but in every case there is uncertainty about the interpretation. On two
beautiful vases (Pl. 4, 5), the hydria in Florence certainly by the
Meidias painter himself, and the crater in Palermo of the school of the
Meidias painter, the beautiful Phaon is definitely pictured.[120] The
inscription on the latter, “Phaon is beautiful,” leaves no doubt in
the matter. But the girl called Chryse or Philomele is perhaps wrongly
interpreted as Sappho. These vases are probably older than the comedy on
_Phaon_, by Plato (not to be confused with the philosopher). Phaon is
painted as handsome; all the girls are adorning themselves and making
love to him, but he has had too much attention from the ladies and is
sick of them (cf. p. 40 above). On another crater,[121] in Bologna (Pl.
17), in style not far removed from the vase-painter Polygnotus, Phaon
appears seated at the oar in a boat, about to take aboard the tall
goddess, who was to give him a perennial antidote against old age.
Before we leave ancient painting we ought to mention a picture of Sappho
in a garb as a lutist which the encyclopaedic Pliny assigns to Leon.[122]
We know nothing about him, but he was probably one of the numerous second
rate artists of Hellenistic times. An epigram in the Anthology and the
Christian Father Tatian[123] seem to have referred to this portrait.
Several Pompeian frescoes, and one from Herculaneum representing a lady
with a _stilus_ about to write her thoughts on a tablet, have been
named Sappho. Only in the case of one[124] do I feel that there is any
probability at all that Sappho was meant, and in that one Alcaeus appears
standing by the side of the seated Lesbian poetess (Pl. 18).
There must have been statues and busts of Sappho, but so many have
been called Sappho without definite evidence that it is difficult to
know where to stop. We must always bear in mind that early Greek art
in Sappho’s day did not believe in realistic portraiture and that all
representations of Sappho are “study heads,” conceptions of later
artists. The most famous statue mentioned in literature is that by
Silanion, the Greek sculptor of the fourth century B.C., who was so noted
for his Plato and Corinna.[125] We learn from Cicero’s _Oration against
Verres_[126] and from Tatian’s _Complaint against the Greeks or Pagans_
that this bronze statue, on the base of which Cicero was still able to
read the epigram, stood in the prytaneum at Syracuse, perhaps a memorial
of Sappho’s sojourn in Sicily. Cicero tells us that it was stolen by
Verres and praises it highly: “Could this work of Silanion, so perfect,
so refined, so finished, be in fitter hands public or private than those
of a man so refined and cultured as Verres?... And how sorely this stolen
Sappho was missed is almost more than words can tell. Not only was
the poetess exquisitely portrayed, but there was a world-famous Greek
couplet inscribed upon the base.... For the inscription on the empty
base declares to-day what the statue was, thus proclaiming the theft”
(Edmonds).
We know from literature of the existence of two other later statues.
We have spoken (p. 34) of the epigram of Damocharis which refers to
a portrait of Sappho with bright eyes and mixed expression of gaiety
and graveness. An epigram by Antipater[127] (p. 8) is thought to come
from a statue at Pergamum and since part of an inscription found at
Pergamum[128] mentions Alcaeus, it is a plausible conjecture that the
lost portion contained the name of Sappho. This is probably the same
bronze seated statue which in the fifth century A.D. stood in the
gymnasium of Zeuxippus at Constantinople and which is described by
Christodorus in his Greek Anthology:[129] “She seemed to be weaving a
well-hymned song, concentrating her thought on the silent Muses.”
No full-size statue which we can certainly identify as Sappho’s has been
preserved. The seated lady in the Vatican holding a volume in her left
hand is hardly Sappho, and it is not safe to call the standing lady
with lyre in New York in the Metropolitan Museum by her name. It would
be interesting to believe, as some do, that the famous maiden of Anzio
in the National Museum in Rome was Sappho, but some scholars of repute
even go so far as to say that it is not even a maiden but rather a boy.
Others say that a priestess, not a poetess, is portrayed. After repeated
examination of the original I have no doubt of her sex and believe the
statue to be that of a poetess, but whether of Praxilla or Sappho or some
other cannot be definitely stated. We have, however, many Roman busts of
different types[130] which have been conjectured to represent Sappho. One
type in all probability is copied from Silanion, as it resembles closely
in the features of the face and the arrangement of the hair, especially
the little curls in front of the face and in the covering of the head,
the portrait of Sappho on the early coins of Mytilene. The best example
of this type is the bust in the Villa Albani in Rome (Pl. 19). It has the
perfection, refinement, and finish to which Cicero referred, and Sappho
is “exquisitely portrayed.” In the Biscari collection at Catania, Sicily,
there is a Roman copy of a head meant to be inserted in a bust or statue.
It is so poorly finished that it was probably placed in a niche or chapel
to be seen from a distance. The oval face is young but placid and cold, a
characteristic partly due to the Roman copyist. With its corkscrew curls
and in other respects it is similar enough to the busts in the Villa
Albani and the Galleria Geographica of the Vatican to be classed with
them. If they represent Sappho, the Sicilian bust also does. If Rizzo
is right that this is a muse or nymph, then a copy of Silanion’s statue
still remains to be found.
The so-called head of Sappho in the Pitti in Florence is of a different
type, more dream-like, and may not be Sappho at all. More likely to
represent Sappho are the busts in Oxford (Pl. 20) and the Vatican. Other
busts about which there is considerable doubt are in Naples, in the
Riccardi Palace, in the Uffizi at Florence, and there is a double herm
in Madrid which has been called Sappho and Phaon. Of the so-called Phaon
in Madrid, Amelung has recently found in the storerooms of the Vatican
a beautiful replica, and he has also discovered there another Sappho
bust of the type on coins. In the summer of 1922 I photographed a bust,
which is in the Borghese Palace, and I think that it may represent Sappho
(Pl. 21). It resembles a colossal head from Smyrna in Constantinople,
the bust in Naples, and the double bust in Madrid in its energetic and
individualized features, such as the large nose and thick lips, and in
the curl on the forehead beneath the middle of the fillet. Rizzo would
trace the Naples bust back to about 420 B.C. and call it an ideal
representation of a mortal or perhaps even a courtesan. But Sappho might
easily have been represented in the type of a courtesan or even a muse.
The large bronze bust in New York which has been published as a portrayal
of Sappho can hardly represent the poetess, even if the bronze is genuine
and has the sanction of great authorities such as Eisen,[131] Babelon,
and André, since it resembles none of the known portraits of her. The
Romans as well as the Greeks were undoubtedly very fond of statues of
Sappho, and some day excavators will turn up for us more authenticated
portraits. The recently discovered Roman stucco relief which we
have already described (p. 42) shows what we may expect from future
discoveries. Even such articles of every-day-use as scales have weights
in the form of a Sappho head, such as that recently discovered.[132]
What we have said about the uncertainty of representations of Sappho
in ancient sculpture applies equally to the portrait of her on gems.
Cipollini has listed and illustrated many ancient and modern gems and
miniatures, but even if those called ancient are forgeries or are from
Renaissance times, the great number of them shows the unusual influence
of Sappho on the glyptic art in precious stones.
After Roman days Sappho was often pictured and sculptured in various
ideal ways.[133] Space fails us to discuss the almost endless works
of later art influenced by her name and traditions; and it seems idle
to detain the reader with a detailed catalogue. But to leave no doubt
that Sappho has had a vast and powerful influence on art of all ages,
I may mention some of the more important. During the last sixty years
especially, sculpture has paid a frequent and international tribute to
her. Now she is represented as sad and pensive, now meditating suicide,
now about to make the fatal leap from the Leucadian rock as in Pietro
Magni’s Saffo (1866), now even as a corpse on the surface of the sea.
Magni’s statue (Pl. 22) was much admired during his lifetime and it
reminds one of the Roman stucco relief, since it likewise represents
Sappho, lyre in hand and with head wreathed, standing on the edge of
the rock. She is holding back her skirts with her left hand and looking
seriously at the waters below, with the intention of stepping off at
the next moment. In 1878 the illustrious Lombard sculptor, Francesco
Confalonieri, influenced it may be by the Vatican Agrippina, made a
seated statue which represents Sappho in profile with sad and bowed head,
clasping her hands on her left side, her lyre abandoned on the floor.
France did not approve of this statue because some years before Pradier
also had sculptured a draped and dreaming Sappho who was seated on the
Leucadian rock with bowed head and hands clasped about her raised crossed
left leg, her lyre lying neglected on the rock (Pl. 23). Pradier had also
sculptured a standing, draped Sappho with bowed head holding her lyre in
her left hand, and supporting her right on an Ionic column on which rest
the rolls of her divine poetry.
The great German sculptor Danneker, who was so fond of classical subjects
and was the sculptor of the famous Ariadne, chiselled a charming marble
statuette of Sappho (1796). The beautiful bas-relief in Greek style in
the Vienna Volksgarten, which R. Weyr sculptured for the Grillparzer
Monument, represents Sappho’s farewell. She stands in drapery like that
of the Erechtheum Caryatids. She is holding a lyre and kissing good-bye
to a girl friend who gives her a last embrace. A shepherd kneels nearby
and others in the background are recoiling in fear. She herself stands
at the edge of the steps in front of Apollo’s temple, and there is much
other Greek architecture in this relief.
In France, Claude Ramey (1801) exhibited a seated statue; Duret (1806),
a Sappho writing to Phaon; Beauvallet (1817), a bust; Diebolt (1848), a
dying Sappho of noble and poetical expression. Other statues of Sappho
were made and exhibited in the Salon by Laurent (1849), Grootaers (1852),
Travaux (1852, now in the Louvre), Aizelin (1853, bronze), Loison (1859),
Grabowski (1859), Clésinger (1859, three statues, “Sappho singing her
last song, Seated on the Leucadian rock,” “The youth of Sappho,” and a
polychrome statue), Robinet (1861), Doriot (1872), and Signora Maraini.
In America, too, from the days of Story and Hezekiah Augur to the bronze
doors of the new Detroit Public Library Sappho has been a subject for
sculpture. Many are the busts which are inscribed to-day with the name of
Sappho, such as that by A. Gennai in the possession of Mrs. W. B. Hill of
Baltimore, or that by Sheldon.
In painting, though not often a subject for the greatest painters, Sappho
was represented in Greek and Roman days and ever since right down to the
most famous modern picture of her and her pupils by Alma Tadema, of which
we have given a description above (p. 32). Several pictures, such as
Titian’s _Sacred and Profane Love_, have been supposed by great critics
to represent Sappho, but it is difficult to agree with Poppelreuter
that Titian really meant to paint a Naiad counselling Sappho, who is
lamenting her love in the forest, to take the Leucadian leap.[134] In
some cases fortunately the painters themselves have labelled them.
Raphael is perhaps the greatest painter who pictured her. He brings
her significantly in his _Parnassus_ (Pl. 24) into juxtaposition with
Petrarch, who dedicated four verses of his tenth eclogue to her (see p.
136). She is represented prominently to the left of the doorway, resting
her left arm on it and holding in her left hand a papyrus roll with
the name Sappho upon it. Other minor painters who have painted Sappho
are Treshain (1683, “The Adventures of Sappho”), Ansiaux (1801), Ducis
(1812), Vafflard (1819, “Sappho rescued from the water by a stranger”),
Girodet (1828, a series of compositions from her first love affair to the
legendary leap), Lafond (1831), Vien (1833, “Sappho playing the lyre,”
and “Sappho reciting to Phaon”), Chasseriau (1850), Chautard (1855),
Agneni (1857, “Sappho rescued from the water by the Nereids”), Credès
(1859), Kauffmann (two beautiful pictures, “Sappho inspired by love”
and “Sappho talking with Homer;” these like many of the other pictures
were also engraved). Barrias painted a sleeping, nude Sappho, with her
lyre by her side, and represents her perhaps repeating the words: “The
silver moon is set; The Pleiades are gone; Half the long night is spent,
and yet I lie alone” (Merivale). Other painters of Sappho are Fragonard,
Gros, Devosge, Bartolazzi, Picou (1863), Loir (1864), Chifflart (1865),
Bertrand (1867, “Death of Sappho”), Gastaldi (1873, “Sappho meditating
suicide”), Gleyre (“Couch of Sappho”). Hector Leroux in his “School of
Sappho” represents her standing in the atrium of a Roman house, with lyre
in her left hand, on a platform inscribed with the name of the Lesbian
Sappho, evidently giving instruction to her many friends and pupils who
stand and sit in various postures in the audience.
This is only a partial list and could easily be extended, but enough has
been said to show that a knowledge of the real Sappho and her writings
and the legends connected with her will help one to be a sound and
intelligent critic of much in the realm of art.
VI. SAPPHO’S INFLUENCE ON GREEK AND ROMAN LITERATURE
If Sappho’s influence on art has been considerable, her place in
literature has been far more remarkable. Nearly every thought in her
fragments, which were known before the recent papyrus additions, has
been borrowed or adapted by some ancient Greek or Roman poet or some
modern poet in English, Italian, French, German, or modern Greek. Even
the Spanish, Scandinavians, and Russians (p. 233) know her, though not
so well acquainted with her as the authors of other nations. A very
remarkable thing is that her writings have in all the ages been almost
never unfavorably criticized from a literary point of view, no matter
how her character was regarded. We have already, in giving a résumé
of Sappho’s writings, cited many an echo, many a translation, many a
dilation or dilution, but have seen that the real flavor of Sappho’s
Greek cannot be transferred to any other language. In this and succeeding
chapters, however, some of the names of writers who owe much to her will
be brought together. She herself was original and coined many a new idea,
many a new word, and perfected a new form of metre. Just as a modern
poet, Tennyson for example, is indebted to his predecessors, Keats,
Shelley, Shakespeare, for images and ideas, she was somewhat indebted in
language and thought to Homer,[135] who filled the fancy of the Lesbians
and was himself, probably, born at the neighboring Smyrna. She took
little from Hesiod, although we find a few echoes of him which I cite
in a note.[136] On the other hand, succeeding poets of the next hundred
years seem to have taken little from her. Mimnermus probably knew the
second ode, and his lines are included in the Corpus of Theognis.[137] If
the fragment “Gold is Zeus’ child, no moth nor worm devours it (E. 110)”
is Sappho’s and not originally written by Pindar himself, then Pindar
took that idea from Sappho.[138] Herodotus tells the story of Rhodopis,
and Plato, who would exclude poets from his ideal state, makes Socrates
speak in the _Phaedrus_ of the beautiful Sappho as one of the wise
ancients, and he calls her the Tenth Muse in his famous epigram.
Aristotle, who refers to her three times, is the first one definitely
to quote her verses and that twice in the _Rhetoric_ (E. 91, 119, and p.
159). Aristotle’s pupil Theophrastus, who was also born in Eresus cites
her (περὶ λέξεως, Mayer, 1910) as the representative of charm in all its
forms. That essential element of charm is emphasized by Plutarch and by
Demetrius, the rhetorician of the first century A.D., in his _Essay on
Style_. Another pupil of Aristotle, Chamaeleon (310 B.C.), wrote a book
about her.
Sappho’s influence was not great in the field of Greek and Roman tragedy.
Aeschylus and Sophocles betray no acquaintance with her, but Euripides
was considerably affected by her verses on love. When he writes in
_Electra_ (l. 67), “I consider you a friend equal to the gods,” he is
thinking of the first verse of Sappho’s second song. Plutarch cites
Aristoxenus as saying that the tragedians learned the mixed Lydian mode
from her. In comedy Aristophanes had a slight acquaintance with her,
and he was thinking of Sappho’s first hymn in his suffragette play
_Lysistrata_ (ll. 723 ff.), where a love-sick devotee of Aphrodite
endeavors to escape from the Acropolis on the back of the sparrow,
Aphrodite’s bird. Epicrates dealt with Sappho in his comedy, _Anti-Laïs_,
before the year 392 B.C.; and Athenaeus applies the words of Epicrates
to himself:
And all the songs that Sappho sang so sweetly,
Breathing of love, I know by heart completely.
_Sappho_ was the title of plays by six different Greek comedians,
Ameipsias, Amphis, Antiphanes, Diphilus, Ephippus, and Timocles. Of those
by Ameipsias and Amphis we have only a single word, and the fragments of
the others throw little light on the question as to how much was taken
from Sappho herself. To the plays of Plato, Menander, and Antiphanes on
the legends of Phaon and the Leucadian Leap, we have already referred (p.
41).
In the Hellenistic Age, after the time of Alexander, Sappho was very
popular. Clearchus, the Peripatetic philosopher (300 B.C.) drew on
her for his _Treatise on Love Matters_.[139] In the third book of
his _Biographies_ Aristoxenus, a writer on music (320 B.C.), classes
her among inventors as did Menaechmus of Sicyon in his treatise _On
Artists_. He says that “her books were her companions.”[140] The third
century B.C. showed a serious interest in the Lesbians, and Theocritus
has many imitations of Sappho in dialect,[141] metre, and content. In
the second idyl Simaetha’s description of her feelings is taken from
Sappho. In the seventh idyl, the picture of the farm to which two friends
walked out from Syracuse in order to attend a harvest home festival,
Theocritus is imitating Sappho’s Garden of the Nymphs, especially in
ll. 135 ff.: “Close at hand the sacred water from the nymphs’ own cave
welled forth with murmurs musical” (Lang). Probably the eighteenth idyl
on Helen and Menelaus borrowed much from Sappho, since the first lines
seem to be cited as Sappho’s by Himerius. Line 38, “O maid of beauty,
maid of grace,” is lifted bodily from Sappho. The twenty-eighth idyl on
_A Distaff_ undoubtedly employed Sappho as a model, and likewise the
twenty-ninth and thirtieth idyls.
Callimachus (270 B.C.) in his first hymn (ll. 95 ff.) echoes the fragment
which influenced Pindar (E. 100): “Wealth without virtue cannot make
men happy, nor virtue without wealth, therefore grant both virtue and
wealth.” It was about the same time that a fellow townsman, Callias,
interpreted her poems as well as those of Alcaeus. Apollonius of Rhodes
(260 B.C.) knew her, and so did the _Lament for Bion_, which has been
attributed doubtfully to Moschus (150 B.C.): “Oh, Bion, Mytilene bewails
thy song evermore instead of Sappho’s” (III. 91). Bion (100 B.C.?) in
his _Lament for Adonis_ was probably influenced by Sappho’s words about
the dying Adonis (E. 103) and used in l. 44 the same word as Sappho did
in E. 29. The philosopher Chrysippus (240 B.C.) mentions her (fr. 36,
69), as does Cicero’s contemporary, the poet-philosopher Philodemus (60
B.C.). In fragment 57a he speaks of her, and in an epigram he uses as
an “intelligence test” of an educated woman a knowledge of the poems
of Sappho. Alexander the Sophist gave a university extension course of
lectures on her poems. A little later in the Augustan Age the great
literary critic and grammarian, Dionysius of Halicarnassus (20 B.C.),
quotes the hymn to Aphrodite, and Strabo calls her a marvel. Living
probably sometime in the first century A.D., the anonymous author of the
_Treatise on the Sublime_ quotes the second ode. A little later, about
85 A.D., the golden-tongued orator, Dio, cites her, and his contemporary
Plutarch often refers to her, in his _Essay on Love_, 18; in his
_Dinner-table Problems_, VII. 8, 2; in his _Moralia_, 243b, 622c, and
406a, where there is a comparison with the practice of _Paiderastia_ of
Socrates. Plutarch prefers Anacreon, but refers to at least four of the
fragments which are preserved from Sappho (E. 2, 48, 71, 137).
Among the Romans Sappho was flattered abundantly, if imitation is the
sincerest flattery. As Tucker says: “the most genuine lyric poet of
Rome, Catullus, and its most skilful artificer of odes, Horace, both
freely copied her. They did more than imitate; they plagiarised, they
translated, sometimes almost word for word.” The flattery does not
begin until the time of Cicero, for Latin comedy, unlike Greek comedy,
paid little heed to the Lesbian poetess. Cicero refers to Silanion’s
statue (p. 109). Lucretius must have taken his description at second
hand, perhaps from some medical source, if he did not take the verses
of the second ode of Sappho direct as his model for his description of
fear.[142] Catullus (84-54 B.C.),[143] who caught the Greek rhythm even
better than Horace, translated the same ode in his famous fifty-first
poem, addressed to Lesbia, and adapted the fragments on the hyacinth and
the evening star in his _epithalamia_, the sixty-first and sixty-second
songs in the Catullian collection. Probably in the sixty-second he is
imitating a lost poem of Sappho. The verse of Sappho (E. 142), “I flutter
like a child after her mother,” referring perhaps to a wounded bird,
has been used by Catullus in his well-known third poem, on the _Passer_,
which probably also imitated a poem of Sappho.
In XI. 22-24, Catullus was perhaps thinking of Sappho’s stricken
hyacinth, although some rustic proverb may also have been in his mind:
Qui illius culpa cecidit velut prati
Vltimi flos, praetereunte postquam
Tactus aratro est.
Think not henceforth, thou, to recall Catullus’
Love; thy own sin slew it, as on the meadow’s
Verge declines, un-gently beneath the ploughshare
Stricken, a flower.
(ROBINSON ELLIS)
From these lines and not from Sappho herself, of whom there is no echo in
Virgil, Virgil took his description of the dying Euryalus:
And like the purple flower the plough cuts down
He droops and dies.
(_Aeneid_, IX. 435)
We are reminded of Robert Burns’ _To A Mountain Daisy_:
But now the share uptears thy bed,
And low thou lies!
...
Stern Ruin’s ploughshare drives, elate,
Full on thy bloom,
Till crushed beneath the furrow’s weight,
Shall be thy doom!
We refer on p. 9 to Catullus’ allusion to Sappho in XXXV. 17.
In the age of Augustus, even if Virgil neglects Sappho, in Horace (65-8
B.C.) she is re-born. If Edmonds[144] is right in his analysis of a
passage in Dio’s _Corinthian Oration_, two fragments (E. 76, 77) of
Sappho are incorporated there from a poem which Horace imitated in the
same metre:
Exegi monumentum aere perennius.
Edmonds even goes so far as to suggest that Horace imitated not only the
poem written by Sappho, but its position. For he thinks that this poem of
Sappho was an epilogue to her collection; and Horace placed his imitation
at the end of the third book, when he probably thought it would be his
last. Horace seems to be adapting Sappho in the twelfth ode of the third
book (see Landor’s imitation, p. 202). He composed twenty-six or more
odes in the Sapphic metre, which he fitted to Italian measures, and he
does them well, though in colder Latin. In him
Still breathed the love, still lived the fire
To which the Lesbian tuned her lyre.[145]