by everyone: for she who far surpassed mankind in beauty, Helen, left her most noble husband and went sailing off to Troy with no thought at all for her child or dear parents, but [love?
She extends her dictum with the example of the mythical figure of Helen of Troy , renowned in antiquity as the most beautiful woman in the world. Consequences be damned! Sappho reveals that Anactoria is gone and is missed. She compares her, indirectly, to Helen and then evokes her beauty, namely her gait and her sparkling face. But they are also powerful, as she rejects the world of masculine warfare in preference for beauty and desire.
In another well-preserved piece, Fragment 31, Sappho evokes the sensations she experiences as a result of being seated opposite a beautiful woman:. He seems to me equal in good fortune to the whatever man, who sits on the opposite side to you and listens nearby to your sweet replies and desire-inducing laugh: indeed that gets my heart pounding in my breast. For just gazing at you for a second, it is impossible for me even to talk; my tongue is broken, all at once a soft flame has stolen beneath my flesh, my eyes see nothing at all, my ears ring, sweat pours down me, a tremor shakes me, I am more greenish than grass, and I believe I am at the very point of death.
The man is god-like because he can be in the presence of the woman and remain unaffected. Sappho, in contrast, is a physical, mental and emotional wreck. The fragmented condition of the piece includes a few words that indicate at least one more stanza followed.
Translating Sappho is no mean feat.
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