Sappho

The context in which she composed her poems has long been the subject of scholarly debate; the most influential suggestions have been that she had some sort of educational or religious role, or wrote for the symposium.

Sappho's poetry was well-known and greatly admired through much of antiquity, and she was among the canon of Nine Lyric Poets most highly esteemed by scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria.

[6] Other sources that mention details of her life were written much closer to her own era, beginning in the fifth century BC;[6] one of the earliest is Herodotus' account of the relationship between the Egyptian courtesan Rhodopis and Sappho's brother Charaxos.

[9] In the latter half of the 20th century, scholars became increasingly sceptical of Greek lyric poetry as a source of autobiographical information, questioning whether the first person narrator in the poems was meant to express the experiences and feelings of the poets.

In the fifth century BC Herodotus, the oldest source of the story,[31] reports that Charaxos ransomed Rhodopis for a large sum and that Sappho wrote a poem rebuking him for this.

[45] The story of Sappho's leap is regarded as ahistorical by modern scholars, perhaps invented by the comic poets or originating from a misreading of a first-person reference in a non-biographical poem.

[53] 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.

[57] The Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poetry may have been based on an Athenian text of her poems, or one from her native Lesbos,[58] and was divided into at least eight books, though the exact number is uncertain.

[63] 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.

[65] 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work was probably lost as the demand for it was insufficiently great for it to be copied onto parchment when codices superseded papyrus scrolls as the predominant form of book.

[78] By the end of the 19th century, Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt had begun to excavate an ancient rubbish dump at Oxyrhynchus, leading to the discoveries of many previously unknown fragments of Sappho.

[84] Prior to Sappho and her contemporary Alcaeus, Lesbos was associated with poetry and music through the mythical Orpheus and Arion, and through the seventh-century BC poet Terpander.

[98] An example is from fragment 96: "now she stands out among Lydian women as after sunset the rose-fingered moon exceeds all stars",[99] a variation of the Homeric epithet "rosy-fingered Dawn".

[100] Her poetry often uses hyperbole, according to ancient critics "because of its charm":[101] for example, in fragment 111 she writes that "The groom approaches like Ares [...] Much bigger than a big man".

[102] Kurke groups Sappho with those archaic Greek poets from what has been called the "élite" ideological tradition,[k] which valued luxury (habrosyne) and high birth.

[104] Thus in fragment 2 she has Aphrodite "pour into golden cups nectar lavishly mingled with joys",[105] while in the Tithonus poem she explicitly states that "I love the finer things [habrosyne]".

[114] 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".

[115] In Sappho's time, sung poetry was usually accompanied by musical instruments, which usually doubled the voice in unison or played homophonically an octave higher or lower.

[123] This view, popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,[124] was advocated by the German classicist Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, to "explain away Sappho's passion for her 'girls'" and defend her from accusations of homosexuality.

The earliest of these is a fragmentary biography written on papyrus in the late third or early second century BC,[138] which states that Sappho was "accused by some of being irregular in her ways and a woman-lover".

[139] Denys Page comments that the phrase "by some" implies that even the full corpus of Sappho's poetry did not provide conclusive evidence of whether she described herself as having sex with women.

[148] Today, it is generally accepted that Sappho's poetry portrays homoerotic feelings:[149][150] as Sandra Boehringer puts it, her works "clearly celebrate eros between women".

[150] Others, influenced by Michel Foucault's work on the history of sexuality, believe that it is incoherent to project the concept of lesbianism onto an ancient figure like Sappho.

[155] The earliest surviving text to do so is a third-century BC epigram by Dioscorides,[156][157] but poems are preserved in the Greek Anthology by Antipater of Sidon[158][159] and attributed to Plato[160][161] on the same theme.

[173][174] Fragment 31 is widely referenced in Latin literature: as well as by Catullus, it is alluded to by authors including Lucretius in the De rerum natura, Plautus in Miles Gloriosus, and Virgil in book 12 of the Aeneid.

[184] She was also shown on coins from Mytilene and Eresos 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.

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.

[203] Composers have also set Sappho's own poetry to music: for example Xenakis' Aïs, which uses text from fragment 95, and Charaxos, Eos and Tithonos (2014) by Theodore Antoniou, based on the 2014 discoveries.

The critic Douglas Bush characterised Swinburne's sadomasochistic Sappho as "one of the daughters of de Sade", the French author known for his violent pornographic books.

[80] The publication of the Brothers Poem a decade later saw further news coverage and discussion on social media, while M. L. West described the 2014 discoveries as "the greatest for 92 years".

Vase painting of a woman holding a lyre.
Kalpis painting of Sappho by the Sappho Painter ( c. 510 BC)
Marble head of a woman with the nose broken off
Head of a woman from the Glyptothek in Munich, possibly a copy of Silanion 's fourth-century BC imaginative portrait of Sappho [ 2 ]
Sappho , by Enrique Simonet .
Painting of a woman dressed in dark robes, with her breasts bare. She holds a lyre in one hand and stands on a rock over the sea.
Sappho (1877) by Charles Mengin (1853–1933). One tradition claims that Sappho committed suicide by jumping off the Leucadian cliff. [ 29 ]
Black and white photograph of a fragment of papyrus with Greek text
P. Sapph. Obbink: the fragment of papyrus on which Sappho's Brothers Poem was discovered
Red-figure vase painting of a woman holding a barbitos. On the left, a bearded man with a barbitos is partially visible.
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 . [ 26 ]
An oil painting of Sappho, accompanied by a lyre-player and an aulos-player, performing for a group of men and women.
The Disciples of Sappho (1896) by Thomas Ralph Spence . The original performance context of Sappho's works has been a major concern of scholars.
Red-figure vase, depicting a seated woman reading, surrounded by three standing women, one holding a lyre.
Sappho inspired ancient poets and artists, including the vase painter from the Group of Polygnotos who depicted her on this red-figure hydria.
Coin from Mytilene depicting the head of Sappho. Second century AD.
A seated woman playing a lute; more instruments are on the floor and there is a pile of books behind her
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.
A woman seated on a rock, holding a lyre in one hand and a scroll with the word "Sappho" in the other
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, and in her right a lyre. [ 171 ]