Hera, Hermes, Hephaestus, and the Muses. There is much reverence in the
beautiful Hymn to Hera, the latter half of which Edmonds (E. 40) has so
very tentatively restored on the hypothesis that this was written in
Syracuse before Sappho embarked to return to Mytilene on hearing of the
amnesty of Pittacus.
Sappho was not only the poet of ardent love, as we have seen, but the
greatest composer of wedding-songs of antiquity, and much of such
poetry in later days is nothing but a translation or a transfusion of
Sappho. Her _Epithalamia_ were written for actual wedding ceremonies,
but I cannot agree with a great German critic who says that they were
not literary productions. I do not mean to say that she published these
songs, for I believe that they were not collected into a ninth book until
later days. We have already quoted what may be an introductory poem to
the Epithalamies; perhaps even some of the other fragments which we have
mentioned, such as that perfect weaving-song, which may reflect the
awakening of love in the heart of the bride, and certainly the verses on
the _Evening Star_ (p. 64) belong to her Epithalamies. The wonderful new
poem (E. 66) with its Homeric genitives and datives and its Homeric forms
of words on the _Marriage of Hector and Andromache_ could be used as a
wedding-song at any wedding:
HOME-COMING OF HECTOR WITH HIS BRIDE
(Recitation for “_The Wedding Day_”)
Sustained by sturdy limbs a herald came
Swiftly to folk of Ida. Quick as flame
The rumor ran, ere he the tidings told,
Through wide-wayed Ilium that Hector bold
And his fair bride Andromache, so dear
Already to the town for fame as peer
In beauty of the woman that with hate
They passed upon the street with eyes avert
(The Grecian Helen, whom, as seers assert,
Her name had doomed to be the torch of Troy—
‘Destroyer’), and more dear because the joy
She was of Priam’s most beloved son,
Were at the landing. All the people run
Out of the gates; the young men yoke their steeds
To chariots, and each his charges speeds,
With harness jingling, to be first, and bring
Hector and Hector’s bride to Priam king.
And so like gods to Ilium they came
Attended by the people’s wild acclaim,
Nor knew that even then across the sea
Sailed swift Achilles, born their bane to be:
To drag dead Hector round the walls of Troy,
And doom to slavery his wife and boy.
(MARION MILLS MILLER)
I do not feel that this poem was cold and superficial as Miss De Courten
and some other critics say, for to me it is a dignified and simple epic
narrative, like the messengers’ speeches in Greek tragedy, introduced
into the midst of lyrics. It is almost perfect and well worthy of
Sappho. It makes us realize that Sappho’s activity was broader than we
had supposed and brings her nearer to her predecessors and successors.
It is a unique example, hitherto unknown, of a lyric narrative with
epic intonations, throwing new light on the history of the ancient
wedding-songs.[96]
A rhetorician of the fourth century A.D., Himerius,[97] has an
interesting passage which bears on Sappho’s wedding-songs and helps us
interpret the fragments which are preserved:
“So it is time for us, my children, since we are summoning
our Muses to marriage-dance and marriage-love, to relax the
graveness of our music, so that we may the better trip it with
the maidens in honour of Aphrodite. How hard it is to find a
tune gentle enough to please the Goddess, we may judge from
the poets themselves, most of whom, though past masters in
love-poetry, went as bravely to the description of Hera as any
boy or girl, but when it came to the rites of Aphrodite, left
the song for the lyre and the making of the epithalamy entirely
to Sappho, who when the contests are over enters the chamber,
weaves the bower, makes the bride-bed, gathers the maidens into
the bride-chamber, and brings Aphrodite in her Grace-drawn car
with a bevy of Loves to be her playfellows; and her she adorns
with hyacinths about the hair, leaving all but what is parted
by the brow to float free upon the wayward breeze, and them she
decks with gold on wing and tress and makes to go on before the
car and wave their torches on high.” (EDMONDS)
Himerius refers to the mock contests which were a part of the wedding
ceremonies. There was always an _agon_ or sham fight, as in Greek comedy,
running through the hymenaeal, to be succeeded in many cases by a real
fight afterwards. The wedding echoed with noise which suggested the
conflicts of prehistoric days when brides were captives of bow and spear,
and all sorts of characters figured in this drama of real life. There
was place for satire and ridicule as well as for praise. Even in recent
years I have witnessed in a neighboring island, “Scio’s rocky isle,” the
semblance of predatory warfare which the Chians keep up during their
bridal ceremonies. And in 1902 I attended a three days’ Turkish wedding
at Chiblak, near the site of ancient Troy. On that occasion the frequent
shooting and fighting, which resulted even in injuries to Turks and
Greeks, made the noisy ceremony seem like a battle. In Sappho’s day, as
to-day in the Orient, a wedding was not a brief benedictory reading by a
clergyman. It was a long-drawn celebration, a prolonged process rather
than a precise pronouncement, with torchlight processions, dance, and
song.[98] All these features emerge very clearly in Sappho, where we can
trace the whole ceremony from the weaving of the bridal bower (_pastas_
= portico or bower in Himerius as cited above) to the aubade song of the
next morning. Here is the charming song, sung, in the same metre as the
famous _Linus Song_, by the bridesmaids as they led the bride to the
bridegroom’s bed, proud of their island and of their Sappho:[99]
Up with the rafters high,
Ho for the wedding!
Raise them high, ye joiners,
Ho for the wedding!
The bridegroom’s as tall as Ares,
Ho for the wedding!
Far taller than a tall man,
Ho for the wedding!
Towering as the Lesbian poet
Ho for the wedding!
Over the poets of other lands,
Ho for the wedding!
(EDMONDS 148)
Then follows a kind of lyrical marriage drama, the bridesmaids
representing the tribe of the bride, the youths the clan of the
bridegroom, in this respect foreshadowing Catullus’ double choir. The
maidens answer the young men’s praise by chiding Hesperus, the evening
star, whose coming heralds the union. The young men in turn reply with
the famous words already quoted, to which the sequel probably was “even
so bring home the bride to the bridegroom.” We think of Edmund Spenser’s
_Prothalamion_ and _Epithalamion_ which have many of the motives of the
Greek epithalamium, with their reference to Hesper, with their beautiful
descriptions of bride and bridegroom. I quote the lines about Hymen,
which is Sappho’s Greek refrain, rendered by the word “wedding” in
Edmonds’ version:
Hymen, iö Hymen, they do shout;
That even to the heavens theyr shouting shrill
Doth reach, and all the firmament doth fill.
The men praise marriage bliss; the maidens, virginity (E. 152, “I
shall be ever-maiden,” E. 159, “Can it be that I still long for my
virginity?”). The bride says, “Maidenhead, maidenhead, whither away?”
and the reply is, “Where I must stay, bride, where I must stay” (E.
164)[100]; a wonderful example of the way in which Sappho treats
abstractions and inanimate things (cf. also E. 80, “Up, my lute divine
and make thyself a thing of speech”). Sappho is the first to use such
a personification[101] and it recalls Théophile Gautier in his reverse
application in _Mademoiselle de Maupin_. At least it is difficult to
think of the young Gautier independently conceiving the striking figure
that is so characteristic of the genius of the Lesbian poetess. This is
the Frenchman’s passage. It describes the fair heroine going out into the
world dressed in masculine habiliments to test men’s fidelity in love:
“And, as I rode away down the alley of chestnut trees, all the
puerilities of my girlhood ran along by the roadside, blowing
me farewell kisses from the tips of their tapering fingers. And
one little spirit in white, in a clear, silvery voice, cried:
‘Madeleine, where are you going? I am your virginity, dear, but
you look so fierce in your boots and hose, with your plumed hat
and long sword, that I am not sure whether I should go with
you.’
“I replied: ‘Go home, sweet thing, if you are afraid. Water my
flowers and care for my doves. But in sooth you are wrong. You
would be safer with me in these garments of stout cloth than in
airy gauze. My boots prevent it being seen that I have a little
tempting foot; this sword is my defense against dishonor;
and the feather waving in my hat is to frighten away all the
nightingales who would come and sing false love into my ear.’”
In amoebean or antiphonic hexameter verses (E. 150 and 151), as exquisite
as Heine’s _Du bist wie eine Blume_, the maidens liken the virgin state
to the unplucked pippin, the married woman to the hyacinth or columbine,
with which Aphrodite is also adorned in the passage from Himerius. As
Tucker says: “a band of girls mock the men with failure to win some
dainty maiden, and the men reply with a taunt at the neglected bloom of
the unprofitable virgin. Say the maids (Pl. 9):
On the top of the topmost spray
The pippin blushes red,
Forgot by the gatherers—nay!
Was it ‘forgot’ we said?
’Twas too far overhead!
Reply the men:
The hyacinth so sweet
On the hills where the herdsmen go
Is trampled ’neath their feet,
And its purple bloom laid low;
and there unhappily the record deserts us.” These lovely lines are about
as well known as anything of Sappho’s, owing to Rossetti’s adaptation in
his _One Girl_, a title altered in 1881 to _Beauty_, which the reader can
find in Wharton. In modern times, Maurice Thompson, Gamaliel Bradford,
and others have been influenced by them, though often an un-Sapphic
touch not in Sappho’s verses is given, as in Bradford’s _Topmost Bough_:
Don’t you love me now,
After I have set you
On love’s topmost bough;
God, then I’ll forget you.
The bridegroom now bears off the bride while the chorus of youths praise
the bride and the chorus of maidens the bridegroom:
What may I best compare,
Dear groom, with thee?
A slender sapling, ere
It is a tree.
(EDMONDS)
But as to-day the bridegroom disappears in the society column of the
newspaper behind the splendor of the elaborate description of the bride’s
gown, so in Sappho the praise of the bride is far sweeter than that of
the bridegroom. Recall the lines of Rossetti and these verses in the
metre of one of Catullus’ _epithalamia_:
Bride, thy shape is all delight
And thine eyes shine soft and bright,
O’er thy fair cheek desire is shed
And honor showered on thy head
From the Lady of Love in heaven.
(EDMONDS)
Congratulations were offered also to the bridegroom:
No other maiden lives to-day,
Bridegroom, such as thine.
(EDMONDS)
Himerius seems to be quoting such a song of greeting to bride and
bridegroom: “Bride that teemest with rosy desires, bride the fairest
ornament of the Queen of Paphos, hie thee to bed, hie thee to the couch
whereon thou must sweetly sport in gentle wise with thy bridegroom. And
may the Star of Eve lead thee full willingly to the place where thou
shalt marvel at the silver-thronèd Lady of Wedlock” (Edmonds). Himerius
also tells us that Sappho “brings Aphrodite in her Grace-drawn car with
a bevy of Loves” to the wedding. And the joy of the earthly festival is
repeated far up among the clouds of Olympus where the celestial feast is
described (E. 146) in verses the lilt of which Professor Gildersleeve has
thus reproduced in his unpublished version:
The mixing howl yonder
Was filled with ambrosia,
And Hermes ’gan ladle
The drink to the gods all;
The gods all uplifted
Their beakers and pour’d out
Libations and utter’d
Fair wishes for bridegroom,
[For fair bride fair wishes.]
Stebbing in his _Friends of Man_ has the Gods descend to the modest hall
wherein the marriage feast is spread.
All the High Gods from Olympus, to bless the Two, descend.
...
By an ample bowl Hermes, deftest of cupbearers, stands,
Crowning the Gods’ goblets from the full flagon in his hands.
The function of what we Americans used to call the first groomsman, in
the primitive times of wife-stealing, was to protect the bridegroom from
pursuit and the name “best man” perpetuates the tradition. In the Greek
wedding, where the passing and closing of the door was so essential a
part of the ritual, he was the door-keeper, and there was much bantering
and chaffing at his personal appearance on the part of the maidens, who
made much use of the same jokes which have since been applied to the feet
of maidens of Chicago. The feet of the porter were put in the laughing
stocks somewhat after this fashion (E. 154):
Full seven fathoms stretch the feet of the porter,
Full five ox-hides were used for his shoe-soles,
Ten stout cobblers were needed to make them,
(D. M. R.)
to which Edmonds would make the ingenious but doubtful addition based
on Synesius “[and his father lived in other ways an honest life, but
claimed to be better born than Cecrops].” The door is shut and the
mocking subsides, as all chant for the groom, “Happy bridegroom, the
marriage is accomplished, as you prayed it should be, and the maiden you
prayed for is yours” (E. 155); and for the bride they sing, “O beauteous
one, O lovely one, thine it is to sport with the rose-ankled Graces and
Aphrodite the golden” (E. 157). If Edmonds’ tentative restoration of the
end of the first book of 1320 verses is correct, “the maidens spend all
the night at this door, singing of the love that is between thee, thrice
happy bridegroom, and a bride whose breast is sweet as violets. But get
thee up and go when the dawn shall come, and may great Hermes lead thy
feet where thou shalt find just so much ill-luck as we shall see sleep
to-night” (E. 47). Evidently the maidens saw little sleep that night, but
finally silence falls and in the early dawn is heard the last song of the
serenaders: “Farewell the bride, farewell the bridegroom” (E. 160, 162).
This chapter should not close without a mention of the epigrams.
Many have been attributed to Sappho, but three especially (E. 143,
144, 145) have been included in most of the translations. They are,
however, written in normal epic language without any essential traces of
Sappho’s Aeolic dialect. One, which Wilamowitz would date as late as 400
B.C., according to Edmonds was inscribed on the base of a statue of a
nameless infant, dedicated to Artemis in gratitude for her birth by her
priestess-mother. I prefer the older interpretation:
Maidens, that pass my tomb with laughter sweet,
A voice unresting echoes at your feet;
Pause, and if any would my story seek,
Dumb as I am, these graven words will speak;
‘Once in the vanished years it chanced to please
Arista, daughter of Hermocleides,
To dedicate my life in virgin bliss
To thee, revered of women, Artemis!
O Goddess, deign to bless my grandsire’s line,
For Saon was a temple priest of thine;
And grant, O Queen, in thy benefic grace,
Unending fame and fortune to his race.’
(O’HARA’s adaptation)
The epigram on the fisherman (E. 145) is most unlike Sappho. Fawkes,
Elton, Neaves, and many a modern poet have put it into verse:[102]
Above the lowly grave of Pelagon,
Ill-fated fisher lad, Meniscus’ son,
His father placed as sign of storm and strife
The weel and oar, memorial of his life.
(O’HARA)
The two elegiac couplets on _The Dust of Timas_, who died before her
wedding day, are rather flat and hardly worthy of Sappho’s genius (E.
144); but if Edmonds’ restoration of one of Sappho’s fragments as
referring to Timas is correct (p. 60 above), it may be genuine and in
that case one of the very few surviving early metrical epitaphs. I give
you the recent rendering by one of our best modern American poets, Edwin
Arlington Robinson:
This dust was Timas; and they say
That almost on her wedding day
She found her bridal home to be
The dark house of Persephone.
And many maidens, knowing then
That she would not come back again,
Unbound their curls; and all in tears,
They cut them off with sharpened shears.
V. SAPPHO IN ART
The high regard of the ancients and moderns for Sappho appears especially
in art. In olden days she was honored in town-hall and library. Many a
statue and bust of her was erected and she was one of the few historical
characters who were painted on Greek vases, which even quote her
verses. She was sculptured also in terra-cotta and bronze.[103] It is
well established[104] that her image was engraved on coins of Eresus
and Mytilene,—a unique honor in early Greek days. Many (Pl. 10, 11) in
the British Museum, in Paris, and elsewhere[105] bear representations
sometimes of her head on the obverse with the lyre on the reverse, and
sometimes her full figure standing or sitting. They differ much in the
manner of the arrangement of her coiffure, some even showing the hair
covered by a kerchief, a fashion still prevalent in modern Lesbus. They
may be traced back to different types. Those which bear her name date
from Roman Imperial times. In general Furtwängler[106] is right in
contending that it was not the custom to honor distinguished persons
in such a manner before the days of Alexander. But the beautiful head
which appears on early Greek coins of Mytilene of the fifth and fourth
centuries B.C. may easily be Sappho and not her patron Aphrodite, even
in cases where the type is adapted to that of the goddess of love. The
lyre on the reverse and the individual features which resemble some
of the busts of Sappho point that way. The beautiful face on the old
coins was copied from some statue, perhaps one that was even earlier
than that of Silanion. Farnell well says:[107] “the later hero cults of
Homer at Smyrna, Sappho at Lesbus, and Aristotle at Stageira reveal the
deep conviction of the Hellenic spirit that science and art are divine
powers.” If the head on these Mytilenaean coins is really Sappho, it is
a silent but eloquent testimony to the reverence her name acquired after
her death and to the perfection of her living work.
The oldest possible representation of Sappho with which I am acquainted
is an archaic terra-cotta relief from Melos in the British Museum.[108]
It dates only a few years after Sappho’s time, and though not inscribed
it may represent Sappho and Alcaeus. Sappho appears as a slender lady
of average height (not of short stature as Ovid says), dressed in a long
Ionic woven tunic and wearing sandals. She sits with lyre in left hand
and plectrum in right, and the bearded Alcaeus stands before her with
bowl in left and extending his right hand. He seems to be expressing
with a smile his admiration of her new poetry, so different from his
own archaic measure. There is probably no reference, as in the case of
the Munich vase from Sicily,[109] to the famous lines which we have
quoted (p. 27). On this vase the names Sapho (so spelt) and Alcaeus are
painted beside the tall and stately figures who appear with lyre and
plectrum. Sappho seems to be rebuking with almost a pouting expression
her fellow-townsman Alcaeus, who bows his head as she speaks to him
the famous lines. This pictorial translation of her verses and other
representations show her great popularity in Athens in the fifth century
B.C. This Munich _psycter_ or cooling mixing-bowl (Pl. 12) for wine may
date as late as 460 B.C. and has been attributed to a fictitious lady
painter of the Free Style by Hauser, but his attribution has not been
generally accepted.[110] Furtwängler was probably right in connecting the
vase with the Brygus painter. My learned friend, the great Oxford expert
on vases, Mr. J. D. Beazley writes me that very likely it was not by the
Brygus painter himself, but surely in his manner. On an earlier vase,
now in the Czartoryski collection in Cracow (Pl. 13), dating from the
end of the sixth or the beginning of the fifth century B.C., according
to Beazley a vase roughly related in style to the Nicoxenus painter, a
contemporary of Euthymides, we have the earliest certain representation
of Sappho.[111] She is a tall, draped figure with smiling countenance,
walking to right and holding a seven-stringed lyre in her left hand and a
plectrum in her right. She appears on only this one black-figured vase,
which would seem to indicate that she did not become popular in Athens
till long after her death, when red-figured vases were the vogue. The
story of Solon adds testimony to the same effect, and probably a _corpus_
or collection of her writings used by the later Alexandrian editions was
in the book-stalls at Athens even in the last years of the sixth century.
Otherwise it is difficult to account for her frequent portrayal on Attic
red-figured vases. The lost Middleton vase,[112] (Pl. 14), probably of
the South Italian (Lucanian) Style, shows Sappho, whose name is now thus
spelt, seated on a four-legged stool while a nude winged Eros hastens
towards her with a wreath. The painter probably knew the poems of Sappho
which pictured Eros as bitter-sweet, and Sappho’s other word-pictures of
the sorrows of love, for he has labelled Eros “wretched.” One thinks of
Horace’s _querentem Sappho puellis de popularibus_. Mr. Beazley, however,
suspects the inscription _talas_, and thinks that _kalos_ (beautiful) was
written. It is greatly to be hoped that the vase will soon be found again
so that we can have a rereading of the letters. On the Michaelis vase
in late Polygnotan style,[113] which is in the Jatta collection at Ruvo
in Italy (Pl. 15), we possibly have an apotheosis of Sappho. Aphrodite
is painted with a cupid on her right shoulder like the Aphrodite of
the Parthenon frieze, judging the contest of Thamyris. Near Apollo are
three Muses, and near Thamyris are four. Sappho is evidently leaning for
support on Aphrodite, receiving a little dove from a little Eros, and is
pictured as a Muse herself, as in Plato’s epigram. On another red-figured
vase[114] in private possession, Sappho is in the midst of her pupils.
Several vases even show knowledge of her writings. The most important is
the hydria or water-jar in Athens (Pl. 16), dating about 430 B.C.,[115]
which Mr. Beazley would put in the group of Polygnotus, somewhat in the
style of the Hector painter, though not by him. Sappho is seated on a
light-backed chair or _klismos_; she is reading from a papyrus roll,
while Nicopolis behind holds a wreath over her head. Two maidens stand
in front, one, Callis, holding a lyre. Scholars have long tried to make
sense out of the letters on the papyrus, and several, such as Comparetti
and Aly, have considered them un-Sapphic; but Edmonds, the great English
expert on Sappho, has got a new reading for the last word and thinks
this is column 1 of a book entitled _Winged Words_, a phrase borrowed
from Homer. The verses are an introductory poem to Sappho’s works with
an invocation to the Gods, after which follows the verse: “The words I
begin are words of air, but for all that, good to hear.” I do not feel
that the solution is satisfactory or Sapphic, and an examination of the
vase itself proves that Edmonds’ reading will not stand; but no one has
yet made a better proposal. On another vase, in the Louvre, attributed to
Euphronius[116] we have an echo of Sappho in the words (E. 23), “I long
and I yearn.” A beautiful fifth century cylix (Pl. 9) by the erudite
and versatile Sotades,[117] whose wonderful signed terra-cotta horse,
mounted by an Amazon, has recently been brought to Boston from Meroe in
Egypt, pictures a girl on tiptoe trying to pluck the sweet apple which
is reddening on the topmost bough. I have no doubt that Sotades was
illustrating Sappho’s song.
Possibly on the so-called Steinhauser terra-cotta fragment[118] the
seated figure is Sappho; she is nude above the waist and holds her lyre
in her right hand. She is looking into the air enraptured and sublimely
inspired.