Aeoliis fidibus querentem
Sappho puellis de popularibus.
The meaning is simply that she is “singing plaintively (or complaining)
about the girls of her country,” perhaps because they did not all return
her love, as Atthis deserted her for Andromeda (E. 81); not that she
complained of her fellow-maidens for not loving Phaon. Unconsciously
Horace helped to defame Sappho’s character, for the epithet “_mascula_,”
in the _Epistle_ I. 19, 28, repeated by Ausonius, _Idyl_, VI. 21, has
led to gross abuse of Sappho’s good fame.[147] It has no relation to
_mascula libido_ and should be interpreted in the light of Statius[148]
as referring simply to the fact that she was an imitator of the measures
of Archilochus and the equal of men poets. Of elegiac writers, Tibullus
and Propertius (II. 8, 33) were influenced only in a general way by the
personal and ardent poetry of Sappho’s lyrics. Ovid in the fifteenth
epistle of the _Heroides_ pictured Sappho as a passionate and voluptuous
_hetaera_ who could not win the love of the beautiful Phaon. With passion
she burns “as when through ripened corn By driving winds the spreading
flames are borne,” and seeks release and ease, “from the raging seas.”
Ovid (43 B.C.-18 A.D.) in this letter and also in the _Tristia_ (II.
365, _Lesbia quid docuit Sappho nisi amare puellas_) completed the Roman
defamation of Sappho’s good name begun by Horace, and so led the way
for the modern idea. From this disgrace she has been rescued by Madame
Anne Le Fèvre Dacier (1681), by Welcker (1816), the bachelor who loved
Sappho’s genius and who by his chivalrous vindication made himself her
knight, and by Wilamowitz (1896),—her three great defenders.
Seneca (_circa_ 4 B.C.-65 A.D.) in his _Letters to Lucilius_ (88) quotes
a book of the grammarian Didymus on the question _Whether Sappho was a
prostitute_. In the Flavian period, Statius in his miscellaneous poems,
called _Silvae_, mentions her:[148]
saltusque ingressa viriles
Non formidata temeraria Leucade Sappho,
Quosque alios dignata chelys.
About the same time Martial (c. 40-104 A.D.) cites a poem[149] of Canius
on Sappho: “Sappho the lover praised a poetess: more pure is Theophila,
yet Sappho was not more learned” (Ker).
In the second century A.D. Sappho was especially popular. In the time of
Hadrian, Dracon of Stratonicea wrote a book about Sappho’s metres. In
the days of Plutarch[150] the songs of Sappho were often sung at dinner
parties. And Aulus Gellius (170 A.D.) in his _Attic Nights_[151] shows
us that Sappho was all the rage in his day as in the time of Plutarch.
It was the custom “after the chief courses were disposed of and the time
was come for wine ... to have delightful renderings of a number of the
songs of Anacreon and Sappho.” In the second century many writers on
grammar, such as Apollonius Dyscolus and his son Herodian, Hephaestion
(on metre), Demetrius (perhaps first century A.D.), Hermogenes, Maximus
of Tyre, and Aristides (on rhetoric), Aelian, Pausanias, and Pollux quote
Sappho abundantly. The great satirist Lucian (c. 120-c. 200 A.D.) calls
her “the delicious glory of the Lesbians,”[152] makes her the standard
for ladies of learning who write poems, and has her contribute to one
of his pictures “the elegance of life.”[153] In _Loves_ (I, p. 905) he
uses almost the very first words of the second ode. That Galen, another
writer of the second century A.D., who knew not only medicine but also
the popularity of Sappho, was speaking with authority on literature when
he said that Sappho was “_the_ poetess,” is shown by the fact that most
of the papyri with quotations from Sappho date from his time or from the
third century, the century when Athenaeus and Philostratus, who cited
much from Sappho, were living.
In the fourth century Eusebius, Themistius, and the Emperor Julian, as
well as Himerius, often quote her. Ausonius in _Idyl_ VI says:
Et de nimboso saltum Leucate minatur
Mascula Lesbiacis Sappho peritura sagittis.
Claudian in his work on the _Marriage of Honorius and Mary_ (ll. 229-235)
makes Mary “never cease under her mother’s guidance to unroll the writers
of Rome and Greece, all that old Homer sang, or Thracian Orpheus, or
that Sappho set to music with Lesbian quill” (Platnauer). In the fifth
century the Christian writer Synesius and that compiler of chrestomathies
Stobaeus often quote from Sappho. There is nothing to be gained by
giving a long list of the writers on technical subjects to whom we owe so
many fragments of Sappho not found on papyrus or parchment. Enough have
been cited to prove that Sappho was much read in the first four and even
the fifth centuries A.D. Himerius[154] especially proves her popularity
in the fourth century, for he rewrites many of her songs in poetic prose
and makes much use of Sapphic epithets and repetitions of words. The
fragments (E. 68, 101) have influenced him in his _Orations_,[155] and
in the _epithalamium_,[156] which he dedicated to his friend Severus in
354 A.D., Sappho’s influence is very apparent (see above pp. 88 ff.). The
bride is likened to an apple and the bridegroom to Achilles, although in
the fragments preserved we have no Achilles but rather Ares.
The many epigrams[157] referring to Sappho, from Plato’s couplet written
in the fourth century B.C. to the time of Paul the Silentiary (who died
575 A.D.), some of which we have quoted above, bear out the testimony for
Sappho’s continuous influence through these thousand years; and now we
can trace the reading of Sappho down to the seventh century, thanks to
the finding in Egypt of two manuscripts of that century (E. 34, 82-86).
Probably, however, Sappho’s works were not much read even as early as
the end of the sixth century. If so, Paul the Silentiary would never
have written the epigram that appears in the Greek Anthology.[158] I
give a literal translation: “Soft Sappho’s kisses; soft the embraces of
her snowy limbs, soft every part of her, but her soul is of unyielding
adamant. For her love stops at her lips; the rest belongs to her
virginity. And who could endure this? Perhaps one who has borne it, will
endure the thirst of Tantalus easily.” As Professor Gildersleeve[159]
says: “Could Paulus have ever read anything of burning Sappho? We often
envy the Byzantines their richer stores, but they seem to have been more
familiar with Menander than with the early lyrists.... Tell us, Pothos
and Himeros, why has Paulus taken the name of Sappho in vain? We forgive
him for playing with Theocritus’ Galatea but he ought to have let Sappho
sleep alone.” Perhaps Paulus had heard of the question debated in school
and society ever since the days of Didymus; and so he came to her defence
with an interesting compromise on her tantalizing chastity.
VII. SAPPHO IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCE
How long after the seventh century Sappho was read we cannot say, but in
mediaeval days men were either entirely ignorant of her or had erroneous
ideas. By the ninth century she seems to have become almost unknown,
otherwise the critic and compiler Photius[160] would have preserved some
of her works. He refers only to the tradition of her love for Phaon
and the Leucadian Leap, and to the hypothesis that she was different
from Sappho the courtesan, as she had been branded by that father of
the church, Tatian (about 140 A.D.), who called her a female harlot,
love-mad, γύναιον πορνικὸν ἐρωτομανές. That idea undoubtedly led to the
burning of her books, according to Cardan, under Gregory Nazianzen, about
380 A.D. According to Scaliger, the burning took place in Constantinople
and Rome in 1073. In any case, no manuscript has survived in Europe;
and it is strange that now not even her legendary adventures with
Phaon appear in the popular literature. The _Etymologicum Magnum_
(1000 A.D.?) mentions her only five times, but in that way preserves
for us five fragments. After the time of that lexicon and Suidas, the
mediaeval encyclopaedias and the _Speculum Historiale_ of Vincent de
Beauvais of the thirteenth century make no mention of her, though they
cite many another Greek poet. Georgius Cedrenus (1015 A.D.?), a Greek
monk, who in his _Compendium Historiarum_ said that she was “the first
of the Muses,” is about the only one of this time who notices her. Anna
Comnena,[161] daughter of the Emperor Comnenus I, quotes as Sappho’s the
verses supposed to be addressed to Sappho by Alcaeus (E. 119). And the
archbishop Eustathius preserves a few fragments. Dante makes no reference
to her, unless possibly very faintly in the verse “le muse lattar più
ch’altri mai.” Boccaccio (1313-1375), who seems to have been forgotten by
modern writers on Sappho, includes her among his _Delle Donne Famose_,
“ma confortata da più caldo fervore d’animo (i suoi versi sono famosi)
... e certamente non sono più famose che la sua corona le corone dei
re, nè le mitre de’ sacerdoti, nè le lauree de’ trionfanti.” Petrarch
(1304-1374) mentions Sappho in his _Triumph of Love_ (IV. 25):[162]
Una giovane Greca a paro a paro
Coi nobili poeti già cantando
Ed aveva un suo stil leggiadro e raro.
In his Tenth Eclogue he dedicated four verses to her:
Altera solliciti laqueos cantabit amoris
Docta puella, choris doctorum immixta virorum
Cinnameus roseo calamus cui semper ab ore
Pendulus et dulces mulcebant astra querelae.
Petrarch’s friend, Domenico di Bandino of Arezzo (1340-c. 1415),
professor at Bologna, gave her a brief article in his encyclopaedic _Fons
Memorabilium Universi_. The other commentators on Petrarch ignore her.
Giorgio Merula (1424-1494), Poliziano’s adversary, accepts the whole
Ovidian legend as historical fact and even adds a new item to Sappho’s
life by giving her a son Didas by her wealthy Andrian husband, Cercylas.
THE RENAISSANCE. There was now a second “floruit” of Sappho’s fame, but
like her previous popularity among the Romans the second renaissance
was not favorable to Sappho, and there was no true understanding of the
historical Sappho. It was in the fifteenth century that Ovid’s perverse
epistle was discovered and from that time on it biased all Sapphic
literature. The great humanist Poliziano knew her slightly and has left
a Latin version of the epigram on Timas. Domizio Calderini (1447-1477),
the learned though not overcritical humanist, based his little knowledge
of Sappho on an uncritical use of Suidas. He even falsified Horace’s
_querentem_ by forging in its place _gaudentem_, and transformed Sappho
from the leader of a sacred sorority into a tribade[163] or lover of
her pupils, even of the famous poetess Erinna. The result was that
the great injustice done Sappho by Horace and especially by Ovid was
much aggravated. Thanks to Tatian and Calderini, working at different
times and in different fields, Sappho was even more misjudged in the
seventeenth century. It would be idle to cite the many authors who
mention or malign her but who give us little material of literary
importance: Giraldi (1489-1552), Ludovico di Castelvetro (1505-1571),
Giorgio Carraria (1514 A.D.), Iacopo Filippo Pellenagra (1517 A.D.),
Francesco Anguillac (1572), who well renders the second ode, “Parmi
quell’uomo equale essere à i Dei,” Lorenzo Crasso (1625?), Ugo Foscolo
(1776-1827), and many another.[164] One needs only to read the long
account with many references in the famous _Dictionnaire historique et
critique_ (1696) by that learned compiler, Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), who
because of his scepticism lost his professorship of philosophy three
years before (1693). In his ignorance he assumed that Sappho must have
been bad and repeated the usual errors about her. I quote what he says
ironically with regard to the charity of Madame Dacier: “charité de
Mlle Le Fèvre qui a tâché pour l’honneur de Sappho de rendre le fait
incertain; mais je la crois trop raisonnable pour se fâcher que nous
en croyons nos propres yeux.” Anne Le Fèvre[165] in 1681 had made the
first real defense of Sappho’s character, long before Wilhelm Heinse’s
_Ardinghello_, and one hundred and thirty-five years before Johannes
Friedrich Welcker,[166] who so influenced Goethe and Comparetti and
Wilamowitz.
VIII. SAPPHO IN ITALY IN THE 18TH AND 19TH CENTURIES
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Sappho was rehabilitated
and countless works of literature and art show her influence. Though
the old perverse idea pervades all forms of literature and art in many
insidious ways and Sappho loses her real personality and becomes a
heroine of Romance, and although the legends connected with her are
given a prominent place in the sunlight, yet even this proves her great
potentiality in modern times.
The romantic Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), who translated passages from
the _Odyssey_ and wrote an interesting essay on the _Popular Errors of
the Ancients_, composed also a _Last Song of Sappho_. In this poem, drawn
from Ovid, he has given the modern reader a strong impression for better
or worse of the stormy and passionate soul of the great poetess. As in
his _Brutus_, Leopardi is giving his own views of life, which are biased
by his physical affliction; but he blends his sorrow with that of nature
and rises, especially in the third stanza, almost to the heights attained
by Aeschylus in his _Prometheus_. He ends his song with beautiful
mysterious pathos:
Placida notte, e verecondo raggio
Della cadente luna ...
...
Bello il tuo manto, o divo cielo; e bella
Sei tu, rorida terra. Ahi di cotesta
Infinita beltà parte nessuna
Alla misera Saffo i numi e l’empia
Sorte non fenno.
Thou peaceful night, thou chaste and silver ray
Of the declining Moon;
...
Fair is thy sight, O sky divine, and fair
Art thou, O dewy earth! Alas, of all
This beauty infinite, no slightest part
To wretched Sappho did the Gods or Fate
Inexorable give ...
(F. H. CLIFFE)
One is reminded of Sappho’s silver moon in Leopardi’s calm first lines,
and also of Sappho’s autumn fragment in the lines “where in shade Of
drooping willows doth a liquid stream Display its pure and crystal
course....” Leopardi also translated the famous midnight song (p. 78)
and imitated the third fragment in _La Impazienza_. Carducci’s (1888)
comment on Leopardi is worth quoting: “la poetessa di Lesbo non fu nè
brutta nè infelice come il Leopardi l’accolse a imagine sua da una tarda
tradizione, e che della bellezza e dell’amore intese gustò, e cantò
più non potesse il Leopardi.” Leopardi believed in two Sapphos, as did
Zannoni (1822), following the judgment of Visconti. About 1793, Pagnini
(Pilenejo), wishing to praise Teresa Bandettini Landucci, likened her to
Sappho in genius but not in habit:
Te rediviva Saffo ognuno estima
Pari d’ingegno, e d’arte a quella prima:
Ma per costumi e voglie in tutto sei
(Vanto maggior) dissimile da lei!
Parini about 1777 dedicated an ode to Lady Pellegrina Amoretti d’Oneglia
on her graduation from the University of Padua, _La Laurea_, in which he
said that if instead of studying law she had given herself to literature
she would have been the equal of Sappho. In 1782 Verri published _Le
Avventure di Saffo_, in which there is a paraphrase of the second
ode. This romance was written in good literary style and had some fine
thoughts and considerable Greek atmosphere. It went through more than
a dozen editions, and was twice translated into French. In 1787 Parini
celebrated the seductive qualities of a Venetian Signora Cecilia Tron in
a poem of which I quote the first two stanzas:
Che più dalla vivace
Mente, lampi scoppiavano
Di poetica face,
Che tali mai non arsero
L’amica di Faon;
Nè quando al coro intento
Delle fanciulle lesbie
L’errante violento
Per le midolla fervide
Amoroso velen; ...
One evening in 1827, as the story goes, the great Manzoni in the presence
of Lamartine called La Palli, the happy-hearted Italian poetess, a “Saffo
novella.” Eurica Dionigi was called the “Saffo Lazia,” and Anassilide
was named “Saffo campestre” by the inhabitants on the Piave. Their
verses, however, fall far short of the real Sappho. In 1857 Giovanni
Meli published _La Morti di Saffu_; and many another Italian writer has
published poems in her honor, Gemma, Cipolla, Botti, etc.
Tragedies on the subject of Sappho in Italy have been few, among others
those of Luigi Scevola (1815) and Salvatore Cammarono (1842); that of
Leopoldo Marenco (1880) pictured Sappho as one of the Furies who was
rejected by Phaon when he became enamored of another woman. Giovanni
Pacini (Naples, 1840) first produced an opera on the theme, but changed
the figure of Phaon to one who fell in love with Sappho and became
jealous of Alcaeus, but was ready to die with him.
In recent years Carducci, in his _Primavere Elleniche_, makes Sappho and
Alcaeus follow Apollo across the Aegean in a boat drawn by two white
swans:
D’intorno girano come in leggera
Danza le Cicladi patria de’l nume,
Da lungi plaudono Cipro e Citera
Con bianche spume.
E un lieve il séguita pe’l grande Egeo
Legno, a purpuree vele, canoro:
Armato règgelo per l’onde Alceo
Da’l plettro d’oro.
Saffo da’l candido petto anelante
A l’aura ambrosia che da’l dio vola,
Da’l riso morbido, da l’ondeggiante
Crin di viola,
In mezzo assidesi.
The influence of Sappho on Italian literature is also seen in the many
Italian translations of some or all of the fragments; Cappone (1670),
Rogati (1783), Pilenejo (1793), Broglio d’Ajano (1804), Leopardi (1816),
Benedetti da Cortona (1819), Foscolo (1822), Milani (1824), Zanotto
(1844), Jacopo d’Oria (1845), Nievo (1858), Viani (1858), Bustelli
(1863), Canini (1885), and others have translated the famous folk-song
(see p. 78). Giovambattista Possevini (1565), Francesco Anguilla (1572),
Pinelli (1639), Cappone (1670), Corsini (1700), Conti (1739), Verre
(1780), Pindemonte (1781), Rogati (1783), Vincenzo Imperiale (1784),
Pilenejo (1793), Tommaseo (1827), Comparetti (1876), Ardizzone (1876),
Fraccaroli (1878), Ambrosoli (1878), Gemma (1879), Cavallotti (1883), De
Gubernatis (1883), Canini (1885) have translated the _Hymn to Aphrodite_.
Rogati (1783), Gori (1801), Montalti (1804), Broglio d’Ajano (1804),
Sabbione (1817), Venini (1818), Caselli (1819), Foscolo (1823), Milani
(1824), Costa (1825), Accio (1830), Monti (1832), Leone (1843), Nievo
(1858), Canna (1871), Fraccaroli (1878), Canini (1885) have translated or
adapted the second ode. D’Ajano (1804) gave the first complete version
of all the old fragments, and in 1863 Bustelli did likewise,—neither of
a high order of merit. In 1890 Cipollini published his verse translation
of the first two odes and of the fragment about the Pleiades, which his
brother set to music. The latest translation I have seen is by Latini
(1914) and it is an excellent piece of work. Italy has had for the last
hundred or more years a high regard for Sappho. Cipolla, thinking perhaps
of Meleager’s comparison of Sappho’s poems to roses, says:
Ma i fior più belli
Eran, Saffo, i tuoi canti, e ben sapevi
Destinato a durar presso i futuri,
Tra i più cari, il gentil nome di Saffo.
And Zanotto says:
Le corde Lesbie risuonar d’amore
Per te, donna gentil, vanto di Grecia;
Et il tuo lamento ancor discende al cuore.
Many of the fragments besides those mentioned have been translated into
Italian or imitated by Italian writers, as for example Zanella’s famous
imitation, _A donna ignorante_:
Tutta il sepolcro di accorrà: memoria
Non fia che di te resti,
Perchè le rose, del bel colle Aonio
Le rose, non cogliesti:
Tu senza nome scendarai dell’Erebo
A’tenebrosi porti,
E fatua larva fra le larve ignobili
Vagolerai dei morti.
Montalti (1804) imitated the fragment on virginity (p. 91), adding,
however, much material of his own; and D’Oria (1845) expanded Sappho’s
ten words on the evening star into:
Espero amabile,
Tu sempre apporti
A noi vivissime
Gioie e conforti.
Tu splendi, e subito
Le tazze, piene
Di licor, vuotansi
A liete cene.
Gli armenti all’umile
Ovil riduce
La soavissima
Tua bianca luce;
E rende al tenero
Seno di quella,
Ond’ebbe il nascere,
La pastorella.
Zanella (1887) says in his _Volo in Ellade_, which Cipollini quotes at
length, that it is sweet to
Salutar le riviere a cui fedele
L’eco dell’Ellesponto ancor ripete
L’ardente inno di Saffo e le querele.
There is not space to speak further of Sappho’s influence in Italy; we
have said enough to show that Italian poetry has many echoes of Sappho
and that Italy still takes an interest in the Lesbian lyrist. Ada Negri
with her fiery pictures of passion is to-day called the modern Italian
Sappho.
IX. SAPPHO IN LATIN TRANSLATIONS, IN SPANISH, AND IN GERMAN
We have spoken of Sappho’s influence on the ancient Latin authors and
especially of Catullus’ translation and elaboration of the second ode.
Horace also may have translated whole odes, but we have only Catullus’
preserved. In later days many of the editions of Athenaeus, Dionysius,
Pseudo-Longinus, Hephaestion, and of the Anthology included Latin
versions, and many other writers have Latinized the fragments of Sappho,
especially Ausonius, Stephanus, Thomas Venatorius, Lubinus, Poliziano,
and Thomas Moore. One of Moore’s two versions of Plato’s epigram is
quoted here:
Musas esse novem referunt, sed prorsus aberrant.
Lesbia jam Sappho Pieriis est decima.
Among the Latin translators of the odes have been Elias Andreas, Simone
Bircovio, Professor Le Fèvre (Tanaquillus Faber), Zacharias Pearce,
Valentini, Barbagallo and Allucci, Ambrocio, Emilio Porto and Birkow,
etc. Gorsse, A. Stace, Vossius, and Henri Etienne and others have
rendered the second ode into Latin.
SPANISH. In Spain in 1794 there was a translation of Sappho and many
other Greek lyric poets into Castilian verse by D. Jos. y D. Bernabé
Canga Arguelles; and in 1832 appeared a prose and verse translation of
Anacreon, Sappho, and Tyrtaeus by D. Jose del Castilla y Ayensa. Recently
in Paris (1913) has been printed a modern Spanish version by T. Meabe.
But in general Sappho has had but little influence on Spanish and German
literatures, as compared with her great effect on Italian, French, and
English. Mention, however, must not be omitted of the account of Sappho
by A. Fernandez Merino. It is written in Spanish and discusses many of
the Sapphic problems, giving full references.