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113-537: The "Geryoneis" is a fragmentary poem, written in Ancient Greek by the lyric poet Stesichorus . Composed in the 6th century BC, it narrates an episode from the Heracles myth in which the hero steals the cattle of Geryon , a three-bodied monster with a human face. The text of the "Geryoneis" has only been handed down in fragmentary form. The majority of which comes from Papyrus Oxyrhynchus XXXII 2617 , which

226-585: A bent old man holding a book. Eusebius dated his floruit in Olympiad 42.2 (611/10 BC) and his death in Olympiad 55.1 (560/59 BC). The Suda' s claim that Hesiod was the father of Stesichorus can be dismissed as "fantasy" yet it is also mentioned by Tzetzes and the Hesiodic scholiast Proclus (one of them however named the mother of Stesichorus via Hesiod as Ctimene and the other as Clymene). According to another tradition known to Cicero , Stesichorus

339-434: A big man". Kurke groups Sappho with those archaic Greek poets from what has been called the "élite" ideological tradition, 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 . Thus in fragment 2 she has Aphrodite "pour into golden cups nectar lavishly mingled with joys", while in

452-438: A close rival of Homer; but he is redundant and diffuse, a fault to be sure but explained by the abundance of what he had to say. —Quintilian In a similar vein, Dionysius of Halicarnassus commends Stesichorus for "...the magnificence of the settings of his subject matter; in them he has preserved the traits and reputations of his characters", and Longinus puts him in select company with Herodotus , Archilochus and Plato as

565-488: A council of the gods , which resolves that Geryon is to die, the birth of his cowherd Eurytion and a depiction of his parents, trying to convince him not to face Heracles. The final moments of the conflict are preserved at length: Heracles shoots a deadly arrow into Geryon's forehead. His agony is described in detail and compared to a withering poppy . Like much of Stesichorus' output, the "Geryoneis" has been noted for its use and advancement of Homeric elements . Especially

678-504: A cupbearer in the town hall of Mytilene, an office held by boys of the best families. This indication that Sappho was born into an aristocratic family is consistent with the sometimes-rarefied environments that her verses record. One ancient tradition tells of a relationship between Charaxos and the Egyptian courtesan Rhodopis . In the fifth century BC Herodotus , the oldest source of the story, reports that Charaxos ransomed Rhodopis for

791-525: A description of the river Himera as well as praise for the town named after it, and his poem Geryoneis included a description of Pallantium in Arcadia. His possible exile from Arcadia is attributed by one modern scholar to rivalry between Tegea and Sparta . Traditional accounts indicate that he was politically active in Magna Graeca. Aristotle mentions two public speeches by Stesichorus: one to

904-527: A few centuries longer, but around the ninth century her poetry appears to have disappeared, and by the 12th century, John Tzetzes could write that "the passage of time has destroyed Sappho and her works". According to legend, Sappho's poetry was lost because the church disapproved of her morals. These legends appear to have originated in the Renaissance – around 1550, Jerome Cardan wrote that Gregory Nazianzen had her work publicly destroyed, and at

1017-522: A fifth-century red-figure vase by either the Dokimasia Painter or Brygos Painter includes Sappho and Alcaeus with barbitoi. 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. Later Greek commentators wrongly believed that she had invented

1130-502: A friendly affection": Glenn Most comments that "one wonders what language Sappho would have used to describe her feelings if they had been ones of sexual excitement", if this theory were correct. By 1970, the psychoanalyst George Devereux argued that the same poem contained "proof positive of [Sappho's] lesbianism". Today, it is generally accepted that Sappho's poetry portrays homoerotic feelings: as Sandra Boehringer puts it, her works "clearly celebrate eros between women". Toward

1243-472: A large sum and that Sappho wrote a poem rebuking him for this. The names of two of the brothers, Charaxos and Larichos, are mentioned in the Brothers Poem , discovered in 2014; the final brother, Eurygios, is mentioned in three ancient sources but nowhere in the extant works of Sappho. Sappho may have had a daughter named Cleïs, who is referred to in two fragments. Not all scholars accept that Cleïs

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1356-416: A literary coterie", but that "evidence for a formal appointment as priestess or teacher is hard to find". None of Sappho's own poetry mentions her teaching, and the earliest source to support the idea of Sappho as a teacher comes from Ovid, six centuries after Sappho's lifetime. So you hate me now, Atthis, and Turn towards Andromeda. — Sappho 131, trans. Edward Storer In the second half of

1469-449: A papyrus from the second or third century AD was published. He seems like a god to me the man who is near you, Listening to your sweet voice and exquisite laughter That makes my heart so wildly beat in my breast. If I but see you for a moment, then all my words Leave me, my tongue is broken and a sudden fire Creeps through my blood. No longer can I see. My ears are full of noise. In all my body I Shudder and sweat. I am pale as

1582-485: A pedogogic role and as part of a circle of friends. The word lesbian is an allusion to Sappho, originating from the name of the island of Lesbos , where she was born. However, though in modern culture Sappho is seen as a lesbian, she has not always been considered so. In classical Athenian comedy (from the Old Comedy of the fifth century to Menander in the late fourth and early third centuries   BC), Sappho

1695-508: A period where the Attic dialect was seen as the true classical Greek, and had become the standard for literary compositions. Consequently, many readers found her dialect difficult to understand: in the second century   AD, the Roman author Apuleius specifically remarks on its "strangeness", and several commentaries on the subject demonstrate the difficulties that readers had with it. This

1808-477: A quote by the geographer Strabo , is characteristic of the "descriptive fulness" of his style: A nineteenth century translation imaginatively fills in the gaps while communicating something of the richness of the language: See The Queen's Speech in the Lille fragment for more on Stesichorus's style. The Homeric qualities of Stesichorus' poetry are demonstrated in a fragment of his poem Geryoneis describing

1921-418: A result of her family's involvement with the conflicts between political elites on Lesbos in this period. It is unknown which side Sappho's family took in these conflicts, but most scholars believe that they were in the same faction as her contemporary Alcaeus, who was exiled when Myrsilus took power. A tradition going back at least to Menander (Fr. 258 K) suggested that Sappho killed herself by jumping off

2034-444: A scene showing Aeneas and his father Anchises departing 'for Hesperia ' with 'sacred objects', which might have more to do with the poetry of Virgil than with that of Stesichorus. Sappho Sappho ( / ˈ s æ f oʊ / ; Greek : Σαπφώ Sapphṓ [sap.pʰɔ̌ː] ; Aeolic Greek Ψάπφω Psápphō ; c.  630  – c.  570   BC ) was an Archaic Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on

2147-405: A sympotic context, it is doubtful that the cultic hymns or poems about family would have been. Despite scholars' best attempts to find one, Yatromanolakis argues that there is no single performance context to which all of Sappho's poems can be attributed. Camillo Neri argues that it is unnecessary to assign all of her poetry to one context, and suggests that she could have composed poetry both in

2260-457: A thing of beauty—the poppy has not wilted or died. Stesichorus adapted the simile to restore Death's ugliness while still retaining the poignancy of the moment: The mutual self-reflection of the two passages is part of the novel aesthetic experience that Stesichorus here puts into play. The enduring freshness of his art, in spite of its epic traditions, is borne out by Ammianus Marcellinus in an anecdote about Socrates: happening to overhear, on

2373-444: A tragic heroine, driven to suicide by her unrequited love for Phaon. A fragment of a play by Menander says that Sappho threw herself off of the cliff at Leucas out of her love for him. 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 by Sappho. Sappho's suicide was also depicted in classical art, for instance on

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2486-519: A variety of occasions both public and private, and probably encompassed both solo and choral works. Most of her best-preserved fragments, such as the Ode to Aphrodite, are usually thought to be written for solo performance – though some scholars, such as André Lardinois, believe that most or all of her poems were originally composed for choral performances. These works, which Leslie Kurke describes as "private and informal compositions" in contrast to

2599-480: Is Scamandronymus. In Ovid 's Heroides , Sappho's father died when she was six. He is not mentioned in any of her surviving works, but Campbell suggests that this detail may have been based on a now-lost poem. Her own name is found in numerous variant spellings; the form that appears in her own extant poetry is Psappho ( Ψάπφω ). Sappho was said to have three brothers: Eurygios, Larichos, and Charaxos. According to Athenaeus , she praised Larichos for being

2712-478: Is a characteristic feature of her style. An example is from fragment 96 : "now she stands out among Lydian women as after sunset the rose-fingered moon exceeds all stars", a variation of the Homeric epithet "rosy-fingered Dawn". Her poetry often uses hyperbole , according to ancient critics "because of its charm": for example, in fragment 111 she writes that "The groom approaches like Ares [...] Much bigger than

2825-609: Is a form of the Greek word aner , which means "man". Thus the name, for which an English equivalent could be "Prick (of the isle) of Man", is likely to have originated from a comic play. One tradition said that Sappho was exiled from Lesbos around 600   BC. The only ancient source for this story is the Parian Chronicle , which records her going into exile in Sicily some time between 604 and 595. This may have been as

2938-453: Is best known for her lyric poetry , written to be accompanied by music. The Suda also attributes to her epigrams , elegiacs , and iambics ; three of these epigrams are extant, but are in fact later Hellenistic poems inspired by Sappho. The iambic and elegiac poems attributed to her in the Suda may also be later imitations. Ancient authors claim that she primarily wrote love poetry, and

3051-568: Is conceivable. One longstanding suggestion of a social role for Sappho is that of "Sappho as schoolmistress". This view, popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, 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. More recently the idea has been criticised by historians as anachronistic and has been rejected by several prominent classicists as unjustified by

3164-447: Is known of Sappho's life. She was from a wealthy family from Lesbos, though her parents' names are uncertain. Ancient sources say that she had three brothers: Charaxos, Larichos and Eurygios. Two of them, Charaxos and Larichos, are mentioned in the Brothers Poem discovered in 2014. She was exiled to Sicily around 600   BC, and may have continued to work until around 570   BC. According to legend, she killed herself by leaping from

3277-490: Is known of it apart from its name. 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 . 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 – though unlike male poets such as Anacreon and Alcaeus, in

3390-448: Is maligned for having been a tribad ". 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. In his Historical Miscellanies , Aelian wrote that there was "another Sappho, a courtesan, not a poetess". By the medieval period, Sappho's works had been lost, though she

3503-433: Is no evidence that she held a priesthood. More recent scholars have proposed that Sappho was part of a circle of women who took part in symposia, for which she composed and performed poetry, or that she wrote her poetry to be performed at men's symposia. Though her songs were certainly later performed at symposia, there is no external evidence for archaic Greek women's symposia, and even if some of her works were composed for

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3616-799: Is possible that these are the works of another Stesichorus belonging to the fourth century, mentioned in the Marmor Parium . Bovillae , about twelve miles outside Rome, was the original site of a monument dating from the Augustan period and now located in the Capitoline Museum . The stone monument features scenes from the fall of Troy, depicted in low relief, and an inscription: Ιλίου Πέρσις κατα Στησίχορον ('Sack of Troy according to Stesichorus'). Scholars are divided as to whether or not it accurately depicts incidents described by Stesichorus in his poem Sack of Troy . There is, for example,

3729-595: Is repeated by Pliny the Elder but it was the epic qualities of his work that most impressed ancient commentators, though with some reservations on the part of Quintilian : The greatness of Stesichorus' genius is shown among other things by his subject-matter: he sings of the most important wars and the most famous commanders and sustains on his lyre the weight of epic poetry. In both their actions and their speeches he gives due dignity to his characters, and if only he had shown restraint he could possibly have been regarded as

3842-703: Is still debated: André Lardinois has described it as the "Great Sappho Question". Early translators of Sappho sometimes heterosexualised her poetry. Ambrose Philips ' 1711 translation of the Ode to Aphrodite portrayed the object of Sappho's desire as male, a reading that was followed by virtually every other translator of the poem until the 20th century, while in 1781 Alessandro Verri interpreted fragment 31 as being about Sappho's love for Phaon. Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker argued that Sappho's feelings for other women were "entirely idealistic and non-sensual", while Karl Otfried Müller wrote that fragment 31 described "nothing but

3955-576: Is the Cologne papyrus that contains the Tithonus poem, dating to the third century   BC. Until the last quarter of the 19th century, Sappho's poetry was known only through quotations in the works of other ancient authors. In 1879, the first new discovery of a fragment of Sappho was made at Fayum . 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

4068-458: Is the only contemporary source for her life. The earliest surviving biography of Sappho dates to the late second or early third century   AD, approximately eight centuries after her own lifetime; the next is the Suda , a tenth-century Byzantine encyclopedia. Other sources that mention details of her life were written much closer to her own era, beginning in the fifth century   BC; one of

4181-479: Is well known as a symbol of love and desire between women , with the English words sapphic and lesbian deriving from her name and that of her home island, respectively. Modern knowledge of Sappho comes both from what can be inferred from her own poetry and from mentions of her in other ancient texts. Her poetry – which, with the exception of a single complete poem, survives only in fragments –

4294-731: 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 . Latin poets also referenced other fragments: the section on Eppia in Juvenal 's sixth satire references fragment 16, a poem in Sapphic stanzas from Statius ' Silvae may reference

4407-672: The Leucadian cliffs due to her unrequited love for the ferryman Phaon . Sappho was a prolific poet, probably composing around 10,000 lines. She was best-known in antiquity for her love poetry; other themes in the surviving fragments of her work include family and religion. She probably wrote poetry for both individual and choral performance. Most of her best-known and best-preserved fragments explore personal emotions and were probably composed for solo performance. Her works are known for their clarity of language, vivid images, and immediacy. The context in which she composed her poems has long been

4520-472: The Leucadian cliffs due to her unrequited love of Phaon , a ferryman. This story is related to two myths about the goddess Aphrodite. In one, Aphrodite rewarded the elderly ferryman Phaon with youth and good looks as a reward for taking her in his ferry without asking for payment; in the other, Aphrodite was cured of her grief at the death of her lover Adonis by throwing herself off the Leucadian cliffs on

4633-858: The Lille Stesichorus ), have led to some improvements in our understanding of his work, confirming his role as a link between Homer 's epic narrative and the lyric narrative of poets like Pindar . Stesichorus also exercised an important influence on the representation of myth in 6th century art, and on the development of Athenian dramatic poetry. Stesichorus was born in Metauros (modern Gioia Tauro) in Calabria , Southern Italy c. 630 BC and died in Katane (modern Catania ) in Sicily in 555 BC. Some say that he came from Himera in Sicily, but that

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4746-438: The Suda' s dates "fit reasonably well" with other indications of Stesichorus's life-span — for example, they are consistent with a claim elsewhere in Suda that the poet Sappho was his contemporary, along with Alcaeus and Pittacus , and also with the claim, attested by other sources, that Phalaris was his contemporary. Aristotle quoted a speech the poet is supposed to have made to the people of Himera warning them against

4859-415: The first person narrator in the poems was meant to express the experiences and feelings of the poets. Some scholars, such as Mary Lefkowitz , argue that almost nothing can be known about the lives of early Greek poets such as Sappho; most scholars believe that ancient testimonies about poets' lives contain some truth but must be treated with caution. Little is known about Sappho's life for certain. She

4972-460: The plectrum . One of the major focuses of scholars studying Sappho has been to attempt to determine the cultural context in which Sappho's poems were composed and performed. Various cultural contexts and social roles played by Sappho have been suggested: primarily teacher, priestess, chorus leader, and symposiast . However, the performance contexts of many of Sappho's fragments are not easy to determine, and for many more than one possible context

5085-473: The "tenth Muse ". The earliest surviving text to do so is a third-century   BC epigram by Dioscorides , but poems are preserved in the Greek Anthology by Antipater of Sidon and attributed to Plato on the same theme. She was sometimes referred to as "The Poetess", just as Homer was "The Poet". The scholars of Alexandria included her in the canon of nine lyric poets. According to Aelian ,

5198-595: The 'most Homeric' of authors. Modern scholars tend to accept the general thrust of the ancient comments – even the 'fault' noted by Quintilian gets endorsement: 'longwindedness', as one modern scholar calls it, citing, as proof of it, the interval of 400 lines separating Geryon's death from his eloquent anticipation of it. Similarly, "the repetitiveness and slackness of the style" of the recently discovered Lille papyrus has even been interpreted by one modern scholar as proof of Stesichorean authorship – though others originally used it as an argument against. Possibly Stesichorus

5311-434: The 19th century, ancient biographical accounts of archaic poets' lives were largely accepted as factual. In the 19th century, classicists began to be more sceptical of these traditions, and instead tried to derive biographical information from the poets' own works. In the latter half of the 20th century, scholars became increasingly sceptical of Greek lyric poetry as a source of autobiographical information, questioning whether

5424-590: The Athenian lawmaker and poet Solon asked to be taught a song by Sappho "so that I may learn it and then die". 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. Sappho's poetry also influenced other ancient authors. Plato cites Sappho in his Phaedrus , and Socrates ' second speech on love in that dialogue appears to echo Sappho's descriptions of

5537-589: The French printer Robert Estienne produced an edition of the Greek lyric poets that contained around 40 fragments attributed to Sappho. 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. Theodor Bergk 's 1854 edition became the standard edition of Sappho in

5650-667: The Greek West . His poetry reveals both Doric and Ionian influences and this is consistent with the Suda' a claim that his birthplace was either Metauria or Himera, both of which were founded by colonists of mixed Ionian/Doric descent. On the other hand, a Doric/Ionian flavour was fashionable among later poets — it is found in the 'choral' lyrics of the Ionian poets Simonides and Bacchylides — and it might have been fashionable even in Stesichorus's own day. His poetry included

5763-407: The Ode to Aphrodite, and Horace 's Ode 3.27 alludes to fragment 94. Other ancient poets wrote about Sappho's life. She was a popular character in ancient Athenian comedy , and at least six separate comedies called Sappho are known. 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

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5876-426: The Tithonus poem she explicitly states that "I love the finer things [ habrosyne ]". According to Page duBois , the language, as well as the content, of Sappho's poetry evokes an aristocratic sphere. 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 . Sappho's poetry

5989-531: The Trojan War and thus restoring himself to full sight. The ancients associated the lyrical qualities of Stesichorus with the voice of the nightingale, as in this quote from the Palatine Anthology : "...at his birth, when he had just reached the light of day, a nightingale, travelling through the air from somewhere or other, perched unnoticed on his lips and struck up her clear song." The account

6102-539: The advice of Apollo . 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. It was used to reassure ancient audiences of Sappho's heterosexuality, and became particularly important in the nineteenth century to writers who saw homosexuality as immoral and wished to construct Sappho as heterosexual. Sappho probably wrote around 10,000 lines of poetry; today, only about 650 survive. She

6215-516: The cult of Philoctetes at Sybaris , Diomedes at Thurii and the Atreidae at Tarentum . It was also a sympathetic environment for his most famous poem, The Palinode, composed in praise of Helen, an important cult figure in the Doric diaspora. On the other hand, the western Greeks were not very different from their eastern counterparts and his poetry cannot be regarded exclusively as a product of

6328-539: The death of the monster Geryon. A scholiast writing in a margin on Hesiod's Theogony noted that Stesichorus gave the monster wings, six hands and six feet, whereas Hesiod himself had only described it as 'three-headed'. yet Stesichorus adapted Homeric motifs to create a humanized portrait of the monster, whose death in battle mirrors the death of Gorgythion in Homer's Iliad , translated here by Richmond Lattimore : Homer here transforms Gorgythion's death in battle into

6441-403: The discoveries of many previously unknown fragments of Sappho. Fragments of Sappho continue to be rediscovered. Major discoveries were made in 2004 (the "Tithonus poem" and a new, previously unknown fragment) and 2014 (fragments of nine poems: five already known but with new readings, four, including the " Brothers Poem ", not previously known). Additionally, in 2005 a commentary on her poems on

6554-463: The earliest is Herodotus ' account of the relationship between the Egyptian courtesan Rhodopis and Sappho's brother Charaxos. The information about her life recorded in ancient sources was derived from statements in her own poetry that ancient authors assumed were autobiographical, along with local traditions. Some of the ancient traditions about her, such as those about her sexuality and appearance, may derive from ancient Athenian comedy . Until

6667-400: The edition by Aristophanes, but are silent on whether Sappho's work also went through multiple editions. The Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poetry may have been based on an Athenian text of her poems, or one from her native Lesbos, and was divided into at least eight books, though the exact number is uncertain. Many modern scholars have followed Denys Page , who conjectured a ninth book in

6780-520: The end of the 16th century Joseph Justus Scaliger claimed that her works were burned in Rome and Constantinople in 1073 on the orders of Pope Gregory VII . 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. A contributing factor to the loss of her poems may have been her Aeolic dialect , considered provincial in

6893-533: The end of the 20th century, though, some scholars began to reject the question of whether Sappho was a lesbian — Glenn Most wrote that Sappho herself "would have had no idea what people mean when they call her nowadays a homosexual", André Lardinois stated that it is "nonsensical" to ask whether Sappho was a lesbian, and Page duBois calls the question a "particularly obfuscating debate". Some scholars argue that although Sappho would not have understood modern conceptions of sexuality, lesbianism has always existed and she

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7006-535: The eve of his own execution, the rendition of a song of Stesichorus, the old philosopher asked to be taught it: "So that I may know something more when I depart from life." According to the Suda , the works of Stesichorus were collected in 26 books, but each of these was probably a long, narrative poem. The titles of more than half of them are recorded by ancient sources: Some poems were wrongly attributed to Stesichorus by ancient sources, including bucolic poems and some love songs such as Calyce and Rhadine . It

7119-411: The evidence. In 1959, Denys Page, for example, stated that Sappho's extant fragments portray "the loves and jealousies, the pleasures and pains, of Sappho and her companions"; and he adds, "We have found, and shall find, no trace of any formal or official or professional relationship between them... no trace of Sappho the principal of an academy." Campbell in 1967 judged that Sappho may have "presided over

7232-463: The first-century   BC Porta Maggiore Basilica in Rome. 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. Horace called her " mascula Sappho " ("masculine 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

7345-535: The form of epic poetry – works such as the Palinode were also a recasting of epic material: in that version of the Trojan War, the combatants fought over a phantom Helen while the real Helen either stayed home or went to Egypt (see a summary below ). The 'Lyric Age' of Greece was in part self-discovery and self-expression – as in the works of Alcaeus and Sappho – but a concern for heroic values and epic themes still endured: Stesichorus' citharodic narrative points to

7458-536: The four surviving vases in which she is identified by an inscription she is never shown singing. 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. From the fourth century   BC, ancient works portray Sappho as

7571-419: The heat of her heart". Some scholars theorize that the Tithonus poem was among her works meant for a solo singer. Only fragments of Sappho's choral works are extant; of these, her epithalamia (wedding songs) survive better than her cultic hymns. The later compositions were probably meant for antiphonal performance between either a male and female choir or a soloist and choir. In Sappho's time, sung poetry

7684-571: The humanisation of Geryon through the mention of his parents and the poppy simile has been highlighted by critics. Stesichorus He was ranked among the nine lyric poets esteemed by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria , and yet his work attracted relatively little interest among ancient commentators, so that remarkably few fragments of his poetry now survive. As David Campbell notes: "Time has dealt more harshly with Stesichorus than with any other major lyric poet." Recent discoveries, recorded on Egyptian papyrus (notably and controversially,

7797-414: The indirect transmission of her work supports this notion. However, the papyrus tradition suggests that this may not have been the case: a series of papyri published in 2014 contains fragments of ten consecutive poems from an ancient edition of Sappho, of which only two are certainly love poems, while at least three and possibly four are primarily concerned with family. It is uncertain when Sappho's poetry

7910-645: The island of Lesbos . Sappho is known for her lyric poetry , written to be sung while accompanied by music. In ancient times, Sappho was widely regarded as one of the greatest lyric poets and was given names such as the "Tenth Muse " and "The Poetess". Most of Sappho's poetry is now lost, and what is extant has mostly survived in fragmentary form; only the Ode to Aphrodite is certainly complete. As well as lyric poetry, ancient commentators claimed that Sappho wrote elegiac and iambic poetry. Three epigrams formerly attributed to Sappho are extant, but these are actually Hellenistic imitations of Sappho's style. Little

8023-443: The lock of Berenice's hair from Berenice herself. In the first century   BC, the Roman poet 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, giving his lover in his poetry the name " Lesbia " in reference to Sappho, and adapting and translating Sappho's 31st fragment in his poem 51 . Fragment 31

8136-421: The love poetry for which she is best known, her surviving works include poetry focused on the family, epic-influenced narrative, wedding songs, cult hymns, and invective. With the exception of a few songs, where the performance context can be deduced from the surviving fragments with some degree of confidence, scholars disagree on how and where Sappho's works were performed. They seem to have been composed for

8249-400: The name wasn't unique — there seems to have been more than one poet of this name (see Spurious works below). The Suda in yet another entry refers to the fact, now verified by Papyrus fragments, that Stesichorus composed verses in units of three stanzas (strophe, antistrophe and epode), a format later followed by poets such as Bacchylides and Pindar . Suda claims this three-stanza format

8362-402: The people of Himera, warning them against Phalaris, and another to the people of Locri , warning them against presumption (possibly referring to their war against Rhegium ). Philodemus believed that the poet once stood between two armies (which two, he doesn't say) and reconciled them with a song — but there is a similar story about Terpander . According to the 9th century scholar Photius ,

8475-460: The philosopher Plato the poet's father was named Euphemus, but an inscription on a herm from Tivoli listed him as Euclides. The poet's mathematically inclined brother was named Mamertinus by the Suda but a scholiast in a commentary on Euclid named him Mamercus. Stesichorus's lyrical treatment of epic themes was well-suited to a western Greek audience, owing to the popularity of hero-cults in southern Italy and Magna Graeca , as for example

8588-484: 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. These ancient authors do not appear to have believed that Sappho did, in fact, have sexual relationships with other women, and as late as the 10th century the Suda records that Sappho was "slanderously accused" of having sexual relationships with her "female pupils". Among modern scholars, Sappho's sexuality

8701-616: The physical effects of desire in fragment 31. Many Hellenistic poets alluded to or adapted Sappho's works. The Locrian 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 female poet. Several of Theocritus ' poems allude to Sappho, including Idyll 28, which imitates both her language and meter. Poems such as Erinna 's Distaff and Callimachus ' Lock of Berenice are Sapphic in theme, being concerned with separation – Erinna from her childhood friend;

8814-420: The poems themselves. Some time in the second or third century   BC, Alexandrian scholars produced a critical edition of her poetry. 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 . This is not certain – ancient sources tell us that Aristarchus' edition of Alcaeus replaced

8927-469: The potsherd on which fragment 2 is preserved, date to the third century   BC, and thus might predate the Alexandrian edition. The latest surviving copies of her 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. Manuscript copies of her works may have survived

9040-435: The public ritual nature of cultic hymns and wedding songs, tend to avoid giving details of a specific chronological, geographical, or occasional setting, which Kurke suggests facilitated their reperformance by performers outside Sappho's original context. Sappho's poetry is known for its clear language and simple thoughts, sharply-drawn images, and use of direct quotation that brings a sense of immediacy. Unexpected word-play

9153-536: 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. The earliest surviving manuscripts of Sappho, including

9266-602: The same light until she magically punished him with blindness for blaspheming her in one of his poems. According to a colourful account recorded by Pausanias , she later sent an explanation to Stesichorus via a man from Croton , who was on a pilgrimage to White Island in the Black Sea (near the mouth of the Blue Danube), and it was in response to this that Stesichorus composed the Palinode, absolving her of all blame for

9379-437: The seventh-century   BC poet Terpander . The Aeolic metrical tradition in which she 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 that allowed for the substitution of two short syllables for one long or vice versa. Sappho was one of the first Greek poets to adopt the "lyric 'I'" – to write poetry adopting

9492-433: The simultaneous coexistence of different literary genres and currents in an age of great artistic energy and experimentation. It is one of the exciting qualities of early Greek culture that forms continue to evolve, but the old traditions still remain strong as points of stability and proud community, unifying but not suffocating. —Charles Segal. The following description of the birthplace of the monster Geryon , preserved as

9605-469: The standard edition; Dimitrios Yatromanolakis doubts this, noting that though ancient sources refer to an eighth book of her poetry, none mention a ninth. 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. Book one of the Alexandrian edition, made up of poems in Sapphic stanzas, seems to have been ordered alphabetically. Even after

9718-480: 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. Sappho's poetry is still considered extraordinary and her works continue to influence other writers. Beyond her poetry, she

9831-419: The sun-scorched Grass. In my fury I seem like a dead woman, But I would dare... — Sappho 31, trans. Edward Storer Sappho worked within a well-developed tradition of poetry from Lesbos, which had evolved its own poetic diction, metres, and conventions. Prior to Sappho and her contemporary Alcaeus, Lesbos was associated with poetry and music through the mythical Orpheus and Arion , and through

9944-633: The surviving fragments of Sappho contain only a single word – for example, fragment 169A is simply a word meaning "wedding gifts" ( ἀθρήματα , athremata ), and survives as part of a dictionary of rare words. 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 rediscovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. Other fragments survive on other materials, including parchment and potsherds. The oldest surviving fragment of Sappho currently known

10057-572: The term eight all (used by gamblers at dice) derives from an expensive burial the poet received outside Catana, including a monument with eight pillars, eight steps and eight corners, but the 3rd century grammarian Julius Pollux attributed the same term to an 'eight all ways' tomb given to the poet outside Himera. Many modern scholars don't accept the Suda' s claim that Stesichorus was named for his innovations in choral poetry — there are good reasons to believe that his lyrical narratives were composed for solo performance (see Works below). Moreover

10170-493: The twentieth century, scholars began to interpret Sappho as involved in the ritual education of girls, for instance as a trainer of choruses of girls. Though not all of her poems can be interpreted in this light, Lardinois argues that this is the most plausible social context to site Sappho in. Another interpretation which became popular in the twentieth century was of Sappho as a priestess of Aphrodite. However, though Sappho wrote hymns, including some dedicated to Aphrodite, there

10283-408: The tyrannical ambitions of Phalaris. The Byzantine grammarian Tzetzes also listed him as a contemporary of the tyrant and yet made him a contemporary of the philosopher Pythagoras as well. According to Lucian , the poet lived to 85 years of age. Hieronymus declared that his poems became sweeter and more swan-like as he approached death, and Cicero knew of a bronzed statue representing him as

10396-501: The use of lengthy melismata developed in the later classical period. Sappho wrote both songs for solo and choral performance. With Alcaeus, she pioneered a new style of sung monody (single-line melody) that departed from the multi-part choral style that largely defined earlier Greek music. 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

10509-468: The versatility of lyric meter is suited to solo performance with self-accompaniment on the lyre – which is how Homer himself delivered poetry. Whether or not it was a choral technique, the triadic structure of Stesichorean lyrics allowed for novel arrangements of dactylic meter – the dominant meter in his poems and also the defining meter of Homeric epic – thus allowing for Homeric phrasing to be adapted to new settings. However, Stesichorus did more than recast

10622-422: The viewpoint of a specific person, in contrast to the earlier poets Homer and Hesiod , who present themselves more as "conduits of divine inspiration". 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. Much of her poetry focuses on the lives and experiences of women. Along with

10735-414: The word is used for familial but not sexual relationships. According to the Suda , Sappho was married to Kerkylas of Andros . This name appears to have been invented by a comic poet: the name Kerkylas appears to be a diminutive of the word kerkos , a possible meaning of which is "penis", and which is not otherwise attested as a name, while "Andros", as well as being the name of a Greek island,

10848-462: Was Sappho's daughter. Fragment 132 describes Cleïs as " pais ", which, as well as meaning "child", can also refer to the "youthful beloved in a male homosexual liaison". It has been suggested that Cleïs was one of her younger lovers, rather than her daughter, though Judith Hallett argues that the description of Cleis as " agapata " ("beloved") in fragment 132 suggests that Sappho was referring to Cleïs as her daughter, as in other Greek literature

10961-480: Was active until around 570   BC. Tradition names Sappho's mother as Cleïs. This may derive from a now-lost poem or record, though ancient scholars may simply have guessed this name, assuming that Sappho's daughter was named Cleïs after her mother. Ancient sources record ten different names for Sappho's father; this proliferation of possible names suggests that he was not explicitly named in any of her poetry. The earliest and most commonly attested name for him

11074-422: Was an expert in geometry and a second brother Helianax, a law-giver. He was a lyric poet. His poems are in the Doric dialect and in 26 books. They say that he was blinded for writing abuse of Helen and recovered his sight after writing an encomium of Helen, the Palinode, as the result of a dream. He was called Stesichorus because he was the first to establish ( stesai ) a chorus of singers to the cithara ; his name

11187-412: Was caricatured as a promiscuous heterosexual woman, and the earliest surviving sources to explicitly discuss Sappho's homoeroticism come from the Hellenistic period. The earliest of these is a fragmentary biography written on papyrus in the late third or early second century   BC, which states that Sappho was "accused by some of being irregular in her ways and a woman-lover". Denys Page comments that

11300-482: Was considered sorrowful; it was commonly used in Greek tragedy , and Aristoxenus believed that the tragedians learned it from Sappho. Aristoxenus attributed to Sappho the invention of this mode, but this is unlikely. While there are no attestations that she used other modes , she presumably varied them depending on the poem's character. When originally sung, each syllable of her text likely corresponded to one note as

11413-460: Was due to him moving from Metauros to Himera later in life. When exiled from Pallantium in Arcadia he came to Katane ( Catania ) and when he died there was buried in front of the gate which is called Stesichorean after him. In date he was later than the lyric poet Alcman , since he was born in the 37th Olympiad (632/28 BC). He died in the 56th Olympiad (556/2 BC). He had a brother Mamertinus who

11526-493: Was even more Homeric than ancient commentators realized – they had assumed that he composed verses for performance by choirs (the triadic structure of the stanzas, comprising strophe, antistrophe and epode, is consistent with choreographed movement) but a poem such as the Geryoneis included some 1500 lines and it probably required about four hours to perform – longer than a chorus might reasonably be expected to dance. Moreover,

11639-406: Was first written down. Some scholars believe that she wrote her own poetry down for future readers; others that if she wrote her works down it was as an aid to reperformance rather than as a work of literature in its own right. 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

11752-514: Was from the island of Lesbos and lived at the end of the seventh and beginning of the sixth centuries   BC. This is the date given by most ancient sources, who considered her a contemporary of the poet Alcaeus and the tyrant Pittacus , both also from Lesbos. She therefore may have been born in the third quarter of the seventh century – Franco Ferrari infers a date of around 650 or 640   BC; David Campbell suggests around or before 630   BC. Gregory Hutchinson suggests she

11865-428: Was fundamentally a lesbian. 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. Melissa Mueller argues that Sappho's poetry can be read as queer even if the question of her lesbianism is undecidable. In antiquity, Sappho's poetry was highly admired, and several ancient sources refer to her as

11978-464: Was originally Tisias. The specific dates given by the Suda for Stesichorus have been dismissed by one modern scholar as "specious precision" — its dates for the floruit of Alcman (the 27th Olympiad), the life of Stesichorus (37th–56th Olympiads) and the birth of Simonides (the 56th Olympiad) virtually lay these three poets end-to-end, a coincidence that seems to underscore a convenient division between old and new styles of poetry. Nevertheless,

12091-406: Was part of a more general decline in interest in the archaic poets; indeed, the surviving papyri suggest that Sappho's poetry survived longer than that of her contemporaries such as Alcaeus. 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

12204-477: Was popularly referred to as the three of Stesichorus in a proverbial saying rebuking cultural buffoons ("You don't even know the three of Stesichorus!"). According to one modern scholar, however, this saying could instead refer to the following three lines of his poem The Palinode , addressed to Helen of Troy: Helen of Troy's bad character was a common theme among poets such as Sappho and Alcaeus and, according to various ancient accounts, Stesichorus viewed her in

12317-466: Was published in 1967. Additional fragments can be found in Book 11 of Athenaeus ' Deipnosophistae . The extant parts of the poem exhibit numerous lacunae , with only fragment 19 (= 15 SLG ) displaying long stretches of uninterrupted text. The length of the complete poem is estimated to 1300 lines. The extant parts of the poem begin with the prelude of the fight between Heracles and Geryon. They include:

12430-405: Was still quoted in later authors. Her work became more accessible in the 16th 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,

12543-399: Was the grandson of Hesiod yet even this verges on anachronism since Hesiod was composing verses around 700 BC. Stesichorus might be regarded as Hesiod's literary "heir" (his treatment of Helen in the Palinode, for example, may have owed much to Hesiod's Catalogue of Women ) and maybe this was the source of confusion about a family relationship. According to Stephanus of Byzantium and

12656-445: Was usually accompanied by musical instruments , which usually doubled the voice in unison or played homophonically an octave higher or lower. Her poems mention numerous instruments, including the pektis , a harp of Lydian origin, and lyre . Sappho is most closely associated with the barbitos , a lyre-like string instrument that was deep in pitch. Euphorion of Chalcis reports that she referred to it in her poetry, and

12769-466: Was written to be sung, but its musical content is largely uncertain. As it is unlikely that any system of musical notation existed in Ancient Greece before the fifth century, the original music that accompanied her songs probably did not survive until the classical period , and no ancient musical scores to accompany her poetry survive. Sappho reportedly wrote in the mixolydian mode , which

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