literature that has moulded the world? Colonel Mure thinks
that a hundred such women might have demoralized all Greece.
But it grew demoralized at any rate; and even the island where
Sappho taught took its share in the degradation. If, on the
other hand, the view taken of her by more careful criticism
be correct, a hundred such women might have done much to save
it. Modern nations must again take up the problem where Athens
failed and Lesbos only pointed the way to the solution,—to
create a civilization where the highest culture shall be
extended to woman also. It is not enough that we should dream,
with Plato, of a republic where man is free and woman but
a serf. The aspirations of modern life culminate, like the
greatest of modern poems, in the elevation of womanhood. ‘Die
ewige Weibliche zieht uns hinan.’”
Sappho, then, was a pure and good woman, busily and successfully engaged
in the work of her chosen profession. She was a teacher of singing and
dancing and the technique of poetry, and to give her pupils the finest
models she applied herself so seriously to the lyric art that she reached
a perfection in it to which no other classic poet attained. If she ever
collected her verse it was only to promote the idealization of marriage
pageants, and not with the purpose of publishing a full edition of her
songs. It would not be safe to deny that there was a practically useful
collection of Sappho’s songs in the archives of her school or guild or in
the Temple of Aphrodite, but no copies were sold at the book-stalls in
her own day as certainly was later the case in fifth century Athens.
Sappho, in fact, must be listed with two other names which, taken
together, form a unique and astonishing group, a group whose peculiar and
distinguishing feature is that their enduring thoughts and imperishable
words were indispensable necessities in their life-work rather than
productions as literature for the sake of literature. It is not because
of the accidental alliteration that we rank Sappho with Socrates
and Shakespeare. These great exemplars of song, ethics, and drama,
respectively, were alike in that it was not by their intention that
their works became literature. Shakespeare as a theatrical manager was
obliged by his position to write plays that would attract audiences. He
was compelled by his genius to make those dramas imperishable. But if he
had had his way none of them would ever have been printed. Our gratitude
must be given to prompters’ copies and to literary thieves. Socrates
was a teacher whose purely oral lessons his pupils, Plato and Xenophon,
committed to writing that the master’s inspiring thoughts might not die.
Socrates’ love for his young disciples was a love passing the love of
women. The myriad-minded man of Stratford,—“Gentle Will,” as his comrades
called him,—had an affectionate sympathy with all sorts and conditions of
his fellow-men. Sappho’s love for her girl friends was so intense that
there are those who, not knowing how passionate the love of woman can be
for woman, still fail, despite the evidence, to recognize a love more
sublime even than that for man.
How jealous she could be of her family’s good name! More than once she
prays that no dishonor may come to her house. How jealous also of those
who sought to win away the love of her girls and of the girls themselves
when any of them seemed to have forgotten her! How intensely, too, she
could hate, the outbursting passion against the “she-dog” at the close of
fragment E 36, which we have translated on page 20, may serve to suggest.
The fierceness of her satire is also incidentally shown in this as well
as in other fragments. (See E 35, 37, 71, _et al._)
Like Socrates and Shakespeare Sappho had a planetary mind swinging in its
orbit with ease through all realms, whether of nature, or human nature,
or the divine nature of the unseen world. This need not be elaborated
here, save in Sappho’s case. But it may be worth while to repeat some of
the evidence as to Sappho’s wide range of thought as it is seen in a few
typical instances. She loved the roses, the clover, and the anthrysc.
She loved the doves and the nightingales, and knew their colorings and
discerned their ways. But the unplucked apple on the top of the topmost
bough, the myriad ears of the listening night that hears what the girl
across the sea says and relays it right over the waves, the rosy-fingered
moon well above the horizon and launching light across the rolling sea
and over the fields of flowers, reveal even in the fragments which
are “small but roses” how surpassing were her instincts for nature’s
loftier meanings as well as its minute details and how exquisite were her
comparisons. As for the phases of love—they were her daily business,—and
each new couple whose wedding festivities she arranged in song gave her
new material. Where in all literature is there a finer example of the
union of human love along with insight into the soul of nature than in
the ode, _To Absent Anactoria_? (See p. 72).
As we have said, she knew the heart of the Greek bride and her dread
at the loss of her free virginity. Mother love, too, was never more
exquisitely portrayed than in the song we have quoted on pp. 27-28. But
the subject of woman’s love for woman is peculiarly her own. The finest
lines in all Sappho’s poetry are those descriptive of Anactoria in a poem
which we might call _Old Love is Best_ (E. 38, pp. 82-83 above).
Finished style, the γλαφυρὸς χαρακτήρ, as the Greek critics called
it, simple purity but effective luminosity and exquisite rarity of
expression, faultless constraint, fine taste in choosing appropriate
subjects, marvellous verbal economy, comprehensive power in single
words, fiery passion as well as austerity, richness and beauty, good
arrangement of words, assonance, alliteration, consonantal harmonies,
lingering vowel music and melody, produced often by the repetition
of long vowels, the soft Aeolic quality of the Greek sounds, swift
changes of nature and enchanting images, varied metres, but above all
else, charm, that greatest characteristic of Sappho so emphasized by
the ancients and moderns,—all these qualities she used that her songs
and hymns might be perfect. It is this simple natural perfection of
her art, like the “nothing too much” of the Parthenon frieze, that
makes her untranslatable, even though it is precisely the quality which
modern literature lacks but needs. Her nature was so great and her
genius so marvellous and her purposes so inexorable that, in attending
with her whole soul to her business as the poetic and musical caterer
for successive weddings upon an ancient and interesting island, she
incidentally made word-music and created thought-images which sounded the
depths and scaled the heights of human passion and which winged their way
to distant shores. The strains of her songs are beginning to be heard
everywhere and are ever growing clearer and sweeter in this present
timely century, the century of woman’s exaltation and glorification. Her
genius is concisely summed up by Watts-Dunton in his _Essay on Poetry_,
as follows: “_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._”
In the Lesbus and the Asia Minor of Sappho’s day as in those of Homer,
women were at their zenith and were allowed greater freedom in life
and speech than in later Athens where woman’s position had reached its
nadir, even though literature and art had attained their highest bloom.
In Athens women were cabin’d, cribb’d, confined. The more ancient Greeks
in general, however, even if their law made the wife the property of
her lord and master, appreciated their women and considered them close
to the divine, else they would not have appointed them to important
priesthoods and other offices and to be interpreters of the desires of
the gods and counsellors of their own political troubles. Sappho was a
twentieth century woman living in sixth century Lesbus, who could go
about town without a chaperon and take part in the most intellectual
and religious meetings. Of course she was “ni une sainte ni surtout
une prude,” as Reinach says. Rarely is a woman who is interesting a
“saint.” Reinach compares her also to Madame de Sévigné, who wrote to
her daughter “paroles de feu et de fièvre ... tout pareils à ceux de
l’amour.” What with her teaching, with her own writings, and with the
executive work of the _hetairiai_, those ancient Y. W. C. A.’s for the
cultivation of poetry and music, which Mackail has so aptly compared
with the Courts of Love which existed in Languedoc from the twelfth to
the fourteenth century, she was too noble and too busy to be devoted to
ignobler ways, falsely ascribed to her. But her love was deeper than
that of the schoolgirl in convent, conservatory of music, or literary
club. She was no Ruskin-like school-mistress presiding over a group of
virtuous but bold young women. She was respectable and respected. There
was in her sacred guild under the patronage of Aphrodite “l’étroite
et tendre intimité de jeunes filles de bonne naissance entre elles et
avec leurs dirigeantes” (Reinach). But we utterly reject to-day the
Athenian vaudeville idea of Sappho, who never should have been branded a
courtesan.
How the fine radiance Sappho shed on woman’s love for woman and on her
love of love and on the glory of pure and honorable marriage shines at
last across these twenty-five hundred years! Her figure stands there
on her isle. In itself it is white marble veined with gold. Much mud
from many lands has been flung against it. For centuries, almost for
millenniums, it has been soiled and stained. Even good men have come
to think of the stains as integral parts of the statue, and of the
gold as base metal. But the winds and rains of time have tired out the
soilers and washed the figure white and clean of all Attic and all later
defilings. It is all pure marble now, veined with warm gold. Something
that suggests the Pygmalion miracle is happening to it. The statue is
alive and luminous with its own beauty, grace, and power. Sappho’s poetry
deals with the eternal experiences of the human heart and carries with it
those touches which make the whole world kin. As T. G. Tucker says: “Love
and Sorrow are re-born with every human being. Time and civilisation make
little difference.”
And not unhallowed was the page
By wingèd Love inscribed, to assuage
The pangs of vain pursuit;
Love listening while the Lesbian Maid
With finest touch of passion swayed
Her own Aeolian lute.
(WORDSWORTH, _Upon the Same
Occasion_, 1819)
NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
NOTES
(The dates given in the text with authors are generally those of
_floruit_, _i.e._ about the fortieth year.)
[1] Somewhere recently in a newspaper I saw these lines entitled, _They
Lived Too Soon_:
I fear Cleopatra was wasted
Way back in her misty old realm.
As matters befell, she did fairly well
But she’d have been great in a film.
If Dido and Sappho were with us—
They’re advertised widely, you see—
And Helen of Troy—good gracious
My boy, what movie successes they’d be.
[2] _Oxyrhynchus Papyri_, XV. 1787, frag. 4.
[3] Galen, _Protrep._, 2.
[4] _Classical Philology_, XVIII. 35 ff. (1923).
[5] Sir Edward Cook, _More Literary Recreations_, 1919, p. 205, quotes
Wharton with approval to the effect that Tennyson called Sappho “the
poet, implying her supremacy by the absence of any added epithet.”
[6] _Anth. Pal._, VII. 16.
[7] Athenaeus, _Deipnosophistae_ (Doctors at dinner), 596 b.
[8] _Odes_, IV. 9. 11.
[9] _Amatorius_, 18.
[10] Athenaeus, 598 b.
[11] _Loves_, 30.
[12] Lord Neaves, _The Greek Anthology_, p. 113.
[13] _Anth. Pal._, VII. 15.
[14] Fraenkel, _Inschriften von Pergamon_, I, p. 118, no. 198; _C. I. G._
3555.
[15] _Sappho und Simonides_, p. 41, 1.
[16] _Anth. Pal._, IX. 66.
[17] _Anth. Pal._, VII. 14.
[18] _Anth. Pal._, VII. 407.
[19] _Anth. Pal._, IX. 189. Cf. A. J. Butler, _Amaranth and Asphodel_,
Oxford, 1922, p. 195. The ending is “you shall fain Deem that Calliope
doth hymn the strain.”
[20] _Anth. Pal._, IX. 571.
[21] XXXV. 16.
[22] Cf. also Epigr. LXX, Jacobs, II, p. 25; Plut., _Amat._, XII, p. 42.
[23] P. 186 (1921).
[24] 280, pp. 817-818. Cf. also _Posthumous Essays_ in _Sat. Rev._, Feb.
21, 1914.
[25] Professor Scribner in _The Classical Weekly_ XV, 1921, p. 78, says
“there still is room for a work giving a complete critical treatment of
Sappho’s influence on ancient and modern literature down to our own time.”
[26] Athenaeus, 599 c; _Oxyr. Pap._, XV. 1800.
[27] Strabo, 618; Athenaeus, 85 c.
[28] Cf. Herodotus, II. 135; Schol. Plato, _Phaedrus_, 235 c; _Ox. Pap._,
XV. 1800. The papyrus gives Scamandrus, which is otherwise known as a
good Lesbian name, as well as Scamandronymus. Scamandrus like Suidas’
Scamon is an abbreviation or _Kosenamen_.
[29] _Her._, XV. 61.
[30] Confirmed by the new papyrus. The more correct form would be Clévis
(Κλεῦις or Κλεῖϊς) after the founder of Lesbus, who was named Κλεύας,
Strabo, 582.
[31] Cf. Edmonds, pp. 144-147.
[32] Hiller von Gaertringen, _Inschriften von Priene_, 18; for Erygyius
cf. also Diodorus, XVII. 81, 83; Arrian, III. 6, 5.
[33] The name occurs as a love-name on the interior of an Attic cylix
in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, signed by Hieron (480 B.C.),
published in _American Journal of Archaeology_, XXVII. 274 (1923). Near
a female figure dancing to the accompaniment of the double flute played
by a satyr is the inscription, “Beautiful Rhodopis.” Cf. also Lucian, _De
Saltatione_, 2.
[34] Cf. Poulsen, _Delphi_, London, 1920, pp. 31, 72, 205, 294.
[35] Edmonds’ first poetical translation is given in his _Sappho in
the Added Light of the New Fragments_, p. 8; but he gives a revised
prose version in the _Classical Review_, XXXIV. 5-6 (1920) and in _Lyra
Graeca_, I, p. 207.
[36] Solmsen in _Rhein. Mus._, LVI. 502, 1 (1901) gives arguments for the
spelling with double p.
[37] 599 c.
[38] γέγονε often means flourished, not “was born.” Those who put
Sappho’s birth as late as 610 forget this.
[39] Strabo, 617, also makes Sappho contemporary with Pittacus and
Alcaeus. Eusebius puts the _floruit_ of Sappho in the first year of the
forty-fifth Olympiad (599 B.C.). Edmonds, _Lyra Graeca_, I, p. 142,
adopts the reading Ol. 45, 2 (598 B.C.), but this would be rather the
date of her exile.
[40] The abbreviation E, is used throughout for Edmonds, _Lyra Graeca_,
vol. I.
[41] Cf. Prinz, _Funde aus Naukratis_, 1906, pp. 57 ff.
[42] II. 134.
[43] In another fragment (E. 35) Edmonds calls Sappho “an old bird,” but
this is a very dubious restoration based on only three preserved letters.
[44] _Flor._, XXIX. 58.
[45] Dioscorides in _Anth. Pal._, VII. 407 has Eresus; and coins and
Suidas give both towns. Cf. Wilamowitz, _Sappho und Simonides_, 23; Her.
II. 135 and references in Jacoby, _Das Marmor Parium_, 1904, p. 101.
Many sources call Sappho a Mytilenaean, Schol. to Pindar (E. p. 144);
Schol. Plato, _Phaedrus_, 235 c; Arist., _Rhet._, 1398 b; _Anth. Pal._,
VII. 17. Some scholars assume that there were two Sapphos, but the two
traditions can easily be reconciled by supposing that Sappho belonged
to both cities, born at Eresus but later living at Mytilene. Edmonds
thinks that Strabo would have mentioned Sappho when he is speaking of
Eresus (618), had he believed her to have been born there, but Strabo
omits many famous writers. The tradition of two Sapphos is found also in
Aelian, _Historical Miscellanies_, XII. 19 and in Suidas. Cf. the novel
_Beulah_ by Augusta Evans, pp. 216-218: “Do you think that Sappho’s
frenzy was established by the Leucadian leap? You confound the poetess
with a Sappho, who lived later, and threw herself into the sea from the
promontory of Leucate. Doubtless she too had ‘poetic idiosyncrasies,’ but
her spotless life, and I believe natural death, afford no indication of
an unsound intellect.”
[46] _Studies of the Greek Poets_, vol. I., pp. 307 ff. (American ed.)
[47] I. 9.
[48] Cf. _The Poet Loves of Sappho_ from the third book of _A Catalogue
of Things Relating to Love_, an elegiac poem by Hermesianax, translated
by J. Bailey.
[49] Athenaeus, 450 e.
[50] _Class. Phil._, XIII. 348 (1918).
[51] XVIII. 9.
[52] Edmonds, 82, p. 240.
[53] _Oxyrhynchus Papyri_, XV, 1922, 1800. Also now published in
Miller-Robinson, _The Songs of Sappho_.
[54] Lunák, _Quaestiones Sapphicae_, Kazan, 1888.
[55] Lucy Milburn, p. 21, makes Sappho say, “When Cleïs, I called her
for my mother, was two years old, I found myself a widow.” But we have
no such evidence, how old Cleïs was when her father died. Miss Milburn
(Letter XIX) is also quite wrong in translating “I would rather have
my little daughter know her own worth than to bequeath to her all the
treasures of Lydia, were they mine.”
[56] I. 30.
[57] Edmonds, 116 reads Εἴρηνα (peace) for Ἔραννα so that it is doubtful
if Erinna, the poetess who wrote poems worthy of Homer before her early
death at the age of nineteen, is really meant by Sappho. Most scholars
now date her long after Sappho’s time, some even as late as 350 B.C.
[58] Cf. _Jahrbuch_, XXV. 150 (1910).
[59] _A. J. P._, XXXIV. 106 (1913).
[60] _Anth. Pal._, XVI. 310.
[61] XVIII.
[62] _Odes_, I. 1. 36.
[63] Cf. _Anth. Pal._, VII. 14 and 17 for epigrams about Sappho’s grave.
Cf. Edmonds, 42 and 99. Tucker translates:
As friends we’ll part:
Win thee a younger bride:
Too old, I lack the heart
To keep thee at my side.
[64] My late colleague and dear friend, Kirby Flower Smith, made a
brilliant reconstruction of the story which he read several times in
public. It is to be deeply regretted that the manuscript has never been
printed. Cf. for the Menander fragment, F. G. Allinson’s _Menander_,
in _The Loeb Classical Library_, pp. 400-401. For fragments of Plato’s
_Phaon_, cf. Kock, _C. A. F._, I, p. 645. Cf. Servius on Virgil,
_Aeneid_, III. 274.
[65] Lucian for example, _Dialogues of the Dead_, 9, has Phaon carry
Aphrodite over in his boat from Chios.
[66] _Incred._, 49 in Apostolius, _Paroem._, II. 707.
[67] 596 b; “according to Nymphis in his _Voyage around Asia_, the
courtesan of Eresus who was a namesake of the other Sappho and lover of
the fair Phaon won great notoriety.” Cf. also Suidas, s. v. _Phaon_.
[68] Cf. Furtwängler-Reichhold, _Gr. Vas._, pl. 59; Milani, _Monumenti
scelti del R. Museo Arch. di Firenze_, pl. 3; Nicole, _Meidias_, pl. VI,
I. Cf. also on Phaon, Wilamowitz, _Sappho und Simonides_, pp. 33 ff.
[69] 69 d.
[70] Strabo, 452.
[71] Cf. Curtis, _A. J. A._, XXIV. 146 ff. (1920); Paribeni, _Boll.
d’Arte_, I. 104 (1921); F. Cumont, _Rassegna d’Arte_, VIII. 44 ff.
(1921); Leopold, _Mélanges d’Archéologie et d’Histoire_, XXXIX. pl. II.
181 ff. (1921); _Le Musée Belge_, XXVII. 15 ff. (1923), there connected
by Hubaux with the cult of the Thracian Cotyto. _Cf. Memoirs Am. Ac. in
Rome_, IV. 85 f., pl. XLV.
[72] For another version cf. G. Showerman’s _Ovid_ in _The Loeb Classical
Library_. A new translation by Marion Mills Miller, where the narrative
portions are in recitative and the frequent outbursts of emotion in
lyrical form, appears in Miller-Robinson, _The Songs of Sappho_.
[73] Countless translations have been made. Among a few, I mention
Philips (1711), Herbert (1713), Akenside’s paraphrase (1745), Fawkes
(1760), Merivale (1833), Elton (1814), Egerton (1815), Edinburgh Review
(1832), Palgrave (1854), Arnold (1869), Higginson (1871), Walhouse
(1877), Symonds (at least two versions), Swinburne, Thomas Davidson,
Marion Mills Miller (in _The Classics_ and also in his play _The Return
of Odysseus_, p. 82), Appleton, Fairclough (_The Raven_, V, 1904, p.
120), Easby Smith, Stobart (_The Glory that was Greece_, p. 119), Lawton,
Tucker, Petersen, Lawrence (_Classical Review_, XXXVI, 1922, p. 2),
Edmonds, William A. Drake (_Sewanee Review_, April 1923).
[74] στροῦθοι in l. 10 are birds of Venus, swans, or better doves, rather
than the dirty chatterers of our city streets, who never appear in Greek
art. Cf. Throop, _Wash. Univ. Studies_, IX 282 (1922); Aristophanes,
_Lysistrata_, 723 f.; Statius, _Silvae_, I. 2. Edmonds p. 183 reads the
dual and translates “thy two swans.” For swans drawing Aphrodite’s or
Cupid’s car, cf. Reinach, _Répertoire des Vases Peints_, I, pp. 57, 271.
[75] _Dem._, 38.
[76] _Iliad_, X. 90-95. Cf. also _Od._, XVII. 518-521. For Homer’s
influence on Sappho cf. Smyth, p. 230; H. L. Ebeling, in _The Classical
Weekly_, XVI. 195 ff. (1923).
[77] III. 152-158.
[78] Edmonds, pp. 186-7, makes the ingenious but very uncertain
suggestion that in line 7 a proper noun, Brocheo or Brochea,
corresponding to Catullus’ Lesbia, should be read and now translates:
“When I look on you, Brocheo, my speech comes short or fails me quite.”
Formerly he thought that the poem was sent by the banished Sappho at
the age of eighteen to some beloved girl friend soon after her arrival
in Sicily in 596 B.C., but Sappho was older than eighteen in 596, and
Edmonds now makes an entirely different emendation of the last line, “but
now that I am poor, I must fain be content ...” meaning “beggars can’t be
choosers.” But the reading is uncertain and I do not believe that Sappho
was poor, nor do I agree with Miss Patrick that the words do not describe
love at all.
[79] For such head-cloths cf. the Latin word _struppus_ and the festival
at Falerii, called _struppearia_, Dion. Hal., XI. 39 and Poulsen,
_Etruscan Tomb Paintings_, p. 23. Edmonds’ new reading is very uncertain;
for his previous reading and poetical version cf. _Sappho in the Added
Light of the New Fragments_, p. 28.
[80] I keep Bergk’s reading, “Foolish woman, pride not thyself on a
ring.” Edmonds changes the text and translates, “But come, be not so
proud of a ring.”
[81] Cf. Poulsen, in _Jahrbuch_, XXI. 209 ff. (1906); _Die Bronzen von
Olympia_, IV., pl. VII. 74.
[82] There are many other poetical versions by Merivale, Symonds, F.
Tennyson, Tucker, Cox, Edmonds, etc. For an absurd interpretation _Sappho
in the Rain_, cf. _Wiener Studien_, XXXVIII. 176 ff. (1916).
[83] Poetical translations by Merivale, Arnold, Appleton, F. Tennyson,
Symonds, Edmonds, Miller, Percy Mackaye, etc.
[84] _Sappho in the Added Light of the New Fragments_, p. 25, but in
_Lyra Graeca_, I, p. 253, he changes his previous emendation and reads a
text which I consider very uncertain, “and pours down a sweet shrill song
from beneath his wings, when the Sun-god illumines the earth with his
downshed flame outspread.”
[85] _Praec. Con._, 48; _Qu. Conv._, III. 1. 2.
[86] _Flor._, IV. 12.
[87] For Swinburne’s expansion cf. p. 210; cf. also Percy Mackaye in
_Sappho and Phaon_. Bliss Carman has evolved the following from Sappho’s
one line:
I loved thee, Atthis, in the long ago
When the great oleanders were in flower
In the broad herded meadows full of sun.
And we would often at the fall of dusk
Wander together by the silver stream,
When the soft grass-heads were all wet with dew
And purple misted in the fading light,
And joy I knew and sorrow at thy voice,
And the superb magnificence of love—
The loneliness that saddens solitude,
And the sweet speech that makes it durable,
The bitter longing and the keen desire,
The sweet companionship through quiet days
In the slow ample beauty of the world
And the unutterable glad release
Within the temple of the holy night;
O Atthis, how I loved thee long ago
In that fair perished summer by the sea.
[88] Cf. Miss Shields, “_Lesbos in the Trojan War_,” in _The Classical
Jour._, XIII. 670 ff. (1918); _The Cults of Lesbos_ (Johns Hopkins
University Diss.) 1917.
[89] Cf. _Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological
Association_, LIII. xvi (1922).
[90] For Mnesidice Edmonds would now read Anactoria. There is a good
metrical translation by G. M. Whicher in Manatt, _Aegean Days_, London,
1913, p. 286.
[91] _Odes_, I. 3. 22.
[92] O’Hara renders as follows:
Gold is the son of Zeus,
Immortal, bright;
Nor moth nor worm may eat it,
Nor rust tarnish.
So are the Muse’s gifts
The offspring fair,
That merit from high heaven
Youth eternal.