Bust inscribed Sappho of Eressos, Roman copy of a Greek original of the 5th century BCE

Sappho (/ˈsæfoʊ/; Attic Greek Σαπφώ [sapːʰɔ̌ː], Aeolic Greek Ψάπφω, Psappho [psápːʰɔː]) was a Greek lyric poet, born on the island of Lesbos. The Alexandrians included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BCE, and it is said that she died around 570 BCE, but little is known for certain about her life. The bulk of her poetry, which was well-known and greatly admired through much of antiquity, has been lost, but her immense reputation has endured through surviving fragments.

Life

Roman bust of Sappho, copied from a lost Hellenistic original in Istanbul Archaeological Museum

The only contemporary source for Sappho’s life is her own poetry, and scholars are skeptical of reading it biographically. Later biographical accounts are also unreliable.^[1]

Chronology

Strabo indicates that Sappho was the contemporary of Alcaeus of Mytilene (born c. 620 BCE) and Pittacus (c. 645 – 570 BCE), and according to Athenaeus, she was the contemporary of Alyattes of Lydia (c. 610 – 560 BCE). The Suda, a 10th-century Byzantineencyclopædia, dates her to the 42nd Olympiad (612/608 BCE), meaning either that she was born then or that this was her floruit. The versions of Eusebius state that she was famous by the first or second year of the 45th or 46th Olympiad (between 600 and 594 BCE). Taken together, these references make it likely that she was born c. 620 BCE, or a little earlier.

Judging from the Parian Marble, she was exiled from Lesbos to Sicily sometime between 604 and 594 BCE. If Fragment 98 of her poetry is accepted as biographical evidence and as a reference to her daughter (see below), it may indicate that she had already had a daughter by the time she was exiled. If Fragment 58 is accepted as autobiographical, it indicates that she lived into old age. If her connection to Rhodopis (see below) is accepted as historical, it indicates that she lived into the mid-6th century BCE.^[2][3]

Family

An Oxyrhynchus papyrus from around AD 200^[4] and the Suda agree that Sappho had a mother called Cleïs and a daughter by the same name. The papyrus line reads “She [Sappho] had a daughter Cleis named after her mother.” (Duban 1983, 121) Two preserved fragments of Sappho’s poetry refer to a Cleïs. In Fragment 98, Sappho addresses Cleïs, saying that she has no way of obtaining a decorated headband for her. Fragment 132 reads in full: “I have a beautiful child [pais] who looks like golden flowers, my darling Cleis, for whom I would not (take) all Lydia or lovely…”^[5] These fragments have often been interpreted as referring to Sappho’s daughter, or as confirming that Sappho had a daughter with this name. But even if a biographic reading of the verses is accepted, this is not certain. Cleïs is referred to in Fragment 132 with the Greek word pais, which can as easily indicate a slave or any young person as an offspring. It is possible that these verses or others like them were misunderstood by ancient writers, leading to the biographical tradition which has come down to us.^[6]

Fragment 102 has its speaker address a “sweet mother”, sometimes taken as an indication that Sappho began to write poetry while her mother was still alive.^[7] The name of Sappho’s father is widely given as Scamandronymus,^[8] but he is not referred to in any of the surviving fragments. In his Heroides, Ovid has Sappho lament that, “Six birthdays of mine had passed when the bones of my parent, gathered from the pyre, drank before their time my tears.” Ovid may have based this on a poem by Sappho no longer extant.^[9]

Sappho was reported to have three brothers: Erigyius (or Eurygius), Larichus and Charaxus. The Oxyrhynchus papyrus indicates that Charaxus was the eldest, but that Sappho was more fond of the young Larichus.^[10] According to Athenaeus, Sappho often praised Larichus for pouring wine in the town hall of Mytilene, an office held by boys of the best families.^[11] This indication that Sappho was born into an aristocratic family is consistent with the sometimes rarefied environments that her verses record.

A story recorded by Herodotus, and later by Strabo, Athenaeus, Ovid and the Suda, tells of a relation between Charaxus and the Egyptian courtesan Rhodopis. Herodotus, the oldest source of the story, reports that Charaxus ransomed Rhodopis for a large sum and that after he returned to Mitylene, Sappho scolded him in verse.^[12] Strabo, writing some 400 years later, adds that Charaxus was trading with Lesbian wine and that Sappho called Rhodopis Doricha. Athenaeus, another 200 years later, calls the courtesan Doricha and maintains that Herodotus had her confused with Rhodopis, another woman altogether.^[9] He also cites an epigram byPosidippus (3rd century BCE) that refers to Doricha and Sappho. Based on this story, scholars have speculated that references to a Doricha may have been found in Sappho’s poems. None of the extant fragments have this name in full but Fragments 7 and 15 are often restored to include it.^[13] Joel Lidov has criticized this restoration, arguing that the Doricha story is not helpful in restoring any fragment by Sappho and that its origins lie in the work of Cratinus or another of Herodotus’ comic contemporaries.^[14]

The Suda is alone in claiming that Sappho was married to a “very wealthy man called Cercylas, who traded from Andros”^[15] and that he was Cleïs’ father. This tradition may have been invented by the comic poets as a witticism, as the name of the purported husband means “Penis, from Men’s Island.”^[16]

Sappho on an Attic red-figure vase by the Brygos Painter, c. 470 BCE.

Exile

Sappho’s lifetime witnessed a period of political turbulence on Lesbos and saw the rise of Pittacus. According to the Parian Marble, Sappho was exiled to Sicily sometime between 604 BCE and 594 BCE and Cicero records that a statue of her stood in the town-hall of Syracuse. Unlike the works of her fellow poet, Alcaeus, Sappho’s surviving poetry has very few allusions to political conditions. The principal exception is Fragment 98, which mentions exile and indicates that Sappho was lacking some of her customary luxuries. Her political sympathies may have lain with the party of Alcaeus.^[17] Though there is no explicit record of this, it is usually assumed that Sappho returned from exile at some point and that she spent most of her life in Lesbos.

Phaon legend

A tradition going back at least to Menander (Fr. 258 K) suggested that Sappho killed herself by jumping off the Leucadian cliffs for love of Phaon, a ferryman. This is regarded as unhistorical by modern scholars, perhaps invented by the comic poets or originating from a misreading of a first-person reference in a non-biographical poem.^[18] The legend may have resulted in part from a desire to assert Sappho as heterosexual.^[19]

Sexuality and community

Sappho’s poetry centers on passion and love for various people and both sexes. The word lesbian derives from the name of the island of her birth, Lesbos, while her name is also the origin of the word sapphic; neither word was applied to female homosexuality until the 19th century.^[20][21] The narrators of many of her poems speak of infatuations and love (sometimes requited, sometimes not) for various females, but descriptions of physical acts between women are few and subject to debate.^[22][23] Whether these poems are meant to be autobiographical is not known, although elements of other parts of Sappho’s life do make appearances in her work, and it would be compatible with her style to have these intimate encounters expressed poetically, as well. Her homoerotica should be placed in the context of the 7th century (BCE). The poems of Alcaeus and later Pindar record similar romantic bonds between the members of a given circle.^[24]

Sappho and Alcaeus by Lawrence Alma-Tadema. On view at The Walters Art Museum.

Sappho’s contemporary Alcaeus described her thus: “Violet-haired, pure, honey-smiling Sappho” (ἰόπλοκ᾽ ἄγνα μελλιχόμειδε Σάπφοι, fr. 384). The 3rd-century philosopher Maximus of Tyre wrote that Sappho was “small and dark” and that her relationships to her female friends were similar to those of Socrates:

What else could one call the love of the Lesbian woman than the Socratic art of love? For they seem to me to have practised love after their own fashion, she the love of women, he of boys. For they said they loved many, and were captivated by all things beautiful. What Alcibiades and Charmides and Phaedrus were to him, Gyrinna and Atthis and Anactoria were to her …^[25]

During the Victorian era, it became fashionable to describe Sappho as the headmistress of a girls’ finishing school. As Page DuBois (among many other experts) points out, this attempt at making Sappho understandable and palatable to the genteel classes of Great Britain was based more on conservative sensibilities than evidence. There are no references to teaching, students, academies, or tutors in any of Sappho’s scant collection of surviving works. Burnett follows others, like C. M. Bowra, in suggesting that Sappho’s circle was somewhat akin to the Spartan agelai or the religious sacred band, the thiasos, but Burnett nuances her argument by noting that Sappho’s circle was distinct from these contemporary examples because “membership in the circle seems to have been voluntary, irregular and to some degree international.”^[26] The notion that Sappho was in charge of some sort of academy persists nonetheless.

(de aici)