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Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
[=a] [)a] etc. represent vowels with macrons or breves respectively. In the
representations of metre - represents heavy and v a light syllable, with =
undetermined (breve and macron in the printed work).
* * * * *
[Greek: SAPPHÔ]
[Illustration]
L. Alma Tadema J. Cother Webb
pinxt. fec.
SAPPHO
MEMOIR, TEXT, SELECTED
RENDERINGS, AND A
LITERAL TRANSLATION BY
HENRY THORNTON WHARTON
M.A. OXON
LONDON: JOHN LANE · THE
BODLEY HEAD · NEW YORK:
JOHN LANE COMPANY · 1908
[Greek: Panta kathara tois katharois.]
_First Edition. Fcap. 8vo. Pp._ xii+190.
_One Illustration. David Stott._ 1885.
_Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. Pp._ xvi+213.
_Two Illustrations, David Stott._ 1887.
_Third Edition. Fcap. 8vo. Pp._ xx+217.
_Three Illustrations, John Lane._ 1895.
_Fourth Edition. Fcap. 8vo. Pp._ xx+222.
_Three Illustrations and Memoir of Mr.
Wharton._ _John Lane._ 1898.
_Fifth Edition. Fcap. 8vo. Pp._ xxxii+217.
_Three Illustrations and Memoir of Mr.
Wharton._ _John Lane._ 1908.
Printed by BALLANTYNE & CO. LIMITED
Tavistock Street, London
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION
I would fain have enriched this edition of my _Sappho_ with some new words
of the poetess, if only even to the slight extent which I reached in 1887;
but, to the world's sorrow, that pleasure has been denied me. Still, we
need not yet give up all hope, after the unexpected discovery of the
unknown _Mimiambi_ of Herondas, on a papyrus-roll used to stuff an Egyptian
mummy-case, so few years ago (cf. _The Academy_, Oct. 11, 1890).
Neverthless, I can now present to the lovers of Sappho a good deal more
than was heretofore in my power; in a new form, it is true, but with the
same beautiful Greek type. And with this third edition I am enabled to give
a reproduction, in photogravure, of the charming picture of Mitylene by the
late Mr. Clarkson Stanfield, R.A., for which I am primarily indebted to Dr.
R. Garnett, of the British Museum.
Since it was my privilege, if I may say so without arrogance, to introduce
Sappho to English readers in the year 1885, in a form which they could
understand, whether they knew any Greek or none, and in the entirety of
every known word of hers, there has arisen a mass of literature upon the
subject of the greatest lyrist of all time. To enumerate the pictures that
have been painted, the articles and books and plays that have been written,
which have appealed to the public in the last ten years, would be an almost
impossible task. In my _Bibliography_ I have endeavoured to give a
reference to all that is of prominent and permanent interest, ranging from
'the postman poet,' Mr. Hosken, to the felicitous paraphrases--some
fractions of which I have taken the liberty to quote in the text--of
'Michael Field' in her _Long Ago_.
The translation of the Hymn to Aphrodite, which was made for me by the late
J. Addington Symonds, now appears in the amended form in which he finally
printed it. Professor Palgrave has kindly allowed me to include some
versions of his, made many years ago. The late Sir R. F. Burton made a
metrical translation of Catullus, which has recently been published, and I
am grateful to Lady Burton for allowing me to reprint his version of the
Roman poet's Ode to Lesbia.
The only critical edition of the text of Sappho since that of Bergk--the
text which I adopt--has been made by Mr. G. S. Farnell, headmaster of the
Victoria College, Jersey; from which I have had considerable assistance.
As regards erudite scholarship, the investigations of Professor Luniak, of
the Kazan University, deserve more attention than it is within the scope of
my book to give them. I reviewed his essay in some detail in _The Academy_
for July 19, 1890, p. 53. The criticisms upon it by Professor Naguiewski,
in his disputation for the doctorate two years later, go far to prove that
my appreciation of Sappho's character cannot be easily shaken. That
rapturous fragment of Sophocles--
[Greek: Ô theoi, tis ara Kupris, ê tis himeros,]
[Greek: toude xynêpsato?]
(_O gods, what love, what yearning, contributed to this?_) still remains to
me the keynote of what Sappho has been through all the ages.
HENRY T. WHARTON.
'MADRESFIELD,' ACOL ROAD,
WEST HAMPSTEAD, LONDON, N.W.,
_April 1895_.
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
The cordial reception which the first edition of my little book met with
has encouraged me to make many improvements in this re-issue. Unforeseen
delays in its production have also helped me to advance upon my first
essay. Among other changes, I have been able to obtain a new fount of Greek
type, which has to me a peculiar beauty. Unfamiliar though some of the
letters may appear at first sight, they reproduce the calligraphy of the
manuscripts of the most artistic period of the Middle Ages. This type has
been specially cast in Berlin, by favour of the Imperial Government. In a
larger size it is not unknown to English scholars, but such as I am now
enabled to present has never been used before.
Last spring a telegram from the Vienna correspondent of the _Times_
announced that some new verses of Sappho had been found among the Fayum
papyri in the possession of the Archduke Rénier. When the paper on his
Imperial Highness' papyri was read before the Imperial Academy of Science
by Dr. Wilhelm Ritter von Hartel on the 10th of March, it became evident
that the remark was made, not in allusion to the Archduke's possessions,
but to that portion of the Fayum manuscripts which had been acquired by the
Imperial Museum in Berlin. The verses referred to were indeed no other than
the two fragments which had been deciphered and criticised by the
celebrated scholar, Dr. F. Blass, of Kiel, in the _Rheinisches Museum_ for
1880; and further edited by Bergk in the posthumous edition of his _Poetae
Lyrici Graeci_. I am now able, not only to print the text of these
fragments and a translation of them, but also, through the courtesy of the
Imperial Government of Germany, to give an exact reproduction of
photographs of the actual scraps of parchment on which they were written a
thousand years ago. Dr. Erman, the Director of the Imperial Egyptian
Museum, kindly furnished me with the photographs; and the Autotype Company
has copied them with its well-known fidelity.
Among many other additions, that which I have been able to make to fragment
100 is particularly interesting. The untimely death of the young French
scholar, M. Charles Graux, who found the quotation among the dry dust of
Choricius' rhetorical orations, is indeed to be deplored. Had he lived
longer he might have cleared up for us many another obscure passage in the
course of his studies of manuscripts which have not hitherto found an
editor.
The publication of the memoir on Naukratis by the Committee of the Egypt
Exploration Fund last autumn is an event worthy of notice, the town having
been so intimately connected with Sappho's story. On one of the pieces of
pottery found at Naucratis by Mr. Petrie occur the inscribed letters
[Greek: SAPH] (pl. xxxiv., fig. 532), which some at first thought might
refer to Sappho; but the more probable restoration is [Greek: ei]s
Aph[roditên], 'to Aphrodite.'
Since the issue of my first edition, M. De Vries has published, at Leyden,
an exhaustive dissertation upon Ovid's Epistle, _Sappho to Phaon_, which
has caused me to modify some of my conclusions regarding it. Although
Ovid's authorship of this Epistle seems to me now to be sufficiently
vindicated, I still remain convinced that we are not justified in taking
the statements in it as historically accurate.
It is curious also that a candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
in the University of Erlangen offered, as his inaugural dissertation, in
1885, an account of 'Sappho the Mitylenean.' The author, Joacheim I.
Paulidos, is a native of Lesbos. It is a pamphlet of sixty pages, written,
not in modern, but in classical Greek. His opening sentence, [Greek: Mia
kai monê egeneto Sapphô]--'Sappho stands alone and unique,' comes near the
meaning, but misses the polish of the phrase--gives his dominant tone; his
acceptance of her character greatly resembles mine.
Since the years now and then bring to light some fresh verses of Sappho's,
there is a faint hope that more may still be found. The rich store of
parchments and papyri discovered in the Fayum has not all been examined
yet. Indeed, among a few of these which were lost in the custom-house at
Alexandria in 1881-2, M. Maspero, the renowned Director of Explorations in
Egypt, thought he had detected the perfume of Sappho's art.
It is pleasing to see (cf. fragment 95) that our own Poet Laureate has
again recurred, in his latest volume of poems, to a phrase from Sappho
which he had first used nearly sixty years ago; and that he calls her 'the
poet,' implying her supremacy by the absence of any added epithet.
I am indebted to many kind friends and distinguished scholars for much
assistance. Among them I must especially thank Professor Blass, of Kiel.
Notwithstanding the frequent recurrence of his name on my pages, I owe more
to his cordial help and criticism than I can acknowledge here.
Little more than I have given is needed to prove how transcendent an artist
Sappho was; but I cannot forbear concluding with an extract from a recent
essay on poetry by Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton:--
'Never before these songs were sung, and never since, did the human soul,
in the grip of a fiery passion, utter a cry like hers; and, from the
executive point of view, in directness, in lucidity, in that high imperious
verbal economy which only Nature can teach the artist, she has no equal,
and none worthy to take the place of second.'
HENRY T. WHARTON.
39 ST. GEORGE'S ROAD,
KILBURN, LONDON, N.W.,
_April 1887_.
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION
SAPPHO, the Greek poetess whom more than eighty generations have been
obliged to hold without a peer, has never, in the entirety of her works,
been brought within the reach of English readers. The key to her wondrous
reputation--which would, perhaps, be still greater if it had ever been
challenged--has hitherto lain hidden in other languages than ours. As a
name, as a figure pre-eminent in literary history, she has indeed never
been overlooked. But the English-reading world has come to think, and to be
content with thinking, that no verse of hers survives save those two hymns
which Addison, in the _Spectator_, has made famous--by his panegyric, not
by Ambrose Philips' translation.
My aim in the present work is to familiarise English readers, whether they
understand Greek or not, with every word of Sappho, by translating all the
one hundred and seventy fragments that her latest German editor thinks may
be ascribed to her:
Love's priestess, mad with pain and joy of song,
Song's priestess, mad with joy and pain of love.
SWINBURNE.
I have contented myself with a literal English prose translation, for
Sappho is, perhaps above all other poets, untranslatable. The very
difficulties in the way of translating her may be the reason why no
Englishman has hitherto undertaken the task. Many of the fragments have
been more or less successfully rendered into English verse, and such
versions I have quoted whenever they rose above mediocrity, so far as I
have been able to discover them.
After an account of Sappho's life as complete as my materials have allowed,
I have taken her fragments in order as they stand in Bergk, whose text I
have almost invariably followed. I have given (1) the original fragment in
Greek, (2) a literal version in English prose, distinguished by italic
type, (3) every English metrical translation that seems worthy of such
apposition, and (4) a note of the writer by whom, and the circumstances
under which, each fragment has been preserved. Too often a fragment is only
a single word, but I have omitted nothing.
It is curious to note how early in the history of printing the literature
of Sappho began. The British Museum contains a sort of commentary on Sappho
which is dated 1475 in the Catalogue; this is but twenty years later than
the famous 'Mazarin' Bible, and only one year after the first book was
printed in England. It is written in Latin by Georgius Alexandrinus Merula,
and is of much interest, apart from its strange type and contractions of
words.
The first edition of any part of Sappho was that of the Hymn to Aphrodite,
by H. Stephanus, in his edition of Anacreon, 8vo, 1554. Subsequent editions
of Anacreon contained other fragments attributed to her, including some
that are now known to be by a later hand. Fulvius Ursinus wrote some
comments on those then known in the _Carmina Novem Illustrium Feminarum_
published at Antwerp, 8vo, 1568. Is. Vossius gave an amended text of the
two principal odes in his edition of Catullus, London, 4to, 1684.
But the first separate edition of Sappho's works was that of Johann
Christian Wolf, which was published in 4to at Hamburg in 1733, and
reprinted under an altered title two years later. Wolf's work is as
exhaustive as was possible at his date. He gives a frontispiece figuring
all the then known coins bearing reference to the poetess; a life of
her--written, like the rest of the treatise, in Latin--occupies 32 pages; a
Latin translation of all the quotations from or references to her in the
Greek classics, and all the Latin accounts of her, together with the
annotations of most previous writers, and copious notes by himself, in 253
pages; and the work is completed with elaborate indices.
The next important critical edition of Sappho was that of Heinrich
Friedrich Magnus Volger, pp. lxviii., 195, 8vo, Leipzig, 1810. It was
written on the old lines, and did not do much to advance the knowledge of
her fragments. Volger added a 'musical scheme' which seems more curious
than useful, and of which it is hard to understand either the origin or the
intention.
But nothing written before 1816 really grasped the Sapphic question. In
that year Welcker published his celebrated refutation of the long-current
calumnies against Sappho, _Sappho vindicated from a prevailing Prejudice_.
In his zeal to establish her character he may have been here and there led
into extravagance, but it is certain that his searching criticism first
made it possible to appreciate her true position. Nothing that has been
written since has succeeded in invalidating his main conclusions, despite
all the onslaughts of Colonel Mure and those few who sympathised with him.
Consequently the next self-standing edition of Sappho, by Christian
Friedrich Neue, pp. 106, 4to, Berlin, 1827, embodying the results of the
'new departure,' was far in advance of its predecessors--not in cumbrous
elaboration, but in critical excellence. Neue's life of the poetess was
written in the light of Welcker's researches; his purification of the text
was due to more accurate study of the ancient manuscripts, assisted by the
textual criticisms published by Bishop Blomfield the previous year in the
Cambridge _Museum Criticum._
Since Neue's time much has been written about Sappho, for the most part in
Latin or German. The final revision of the text, and collection of all that
can now be possibly ascribed to her, was made by Theodor Bergk, in his
_Poetae Lyrici Graeci_, pp. 82-140 of the third volume of the fourth
edition, 8vo, Leipzig, 1882, which I have here, with rare exceptions,
followed.
There is a noteworthy dissertation on her life by Theodor Kock, _Alkäos und
Sappho_, 8vo, Berlin, 1862, in which the arguments and conclusions of
Welcker are mainly endorsed, and elaborated with much mythological detail.
Perhaps the fullest account of Sappho which has recently appeared is that
by A. Fernandez Merino, a third edition of which was published at Madrid
early last year. Written in Spanish, it discusses in an impartial spirit
every question concerning Sappho, and is especially valuable for its
copious references.
Professor Domenico Comparetti, the celebrated Florentine scholar, to whom I
shall have occasion to refer hereafter, has recently done much to
familiarise Italian readers with the chief points of Sapphic criticism. His
enthusiasm for her character and genius is all that can be desired, but his
acceptance of Welcker's arguments is not so complete as mine. Where truth
must lie between two extremes, and evidence on either side is so hard to
collect and estimate, it is possible for differently constituted minds to
reach very different conclusions. The motto at the back of my title-page is
the guide I am most willing to follow. But, after all, to use the words of
a friend whom I consulted on the subject, 'whether the pure think her
emotion pure or impure; whether the impure appreciate it rightly, or
misinterpret it; whether, finally, it was platonic or not; seems to me to
matter nothing.' Sappho's poetic eminence is independent of such
considerations. To her,
All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.
Those who wish to learn more about Sappho than is here recorded will find a
guide in the Bibliography which I have added at the end of the volume. My
sole desire in these pages is to present 'the great poetess' to English
readers in a form from which they can judge of her excellence for
themselves, so far as that is possible for those to whom Aeolic Greek is
unfamiliar. Her more important fragments have been translated into German,
French, Italian, and Spanish, as well as English; but all previous complete
editions of her works have been written solely by scholars for scholars.
Now that, through the appreciation of Sappho by modern poets and painters,
her name is becoming day by day more familiar, it seems time to show her as
we know her to have been, to those who have neither leisure nor power to
read her in the tongue in which she wrote.
I have not concerned myself much with textual criticism, for I do not
arrogate any power of discernment greater than that possessed by a scholar
like Bergk. Only those who realise what he has done to determine the text
of Sappho can quite appreciate the value of his work. Where he is
satisfied, I am content. He wrote for the learned few, and I only strive to
popularise the result of such researches as his: to show, indeed, so far as
I can, that which centuries of scholarship have succeeded in accomplishing.
The translations by Mr. John Addington Symonds, dated 1883, were all made
especially for this work in the early part of that year, and have not been
elsewhere published. My thanks are also due to Mr. Symonds for much
valuable criticism.
The medallion which forms the frontispiece has been engraved by my friend
Mr. John Cother Webb, after the head of Sappho in the picture by Mr. L.
Alma Tadema, R.A., exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1881, as 'op.
ccxxiii.,' and now in America. I trust that my readers will sympathise with
me in cordial gratitude to both artist and engraver, to the one for his
permission, to the other for his fidelity.
HENRY T. WHARTON.
39 ST. GEORGE'S ROAD,
KILBURN. LONDON, N.W.,
_May 1885_.
IN MEMORIAM
MR. H. T. WHARTON--known to book-lovers as 'Sappho Wharton'--died on August
22, 1895, after a lingering illness due to influenza, at his residence in
West Hampstead; and he lies buried in the neighbouring cemetery of Fortune
Green.
Henry Thornton Wharton was born in 1846 at Mitcham, in Surrey, of which
parish his father was then vicar. His mother, who survives him, was a
Courtenay, a cousin of the Earl of Devon. His elder brother, the author of
_Etyma Graeca_ and _Etyma Latina_, is a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford; a
younger brother shares his taste for ornithology. He was educated as a
day-boy at the Charterhouse, in its old Smithfield days; and after spending
a short time in the classical department of King's College, he went up to
Oxford in 1867, as a commoner of Wadham. That college had no more
enthusiastic _alumnus_, and he will be greatly missed, both at the Gaudy
and at the annual dinner in London. He graduated in 1871 with honours in
natural science, and then joined the medical school at University College.
On qualifying as M.R.C.S. in 1875, he settled down to general practice in
West Hampstead. He never earned a large income; but his devotion to all his
patients, and in particular his generosity to the poor, will cause his
memory to be long held in honour.
The general public first heard of him in 1885, when he brought out his
_Sappho_--memoir, text, selected renderings, and a literal translation
(David Stott). The book met with an immediate success, partly because it
supplied a want, and partly from the attractive form in which it was
produced. A second edition was called for within two years; and this very
summer a third, with additions, has been published by Mr. John Lane. The
author spared no pains to make the volume worthy of its subject. Merely as
a specimen of book-making, it has few rivals. The Royal Press of Berlin
lent a fount of Greek type, which had never before been used in this
country. Prof. Blass, of Kiel, gave his assistance in determining the
obscure text of the fragments. Mr. John Addington Symonds contributed
special metrical versions of all the longer pieces. Mr. John Cother Webb
engraved for frontispiece the head of Sappho in Mr. Alma Tadema's famous
picture, the original of which has since gone to America. Of Mr. Wharton's
own work we must be content to praise the memoir, marked by good sense as
well as erudition; and the bibliography, which includes the latest programs
of Russian universities. The result is one of the rare books that give
fresh life to an ancient author, and beget other good books, such, in this
case, as Michael Field's _Long Ago_. It appeals alike to the scholar, the
bibliophile, and the general public; and by it the author's name will be
preserved, along with that of the immortal poetess, when far more notorious
writers of the day are forgotten.
But Mr. Wharton was by no means a man of one book. Though he had got
together a choice collection of English literature, his real interest lay
in natural history. It would be difficult, indeed, to say to which of its
branches he was most devoted. His knowledge of ornithology was based upon
observation as much as upon books. His eye and ear were both highly
trained, and he always made his learning subservient to nature. So, again,
with regard to botany. While he did not despise the most technical details,
it was his delight to accompany gatherings of autumn fungus-hunters, and to
point out what was wholesome and what poisonous. He was one of the joint
compilers of the official List of British Birds published by the B. O. U.
(1883), his special task being to supervise and elucidate the Latin
nomenclature; and he contributed a chapter on the local flora to a work
entitled _Hampstead Hill_ (1889).
So much, however, summarises only what Harry Wharton did, not what he was.
His was one of the bounteous natures that radiate happiness wherever they
go. Men, women, and children alike brightened in his genial presence. He
led a blameless and a beneficent life. He never made an enemy and he never
lost a friend. He ought to have been a contemporary of Charles Lamb. It is
hard to realise--especially for one who has known and loved him for nearly
thirty years--that we shall never see again that _os honestum_, never hear
again that ringing laugh.
'God be with his soul! A' was a merry man.'
J. S. COTTON.
1895.
CONTENTS
_Page_
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION v
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION ix
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION xv
IN MEMORIAM xxiii
LIFE OF SAPPHO 1
I. IN SAPPHIC METRE 49
II. IN DACTYLIC METRE 87
III. IN ALCAIC METRE 88
IV. IN MIXED GLYCONIC AND ALCAIC METRE 89
V. IN CHORIAMBIC METRE 90
VI. IN VARIOUS METRES 125
VII. IN THE IONIC "A MINORE" METRE 127
VIII. EPITHALAMIA, BRIDAL SONGS 130
IX. EPIGRAMS 149
X. MISCELLANEOUS 152
THE FAYUM FRAGMENTS 181
SAPPHO TO PHAON 187
BIBLIOGRAPHY 199
ILLUSTRATIONS
SAPPHO _Frontispiece_
_Engraved by Mr. John Cother Webb, from a
picture by Sir L. Alma Tadema, R.A._
MITYLENE _To face page_ 1
THE FAYUM FRAGMENTS " 181
[Illustration]
LIFE OF SAPPHO
SAPPHO, the one great woman poet of the world, who called herself Psappha
in her own Aeolic dialect (in fragments 1 and 59), is said to have been at
the zenith of her fame about the year 610 B.C.
During her lifetime Jeremiah first began to prophesy (628 B.C.), Daniel was
carried away to Babylon (606 B.C.), Nebuchadnezzar besieged and captured
Jerusalem (587 B.C.), Solon was legislating at Athens, and Tarquinius
Priscus, the fifth king, is said to have been reigning over Rome. She lived
before the birth of Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, the religion now
professed by perhaps almost a third of the whole population of the globe.
Two centuries have sufficed to obscure most of the events in the life of
Shakspere; it can hardly be expected that the lapse of twenty-five
centuries should have left many authentic records of the history of Sappho.
Little even of that internal evidence, upon which biography may rely, can
be gathered from her extant poems, in such fragmentary form have they come
down to us. Save for the quotations of grammarians and lexicographers, no
word of hers would have survived. Yet her writings seem to have been
preserved intact till at least the third century of our era, for Athenaeus,
who wrote about that time, applies to himself the words of the Athenian
comic poet Epicrates in his _Anti-Laïs_ (about 360 B.C.), saying that he
too--
Had learned by heart completely all the songs,
Breathing of love, which sweetest Sappho sang.
Scaliger says, although there does not seem to exist any confirmatory
evidence, that the works of Sappho and other lyric poets were burnt at
Constantinople and at Rome in the year 1073, in the popedom of Gregory VII.
Cardan says the burning took place under Gregory Nazianzen, about 380 A.D.
And Petrus Alcyonius relates that he heard when a boy that very many of the
works of the Greek poets were burnt by order of the Byzantine emperors, and
the poems of Gregory Nazianzen circulated in their stead. Bishop Blomfield
(_Mus. Crit._ i. p. 422) thinks they must all have been destroyed at an
early date, because neither Alcaeus nor Sappho was annotated by any of the
later Grammarians. 'Few indeed, but those, roses,' as the poet Meleager
said, are the precious verses the zeal of anti-paganism has spared to us.
Of Sappho's parents nothing is definitely known. Herodotus calls her father
Scamandr[=o]nymus; and as he wrote within one hundred and fifty years of
her death there is little reason to doubt his accuracy. But Suidas, who
compiled a Greek lexicon in about the eleventh century A.D., gives us the
choice of seven other names. Her mother's name was Cl[=e]is. The celebrated
Epistle known as that of _Sappho to Phaon_, of which I subjoin a
translation by Pope in the Appendix, and which is commonly ascribed to
Ovid,[1] says Sappho was only six years old 'when the bones of her parent,
gathered up before their time, drank in her tears'; this is supposed to
refer to her father, because in fr. 90 she speaks of her mother as still
alive.
She had two brothers, Charaxus and Larichus; Suidas indeed names a third,
Eurygius, but nothing is known of him.
Larichus was public cup-bearer at Mitylene, an office only held by youths
of noble birth (cf. fr. 139), whence it is inferred that Sappho belonged to
the wealthy aristocratic class.
Charaxus was occupied in carrying the highly prized Lesbian wine to
Naucr[)a]tis[2] in Egypt, where he fell in love with a woman of great
beauty, D[=o]r[)i]cha or Rhod[=o]pis, and ransomed her from slavery for a
great sum of money. Herodotus says she came originally from Thrace, and had
once served Iadmon of Samos, having been fellow-slave with Aesop the
fabulist. Suidas says Charaxus married her, and had children by her; but
Herodotus only says that she was made free by him, and remained in Egypt,
and 'being very lovely, acquired great riches for a person of her
condition.' Out of a tenth part of her gains (cf. fr. 138) she furnished
the temple of Apollo at Delphi with a number of iron spits for roasting
oxen on. Athenaeus, however, blames Herodotus for having confused two
different persons, saying that Charaxus married Doricha, while it was
Rhodopis who sent the spits to Delphi. Certainly it appears clear that
Sappho in her poem called her Doricha, but Rhodopis, 'Rosy-cheek,' was
probably the name by which she was known among her lovers, on account of
her beauty.
Another confusion respecting Rhodopis is that in Greece she was believed to
have built the third pyramid; and Herodotus takes pains to show that such a
work was far beyond the reach of her wealth, and was really due to kings of
a much earlier date. Still the tale remained current, false as it
undoubtedly was, at least till the time of Pliny (about 77 A.D.). It has
been shown by Bunsen and others that it is probable that
The Rhodope that built the pyramid
was Nitocris, the beautiful Egyptian queen who was the heroine of so many
legends; Mycerinus began the third pyramid, and Nitocris finished it.
Strabo and Aelian relate a story of Rhodopis which recalls that of
Cinderella. One day, they say, when Rhodopis was bathing at Naucratis, an
eagle snatched up one of her sandals from the hands of her female
attendants, and carried it to Memphis; the eagle, soaring over the head of
the king (whom Aelian calls Psammetichus[3]), who was administering justice
at the time, let the sandal fall into his lap. The king, struck with the
beauty of the sandal and the singularity of the incident, sent over all
Egypt to discover the woman to whom it belonged. The owner was found in the
city of Naucratis and brought to the king; he made her his queen, and at
her death erected, so the story goes, this third pyramid in her honour.
Suidas says Sappho 'married one Cerc[=o]las, a man of great wealth, who
sailed from Andros, and,' he adds, 'she had a daughter by him, named
Cleïs.' In fr. 85 (cf. fr. 136) Sappho mentions this daughter Claïs by
name, and Ovid, in the Epistle already alluded to, also refers to her. But
the existence of such a husband has been warmly disputed, and the name
(_P[=e]nifer_) and that of his country (_Vir[=i]lia_) are conjectured to
have been invented in ribaldry by the Comic poets; certainly it was against
the custom of the Greeks to amass wealth in one country and go to seek a
wife in a distant island. Some authorities do not mention Andros, one of
the islands of the Cyclades, but state that Sappho's family belonged to an
Aeolian colony in the Troad.
The age in which Sappho flourished is mainly determined by concurrent
events. Athenaeus makes her contemporary with Alyattes the father of
Croesus, who reigned over Lydia from 628 to 570 B.C. Eusebius mentions her
in his Chronicle for the year 604 B.C. Suidas says she lived about the 42nd
Olympiad (612-609 B.C.), in the time of the poets Alcaeus,
St[=e]sich[)o]rus, and Pitt[)a]cus. Her own verses in fr. 28 are said to
have been written in answer to those of Alcaeus addressing her--
[Greek: Ioplok' agna mellichomeide Sapphoi,]
[Greek: thelô ti weipên, alla me kôlyei aidôs,]
'Violet-weaving, pure, soft-smiling Sappho, I want to say something, but
shame deters me' (cf. p. 24). Athenaeus says that Hermesi[)a]nax, in an
elegy (cf. fr. 26), spoke of Sappho as beloved by Anacreon, and he quotes
from the third book of some elegiac poetry by Hermesianax, 'A Catalogue of
things relating to Love,' these lines of his:
And well thou knowest how famed Alcaeus smote
Of his high harp the love-enlivened strings,
And raised to Sappho's praise the enamoured note,
'Midst noise of mirth and jocund revellings:
Aye, he did love that nightingale of song
With all a lover's fervour,--and, as he
Deftly attuned the lyre, to madness stung
The Teian bard with envious jealousy.
For her Anacreon, charming lyrist, wooed,
And fain would win, with sweet mellifluous chime,
Encircled by her Lesbian sisterhood;
Would often Samos leave, and many a time
From vanquished Teos' viny orchards hie
To viny Lesbos' isle,--and from the shore,
O'er the blue wave, on Lectum cast his eye,
And think on bygone days and times no more.
(_Translated by_ J. BAILEY.)
Diphilus too, in his play _Sappho_, represented Archilochus and Hipp[=o]nax
as her lovers--for a joke, as Athenaeus prudently remarks. Neither of
these, however, was a contemporary of hers, and it seems quite certain that
Anacreon, who flourished fully fifty years later, never set eyes on Sappho
(cf. fr. 26).
How long she lived we cannot tell. The epithet [Greek: geraitera],
'somewhat old,' which she applies to herself in fr. 75, may have been
merely relative. The story about her brother Charaxus and Rhodopis would
show she lived at least until 572 B.C., the year of the accession of
Am[=a]sis, king of Egypt, under whose reign Herodotus says Rhodopis
flourished; but one can scarcely draw so strict an inference. If what
Herodotus says is true, Sappho may have reached the age of fifty years. At
any rate, 'the father of history' is more worthy of credence than the
scandal-mongers. An inscription on the famous Parian marbles, a system of
chronology compiled, perhaps by a schoolmaster, in the third century B.C.
(cf. p. 17), says: 'When Aristocles reigned over the Athenians, Sappho fled
from Mitylene and sailed to Sicily'; but the exact date is illegible,
though it may be placed between 604 and 592 B.C. It is hardly safe to refer
to this Ovid's assertion that she went to Sicily in pursuit of Phaon.
Balancing all the evidence, Fynes-Clinton, in his _Fasti Hellenici_, i. p.
225, takes the years 611-592 B.C. to be the period in which Sappho
flourished.
That she was a native of Lesbos, an island in the Aegean sea, is
universally admitted; and all but those writers who speak of a second
Sappho say she lived at Mityl[=e]n[=e], the chief city of the island. The
existence of a Sappho who was a courtesan of Er[)e]sus, a smaller Lesbian
city, besides the poetess of Mitylene, is the invention of comparatively
late authors; and it is probably due to their desire to detach the
calumnies, which the Comic poets so long made popular, from the personality
of the poetess to whose good name her own contemporaries bore witness (cf.
Alcaeus' address to her, p. 8).
Strabo, in his _Geography_, says: 'Mitylene [[Greek: Mitylênê] or [Greek:
Mytilênê]] is well provided with everything. It formerly produced
celebrated men, such as Pittacus, one of the Seven Wise Men; Alcaeus the
poet, and others. Contemporary with these persons flourished Sappho, who
was something wonderful; at no period within memory has any woman been
known who in any, even the least degree, could be compared to her for
poetry.' Indeed, the glory of Lesbos was that Sappho was its citizen, and
its chief fame centres in the fact of her celebrity. By its modern name
Mitilene, under the dominion of the Turks, the island,
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
is now mainly known for its oil and wine and its salubrity. In ancient
times its wine was the most celebrated through all Greece; and Vergil
refers to its vines, which trailed like ivy on the ground, while many
authors testify to the exceptional wholesomeness of Lesbian wine. But the
clue to Sappho's individuality can only be found in the knowledge of what,
in her age, Lesbos and the Lesbians were; around her converges all we know
of the Aeolian race. As Mr. Swinburne says--
Had Sappho's self not left her word thus long
For token,
The sea round Lesbos yet in waves of song
Had spoken.
'For a certain space of time,' writes Mr. J. Addington Symonds in his
_Studies of Greek Poets_, first series, pp. 127 ff., 'the Aeolians occupied
the very foreground of Greek literature, and blazed out with a brilliance
of lyrical splendour that has never been surpassed. There seems to have
been something passionate and intense in their temperament, which made the
emotions of the Dorian and the Ionian feeble by comparison. Lesbos, the
centre of Aeolian culture, was the island of overmastering passions; the
personality of the Greek race burned there with a fierce and steady flame
of concentrated feeling. The energies which the Ionians divided between
pleasure, politics, trade, legislation, science, and the arts, and which
the Dorians turned to war and statecraft and social economy, were
restrained by the Aeolians within the sphere of individual emotions, ready
to burst forth volcanically. Nowhere in any age of Greek history, or in any
part of Hellas, did the love of physical beauty, the sensibility to radiant
scenes of nature, the consuming fervour of personal feeling, assume such
grand proportions did receive so illustrious an expression as they did in
Lesbos. At first this passion blossomed into the most exquisite lyrical
poetry that the world has known: this was the flower-time of the Aeolians,
their brief and brilliant spring. But the fruit it bore was bitter and
rotten. Lesbos became a byword for corruption. The passions which for a
moment had flamed into the gorgeousness of Art, burnt their envelope of
words and images, remained a mere furnace of sensuality, from which no
expression of the divine in human life could be expected. In this the
Lesbian poets were not unlike the Provençal troubadours, who made a
literature of Love; or the Venetian painters, who based their Art upon the
beauty of colour, the voluptuous charms of the flesh. In each case the
motive of enthusiastic passion sufficed to produce a dazzling result. But
as soon as its freshness was exhausted there was nothing left for Art to
live on, and mere decadence to sensuality ensued. Several circumstances
contributed to aid the development of lyric poetry in Lesbos. The customs
of the Aeolians permitted more social and domestic freedom than was common
in Greece. Aeolian women were not confined to the harem like Ionians, or
subjected to the rigorous discipline of the Spartans. While mixing freely
with male society, they were highly educated, and accustomed to express
their sentiments to an extent unknown elsewhere in history--until, indeed,
the present time. The Lesbian ladies applied themselves successfully to
literature. They formed clubs for the cultivation of poetry and music. They
studied the art of beauty, and sought to refine metrical forms and diction.
Nor did they confine themselves to the scientific side of Art. Unrestrained
by public opinion, and passionate for the beautiful, they cultivated their
senses and emotions, and developed their wildest passions. All the luxuries
and elegances of life which that climate and the rich valleys of Lesbos
could afford, were at their disposal: exquisite gardens, in which the rose
and hyacinth spread perfume; river-beds ablaze with the oleander and wild
pomegranate; olive-groves and fountains, where the cyclamen and violet
flowered with feathery maidenhair; pine-shadowed coves, where they might
bathe in the calm of a tideless sea; fruits such as only the southern sea
and sea-wind can mature; marble cliffs, starred with jonquil and anemone in
spring, aromatic with myrtle and lentisk and samphire and wild rosemary
through all the months; nightingales that sang in May; temples dim with
dusky gold and bright with ivory; statues and frescoes of heroic forms. In
such scenes as these the Lesbian poets lived, and thought of Love. When we
read their poems, we seem to have the perfumes, colours, sounds, and lights
of that luxurious land distilled in verse. Nor was a brief but biting
winter wanting to give tone to their nerves, and, by contrast with the
summer, to prevent the palling of so much luxury on sated senses. The
voluptuousness of Aeolian poetry is not like that of Persian or Arabian
art. It is Greek in its self-restraint, proportion, tact. We find nothing
burdensome in its sweetness. All is so rhythmically and sublimely ordered
in the poems of Sappho that supreme art lends solemnity and grandeur to the
expression of unmitigated passion.'
The story of Sappho's love for Phaon, and her leap from the Leucadian rock
in consequence of his disdaining her, though it has been so long implicitly
believed, does not seem to rest on any firm historical basis. Indeed, more
than one epigrammatist in the Greek Anthology expressly states that she was
buried in an Aeolic grave.[4]
Still Phaon, for all the myths that cluster round his name, for his
miraculous loveliness and his insensibility to love, may yet have been a
real personage. Like other heroes, he may possibly have lived at a period
long anterior to that of the traditions about him which have been handed
down to us. He is said to have been a boatman of Mitylene (cf. fr. 140),
who was endowed by Aphrodite with youth and extraordinary beauty as a
reward for his having ferried her for nothing. Servius, who wrote about 400
A.D. (cf. p. 39), says she gave him an alabaster box of ointment, the
effect of which was to make all women fall in love with him; and that one
of these--he does not mention her name--threw herself in despair from the
cliff of Leucas. Servius further states, on the authority of Menander, that
the temple was founded by Phaon of Lesbos. Phaon's beauty and power of
fascination passed into a proverb. Pliny, however, says he became the
object of Sappho's love because he had found the male root of the plant
called _eryngo_, probably our sea-holly, and that it acted like a
love-charm. And when Athenaeus is talking about lettuces, as to their use
as food and their anti-aphrodisiac properties, he says Callimachus' story
of Aphrodite hiding Adonis under a lettuce is 'an allegorical statement of
the poet's, intended to show that those who are much addicted to the use of
lettuces are very little adapted for pleasures of love. Cratinus,' he goes
on, 'says that Aphrodite when in love with Phaon hid him in the leaves of
lettuces; but the younger Marsyas says that she hid him amid the grass of
barley.'
Those fanciful writers who assert the existence of a second Sappho say that
it was not the poetess who fell in love with Phaon, but that other Sappho
on whom they fasten all the absurd stories circulated by the Comic writers.
The tale runs that the importunate love of Sappho caused Phaon to flee to
Sicily, whither she followed him. Ovid's Epistle, before mentioned (p. 3),
is the foundation for the greater part of the legend. The inscription on
the Parian marbles (cf. p. 9) also mentions a certain year in which 'Sappho
sailed from Mitylene and fled to Sicily.' The chronicle, however, says
nothing about Phaon, nor is any reason given for her exile; some have
imagined that she was obliged to leave her country on political grounds,
but there is no trace in her writings, nor does any report indicate, that
she ever interested herself in politics.
Strabo, in his _Geography_ already quoted (p. 10), says: 'There is a white
rock which stretches out from Leucas to the sea and towards Cephallenia,
that takes its name from its whiteness. The rock of Leucas has upon it a
temple of Apollo, and the leap from it was believed to stop love. From this
it is said that Sappho first, as Menander says somewhere, "in pursuit of
the haughty Phaon, urged on by maddening desire, threw herself from its
far-seen rocks, imploring thee [Apollo], lord and king."' The former
promontory of Leucas is now separated from the mainland and forms one of
the Ionian islands, known as Santa Maura, off the wild and rugged coast of
Acarnania. The story of Sappho's having ventured the Leucadian leap is
repeated by Ovid, and was never much doubted, except by those who believed
in a second Sappho, till modern times. Still, it is strange that none of
the many authors who relate the legend say what was the result of the
leap--whether it was fatal to her life or to her love. Moreover, Ptolemy
Hephaestion (about 100 A.D.), who, in the extant summary of his works
published in the _Myriobiblion_ of Photius, gives a list of many men and
women who by the Leucadian leap were cured of the madness of love or
perished, does not so much as mention the name of Sappho. A circumstantial
account of Sappho's leap, on which the popular modern idea is chiefly
founded, was given by Addison, relying to no small extent upon his
imagination for his facts, 'with his usual exquisite humour,' as Warton
remarks, in the 233rd _Spectator_, Nov. 27, 1711. 'Sappho the Lesbian,'
says Addison, 'in love with Phaon, arrived at the temple of Apollo habited
like a bride, in garments as white as snow. She wore a garland of myrtle on
her head, and carried in her hand the little musical instrument of her own
invention. After having sung a hymn to Apollo, she hung up her garland on
one side of his altar, and her harp on the other. She then tucked up her
vestments like a Spartan virgin, and amidst thousands of spectators, who
were anxious for her safety and offered up vows for her deliverance,
marched directly forwards to the utmost summit of the promontory, where,
after having repeated a stanza of her own verses, which we could not hear,
she threw herself off the rock with such an intrepidity as was never before
observed in any who had attempted that dangerous leap. Many who were
present related that they saw her fall into the sea, from whence she never
rose again; though there were others who affirmed that she never came to
the bottom of her leap, but that she was changed into a swan as she fell,
and that they saw her hovering in the air under that shape. But whether or
no the whiteness and fluttering of her garments might not deceive those who
looked upon her, or whether she might not really be metamorphosed into that
musical and melancholy bird, is still a doubt among the Lesbians. Alcaeus,
the famous lyric poet, who had for some time been passionately in love with
Sappho, arrived at the promontory of Leucate that very evening in order to
take the leap upon her account; but hearing that Sappho had been there
before him, and that her body could be nowhere found, he very generously
lamented her fall, and is said to have written his hundred and twenty-fifth
ode upon that occasion.'
It is to be noted in this connection that the part of the cliff of Santa
Maura or Leukadi, known to this day as 'Sappho's Leap,' was used, even in
historical times, as a place whence criminals condemned to death were
thrown into the sea. The people used, it is said, to tie numbers of birds
to the limbs of the condemned and cover them with feathers to break the
force of their fall, and then send boats to pick them up. If they survived,
they were pardoned.