Sappho

Sappho's poetry was probably first written down on Lesbos, either in her lifetime or shortly afterwards,[45] initially probably in the form of a score for performers of her work.[46] In the fifth century BC, Athenian book publishers probably began to produce copies of Lesbian lyric poetry, some including explanatory material and glosses as well as the poems themselves.[45] Some time in the second or third century, Alexandrian scholars produced a critical edition of Sappho's poetry.[47] There may have been more than one Alexandrian edition – John J. Winkler argues for two, one edited by Aristophanes of Byzantium and another by his pupil Aristarchus of Samothrace.[46] This is not certain – ancient sources tell us that Aristarchus' edition of Alcaeus replaced the edition by Aristophanes, but are silent on whether Sappho's work also went through multiple editions.[48]

The Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poetry was based on the existing Athenian collections,[45] and was divided into at least eight books, though the exact number is uncertain.[49] Many modern scholars have followed Denys Page, who conjectured a ninth book in the standard edition;[49] Yatromanolakis doubts this, noting that though testimonia refer to an eighth book of Sappho's poetry, none mention a ninth.[50] The Alexandrian edition of Sappho probably grouped her poems by their metre: ancient sources tell us that each of the first three books contained poems in a single specific metre.[51] Ancient editions of Sappho, possibly starting with the Alexandrian edition, seem to have ordered the poems in at least the first book of Sappho's poetry – which contained works composed in Sapphic stanzas – alphabetically.[52]

Even after the publication of the standard Alexandrian edition, Sappho's poetry continued to circulate in other poetry collections. For instance, the Cologne Papyrus on which the Tithonus poem is preserved was part of a Hellenistic anthology of poetry, which contained poetry arranged by theme, rather than by metre and incipit, as it was in the Alexandrian edition.[53]

Most of Sappho's poetry is preserved in manuscripts of other ancient writers or on papyrus fragments, but part of one poem survives on a potsherd.[40] The papyrus pictured (left) preserves the Tithonus poem (fragment 58); the potsherd (right) preserves fragment 2.

The earliest surviving manuscripts of Sappho, including the potsherd on which fragment 2 is preserved, date to the third century BC, and thus might predate the Alexandrian edition.[46] The latest surviving copies of Sappho's poems transmitted directly from ancient times are written on parchment codex pages from the sixth and seventh centuries AD, and were surely reproduced from ancient papyri now lost.[54] Manuscript copies of Sappho's works may have survived a few centuries longer, but around the 9th century her poetry appears to have disappeared,[55] and by the twelfth century, John Tzetzes could write that "the passage of time has destroyed Sappho and her works".[56]

According to legend, Sappho's poetry was lost because the church disapproved of her morals.[16] These legends appear to have originated in the Renaissance – around 1550, Jerome Cardan wrote that Gregory Nazianzen had Sappho's work publicly destroyed, and at the end of the sixteenth century Joseph Justus Scaliger claimed that Sappho's works were burned in Rome and Constantinople in 1073 on the orders of Pope Gregory VII.[55]

In reality, Sappho's work was probably lost as the demand for it was insufficiently great for it to be copied onto parchment when codices superseded papyrus scrolls as the predominant form of book.[57] A contributing factor to the loss of Sappho's poems may have been her Aeolic dialect, considered provincial in a period where the Attic dialect was seen as the true classical Greek,[57] and had become the standard for literary compositions.[58] Consequently, many readers found Sappho's dialect difficult to understand: in the second century AD, the Roman author Apuleius specifically remarks on its "strangeness",[59] and several commentaries on the subject demonstrate the difficulties that readers had with it.[60] This was part of a more general decline in interest in the archaic poets;[61] indeed, the surviving papyri suggest that Sappho's poetry survived longer than that of her contemporaries such as Alcaeus.[62]

Only approximately 650 lines of Sappho's poetry still survive, of which just one poem – the "Ode to Aphrodite" – is complete, and more than half of the original lines survive in around ten more fragments. Many of the surviving fragments of Sappho contain only a single word[39] – for example, fragment 169A is simply a word meaning "wedding gifts",[63] and survives as part of a dictionary of rare words.[64] The two major sources of surviving fragments of Sappho are quotations in other ancient works, from a whole poem to as little as a single word, and fragments of papyrus, many of which were discovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt.[65] Other fragments survive on other materials, including parchment and potsherds.[40] The oldest surviving fragment of Sappho currently known is the Cologne papyrus which contains the Tithonus poem,[66] dating to the third century BC.[67]

Grenfell and Hunt, c.1896

Until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, only the ancient quotations of Sappho survived. In 1879, the first new discovery of a fragment of Sappho was made at Fayum.[68] By the end of the nineteenth century, Grenfell and Hunt had begun to excavate an ancient rubbish dump at Oxyrhynchus, leading to the discoveries of many previously unknown fragments of Sappho.[16] Fragments of Sappho continue to be rediscovered. Most recently, major discoveries in 2004 (the "Tithonus poem" and a new, previously unknown fragment)[69] and 2014 (fragments of nine poems: five already known but with new readings, four, including the "Brothers Poem", not previously known)[70] have been reported in the media around the world.[16]

Sappho worked within a well-developed tradition of Lesbian poetry, which had evolved its own poetic diction, metres, and conventions.[71] Prior to Sappho and her contemporary Alcaeus, Lesbos was associated with poetry and music through the mythical Orpheus and Arion, and the seventh-century BC poet Terpander.[72] The Lesbian metrical tradition in which Sappho composed her poetry was distinct from that of the rest of Greece as its lines always contained a fixed number of syllables – in contrast to other traditions which allowed for the substitution of two short syllables for one long or vice versa.[73]

Sappho was one of the first Greek poets to adopt the "lyric 'I'" – to write poetry adopting the viewpoint of a specific person, in contrast to the earlier epic poets Homer and Hesiod, who present themselves more as "conduits of divine inspiration".[74] Her poetry explores individual identity and personal emotions – desire, jealousy, and love; it also adopts and reinterprets the existing imagery of epic poetry in exploring these themes.[75] It seems to have been composed for a variety of occasions – including wedding songs, other ritual occasions, and more private situations – and probably encompassed both solo and choral works.[76]

Sappho's poetry is known for its clear language and simple thoughts, sharply-drawn images, and use of direct quotation which brings a sense of immediacy.[77] Unexpected word-play is a characteristic feature of her style.[78] An example is from fragment 96: "now she stands out among Lydian women as after sunset the rose-fingered moon exceeds all stars",[79] a variation of the Homeric epithet "rosy-fingered Dawn".[80] Sappho's poetry often uses hyperbole, according to ancient critics "because of its charm".[81] An example is found in fragment 111, where Sappho writes that "The groom approaches like Ares [...] Much bigger than a big man".[82]

Leslie Kurke groups Sappho with those archaic Greek poets from what has been called the "élite" ideological tradition,[lower-alpha 11] which valued luxury (habrosyne) and high birth. These elite poets tended to identify themselves with the worlds of Greek myths, gods, and heroes, as well as the wealthy East, especially Lydia.[84] Thus in fragment 2 Sappho has Aphrodite "pour into golden cups nectar lavishly mingled with joys",[85] while in the Tithonus poem she explicitly states that "I love the finer things [habrosyne]".[86][87][lower-alpha 12] According to Page DuBois, the language, as well as the content, of Sappho's poetry evokes an aristocratic sphere.[89] She contrasts Sappho's "flowery,[...] adorned" style with the "austere, decorous, restrained" style embodied in the works of later classical authors such as Sophocles, Demosthenes, and Pindar.[89]

One of the earliest surviving images of Sappho, from c. 470 BC. She is shown holding a barbitos and plectrum, and turning to listen to Alcaeus.[90]

Sappho's poetry was written to be sung but its musical content is largely uncertain.[91] As it is unlikely that any system of musical notation existed in Ancient Greece before the fifth century, the original music that would have accompanied Sappho's songs probably did not survive until the classical period,[91] and no ancient musical scores to accompany Sappho's poetry survive.[92] Sappho was said to have written in the mixolydian mode,[93] which was considered sorrowful; it was commonly used in Greek tragedy, and Aristoxenus believed that the tragedians learned it from Sappho.[94] Aristoxenus attributed Sappho the invention of this mode, but this remains a dubious claim.[95] The classicist Stefan Hagel speculated that perhaps instead Sappho first popularized the association between mixolydian and mournfulness.[96] While there are no attestations that she used other modes, she presumably varied them depending on the poem's character.[93] When originally sung, each syllable of the her text likely corresponded to one note as the use of lengthy melismas developed in the later classical period.[97]

Sappho chiefly wrote for two formats: solo singers and choirs.[97] With Alcaeus, she pioneered a new style of sung monody (single-line melody) that departed from the multi-part choral style which largely defined earlier Greek music.[95] This style afforded her more opportunities to individualize the content of her poems; the historian Plutarch noted that she "speaks words mingled truly with fire, and through her songs, she draws up the heat of her heart".[95] Some scholars theorize that the Tithonus Poem was among her works meant for a solo singer.[97] Only fragments of Sappho's choral works are extant, and of these, slightly more of her epithalamia wedding songs survive.[95] The later compositions were probably meant for antiphonal performance between either a male and female choir or a soloist and choir.[97]

In Sappho's time, sung poetry was accompanied by musical instruments, which usually doubled the voice in unison or played homophonically an octave higher or lower.[93] Her poems mention numerous instruments, including the pēktis, a harp of Lydian origin,[lower-alpha 13] and lyre.[lower-alpha 14][97] Sappho is most closely associated with the barbitos,[95] a lyre-like string instrument which was deep in pitch.[97] Euphorion of Chalcis reports that she referred to it in her poetry,[98] and a well-known 5th century vase by either the Dokimasia Painter or Brygos Painter includes Sappho and Alcaeus with barbitoi.[97] Sappho mentions the aulos, a wind instrument with two pipes, in fragment 44 as accompanying the song of the Trojan women at Hector and Andromache's wedding, but not as accompanying her own poetry.[100] Later Greek commentators wrongly believed that she had invented the plectrum.[101]

Sappho inspired ancient poets and artists, including the vase painter from the Group of Polygnotos who depicted her on this red-figure hydria.

In antiquity, Sappho's poetry was highly admired, and several ancient sources refer to her as the "tenth Muse".[133] The earliest surviving poem to do so is a third-century BC epigram by Dioscorides,[134][135] but poems are preserved in the Greek Anthology by Antipater of Sidon[136][137] and attributed to Plato[138][139] on the same theme. She was sometimes referred to as "The Poetess", just as Homer was "The Poet".[140] The scholars of Alexandria included her in the canon of nine lyric poets.[141] According to Aelian, the Athenian lawmaker and poet Solon asked to be taught a song by Sappho "so that I may learn it and then die".[142] This story may well be apocryphal, especially as Ammianus Marcellinus tells a similar story about Socrates and a song of Stesichorus, but it is indicative of how highly Sappho's poetry was considered in the ancient world.[143]

Sappho's poetry also influenced other ancient authors. In Greek, the Hellenistic poet Nossis was described by Marilyn B. Skinner as an imitator of Sappho, and Kathryn Gutzwiller argues that Nossis explicitly positioned herself as an inheritor of Sappho's position as a woman poet.[144] Beyond poetry, Plato cites Sappho in his Phaedrus, and Socrates' second speech on love in that dialogue appears to echo Sappho's descriptions of the physical effects of desire in fragment 31.[145] In the first century BC, Catullus established the themes and metres of Sappho's poetry as a part of Latin literature, adopting the Sapphic stanza, believed in antiquity to have been invented by Sappho,[146] giving his lover in his poetry the name "Lesbia" in reference to Sappho,[147] and adapting and translating Sappho's 31st fragment in his poem 51.[148][149]

Other ancient poets wrote about Sappho's life. She was a popular character in ancient Athenian comedy,[103] and at least six separate comedies called Sappho are known.[150][lower-alpha 16] The earliest known ancient comedy to take Sappho as its main subject was the early-fifth or late-fourth century BC Sappho by Ameipsias, though nothing is known of it apart from its name.[151] As these comedies survive only in fragments, it is uncertain exactly how they portrayed Sappho, but she was likely characterised as a promiscuous woman. In Diphilos' play, she was the lover of the poets Anacreon and Hipponax.[152] Sappho was also a favourite subject in the visual arts. She was the most commonly depicted poet on sixth and fifth-century Attic red-figure vase paintings[146] – though unlike male poets such as Anacreon and Alcaeus, in the four surviving vases in which she is identified by an inscription she is never shown singing.[153] She was also shown on coins from Mytilene and Lesbos from the first to third centuries AD, and reportedly depicted in a sculpture by Silanion at Syracuse, statues in Pergamon and Constantinople, and a painting by the Hellenistic artist Leon.[154]

From the fourth century BC, ancient works portray Sappho as a tragic heroine, driven to suicide by her unrequited love for Phaon.[107] A fragment of a play by Menander says that Sappho threw herself off of the cliff at Leucas out of her love for him.[155] Ovid's Heroides 15 is written as a letter from Sappho to Phaon, and when it was first rediscovered in the 15th century was thought to be a translation of an authentic letter of Sappho's.[156] Sappho's suicide was also depicted in classical art, for instance on a first-century BC basilica in Rome near the Porta Maggiore.[155]

While Sappho's poetry was admired in the ancient world, her character was not always so well considered. In the Roman period, critics found her lustful and perhaps even homosexual.[157] Horace called her "mascula Sappho" in his Epistles, which the later Porphyrio commented was "either because she is famous for her poetry, in which men more often excel, or because she is maligned for having been a tribad".[158] By the third century AD, the difference between Sappho's literary reputation as a poet and her moral reputation as a woman had become so significant that the suggestion that there were in fact two Sapphos began to develop.[159] In his Historical Miscellanies, Aelian wrote that there was "another Sappho, a courtesan, not a poetess".[160]

In the medieval period, Sappho had a reputation as an educated woman and talented poet. In this woodcut, illustrating an early incunable of Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris, she is portrayed surrounded by books and musical instruments.

By the medieval period, Sappho's works had been lost, though she was still quoted in later authors. Her work became more accessible in the sixteenth century through printed editions of those authors who had quoted her. In 1508 Aldus Manutius printed an edition of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, which contained Sappho 1, the "Ode to Aphrodite", and the first printed edition of Longinus' On the Sublime, complete with his quotation of Sappho 31, appeared in 1554. In 1566, the French printer Robert Estienne produced an edition of the Greek lyric poets which contained around 40 fragments attributed to Sappho.[161]

In 1652, the first English translation of a poem by Sappho was published, in John Hall's translation of On the Sublime. In 1681 Anne Le Fèvre's French edition of Sappho made her work even more widely known.[162] Theodor Bergk's 1854 edition became the standard edition of Sappho in the second half of the 19th century;[163] in the first part of the 20th, the papyrus discoveries of new poems by Sappho led to editions and translations by Edwin Marion Cox and John Maxwell Edmonds, and culminated in the 1955 publication of Edgar Lobel's and Denys Page's Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta.[164]

Like the ancients, modern critics have tended to consider Sappho's poetry "extraordinary".[165] As early as the 9th century, Sappho was referred to as a talented woman poet,[146] and in works such as Boccaccio's De Claris Mulieribus and Christine de Pisan's Book of the City of Ladies she gained a reputation as a learned lady.[166] Even after Sappho's works had been lost, the Sapphic stanza continued to be used in medieval lyric poetry,[146] and with the rediscovery of her work in the Renaissance, she began to increasingly influence European poetry. In the 16th century, members of La Pléiade, a circle of French poets, were influenced by her to experiment with Sapphic stanzas and with writing love-poetry with a first-person female voice.[146] Early modern and modern composers have also been inspired by Sappho; notable compositions based on her life or works include operas such as Sappho (1794) by Jean-Paul-Égide Martini, Sappho (1897) by Jules Massenet, Sappho (1963) by Peggy Glanville-Hicks; the percussion piece Psappha (1975) and orchestral work Aïs (1980) by Iannis Xenakis; and the composition Charaxos, Eos and Tithonos (2014) by Theodore Antoniou.[167]

From the Romantic era, Sappho's work – especially her "Ode to Aphrodite" – has been a key influence of conceptions of what lyric poetry should be.[168] Such influential poets as Alfred Lord Tennyson in the nineteenth century, and A. E. Housman in the twentieth, have been influenced by her poetry. Tennyson based poems including "Eleanore" and "Fatima" on Sappho's fragment 31,[169] while three of Housman's works are adaptations of the Midnight poem, long thought to be by Sappho though the authorship is now disputed.[170] At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Imagists – especially Ezra Pound, H. D., and Richard Aldington – were influenced by Sappho's fragments; a number of Pound's poems in his early collection Lustra were adaptations of Sapphic poems, while H. D.'s poetry was frequently Sapphic in "style, theme or content", and in some cases, such as "Fragment 40" more specifically invoke Sappho's writing.[171]

Detail of Sappho from Raphael's Parnassus (1510–11), shown alongside other poets. In her left hand, she holds a scroll with her name written on it.[172]

It was not long after the rediscovery of Sappho that her sexuality once again became the focus of critical attention. In the early seventeenth century, John Donne wrote "Sapho to Philaenis", returning to the idea of Sappho as a hypersexual lover of women.[173] The modern debate on Sappho's sexuality began in the 19th century, with Welcker publishing, in 1816, an article defending Sappho from charges of prostitution and lesbianism, arguing that she was chaste[146] – a position which would later be taken up by Wilamowitz at the end of the 19th and Henry Thornton Wharton at the beginning of the 20th centuries.[174] In the nineteenth century Sappho was co-opted by the Decadent Movement as a lesbian "daughter of de Sade", by Charles Baudelaire in France and later Algernon Charles Swinburne in England.[175] By the late 19th century, lesbian writers such as Michael Field[lower-alpha 17] and Amy Levy became interested in Sappho for her sexuality,[176] and by the turn of the twentieth century she was a sort of "patron saint of lesbians".[177]

From the beginning of the 19th century, women poets such as Felicia Hemans (The Last Song of Sappho) and Letitia Elizabeth Landon (Sketch the First. Sappho, and in Ideal Likenesses) took Sappho as one of their progenitors. Sappho also began to be regarded as a role model for campaigners for women's rights, beginning with works such as Caroline Norton's The Picture of Sappho.[146] Later in that century, she would become a model for the so-called New Woman – independent and educated women who desired social and sexual autonomy –[178] and by the 1960s, the feminist Sappho was – along with the hypersexual, often but not exclusively lesbian Sappho – one of the two most important cultural perceptions of Sappho.[179]

The discoveries of new poems by Sappho in 2004 and 2014 excited both scholarly and media attention.[16] The announcement of the Tithonus poem was the subject of international news coverage, and was described by Marilyn Skinner as "the trouvaille of a lifetime".[69][180]