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92-694: Hymenaeus may refer to: Hymen (god) , also known as Hymenaios, a deity in Greek mythology Hymenaeus (biblical figure) , a heretical teacher in Ephesus Grady Louis McMurtry , also known as Hymenaeus Alpha William Breeze (Hymenaeus Beta), his successor in the Caliphate Ordo Templi Orientis Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with

184-434: 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

276-410: A burning torch in one hand. Hymen appears as a character in the final scene of William Shakespeare's pastoral comedy As You Like It in which he presides over the rites for four weddings. These include a dance of harmony for the eight characters entering their unions, including the play's protagonist and heroine Rosalind with her beloved Orlando . Hymen (1921) is an early book of poetry by

368-504: 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

460-527: 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

552-522: 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

644-502: 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

736-472: 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

828-416: 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

920-449: 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

1012-485: 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

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1104-508: 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

1196-418: 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

1288-405: 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

1380-444: 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

1472-519: 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

1564-401: A woman in order to join one of those processions, a religious rite at Eleusis in which only women went. The assemblage was captured by pirates, Hymen included. He encouraged the women and plotted strategy with them, and together, they killed their captors. He then agreed with the women to go back to Athens and win their freedom if he were allowed to marry one of them. He thus succeeded in both

1656-540: A woman's (first) marriage. The membrane's name was, therefore, not directly connected to that of the god, but they shared the same root and in folk etymology were sometimes supposed to be related. Hymen is supposed to attend every wedding. If he did not, the marriage would supposedly prove disastrous and so the Greeks would run about calling his name aloud. He presided over many of the weddings in Greek mythology , for all

1748-480: 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

1840-478: 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

1932-557: 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

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2024-453: 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

2116-568: 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

2208-447: 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

2300-490: 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

2392-448: 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

2484-433: 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

2576-525: Is stated to be the son of Dionysus . Other stories give Hymen a legendary origin. In one of the surviving fragments of the Megalai Ehoiai attributed to Hesiod , it's told that Magnes "had a son of remarkable beauty, Hymenaeus. And when Apollo saw the boy, he was seized with love for him, and wouldn't leave the house of Magnes". Aristophanes ' Peace ends with Trygaeus and the Chorus singing

2668-703: 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

2760-576: 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

2852-667: Is the bridegroom; blest am I also, the maiden soon to wed a princely lord in Argos. Hail Hymen, king of marriage! Hymen is also mentioned in Virgil 's Aeneid and in seven plays by William Shakespeare : Hamlet , The Tempest , Much Ado about Nothing , Titus Andronicus , Pericles, Prince of Tyre , Timon of Athens and As You Like It , where he joins the couples at the end — Tis Hymen peoples every town; High wedlock then be honoured. Honour, high honour, and renown, To Hymen, god of every town! Hymen also appears in

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2944-458: 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

3036-589: Is the son of Apollo and one of the muses , Clio or Calliope or Urania or Terpsichore . Hymen's name is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root * syuh₁-men -, "to sew together," hence, "joiner;" it is also recorded in Doric Greek as Ῡ̔μᾱ́ν ( Hyman ). The term hymen was also used for a thin skin or membrane such as the hymen , which covers the vaginal opening and was traditionally supposed to be broken by sexual intercourse after

3128-479: 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 –

3220-731: 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

3312-672: 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

3404-472: 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

3496-415: 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

3588-460: 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

3680-473: 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 ,

3772-434: 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

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3864-511: The American modernist poet H.D. The eponymous long poem of the collection imagines an ancient Greek women's ritual for a bride. [REDACTED] Media related to Hymen (god) at Wikimedia Commons 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

3956-590: 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

4048-589: 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

4140-407: 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

4232-426: 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

4324-539: 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

4416-488: The deities and their children. Hymen is celebrated in the ancient marriage song of unknown origin (called a Hymenaios) Hymen o Hymenae, Hymen delivered by G. Valerius Catullus . Hymen was mentioned in Euripides 's The Trojan Women in which Cassandra says: Bring the light, uplift and show its flame! I am doing the god's service, see! I making his shrine to glow with tapers bright. O Hymen, king of marriage! blest

4508-403: 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

4600-463: 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

4692-400: 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

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4784-520: 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

4876-533: 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

4968-411: 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

5060-463: 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

5152-536: 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

5244-419: 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

5336-414: 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

5428-645: 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

5520-443: 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

5612-421: 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

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5704-530: The mission and the marriage, and his marriage was so happy that Athenians instituted festivals in his honour, and he came to be associated with marriage. According to Apollodorus , "the Orphics report" that Hymenaeus was among those resurrected by Asclepius . At least since the Italian Renaissance , Hymen was generally represented in art as a young man wearing a garland of flowers and holding

5796-484: 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

5888-616: 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;

5980-420: 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

6072-469: 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

6164-435: 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

6256-536: 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

6348-437: 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

6440-469: 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

6532-480: 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

6624-419: 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

6716-633: 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

6808-453: The title Hymenaeus . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hymenaeus&oldid=859254163 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Hymen (god) Hymen

6900-493: 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

6992-501: 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

7084-422: 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

7176-563: The wedding song, with the repeated phrase "Oh Hymen! Oh Hymenaeus!", a typical refrain for a wedding song. According to Athenaeus , Likymnios of Chios , in his Dithyrambics , says that Hymenaeus was the erastes of Argynnus , a boy from Boeotia . Maurus Servius Honoratus , in his commentaries on Virgil 's Eclogues , mentions that Hesperus , the Evening Star, inhabited Mount Oeta in Thessaly and that there he had loved

7268-414: 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,

7360-519: The work of the 7th- to 6th-century BCE Greek poet Sappho (translation: M. L. West , Greek Lyric Poetry , Oxford University Press): High must be the chamber – Hymenaeum! Make it high, you builders! A bridegroom's coming – Hymenaeum! Like the War-god himself, the tallest of the tall! Hymen is most commonly the son of Apollo and one of the Muses . In Seneca's play Medea , he

7452-456: The young Hymenaeus, son of Apollo with a similar singing voice, which he was said to have lost at the wedding of Dionysus and Ariadne . According to a later romance, Hymen was an Athenian youth of great beauty but low birth who fell in love with the daughter of one of the city's wealthiest women. Since he could not speak to her or court her because of his social standing, he instead followed her wherever she went. Hymen disguised himself as

7544-462: 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

7636-480: 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

7728-412: 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

7820-431: 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

7912-406: 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

8004-514: 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

8096-428: 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

8188-406: 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

8280-405: 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,

8372-445: 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

8464-466: 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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