Some historical fact and some points of cultural reference are needed to flesh out the bare information about Sappho from her verse. A basic source of information comes from the Suda, reflecting what was known about the poet Sappho in the tenth century Byzantine world. While not considered authoritative information, this is perhaps the best we have on many ancient topics, since much of the information available then is now irretrievably lost to us. "Sappho: daughter of Simon or Eumenos or Eerigonius or Ecrytos or Semos or Camon or Etarchus or Scamandronymos. Her mother was Kleis from Eresus on Lesbos......" The number of possible parental names is more interesting for the names themselves rather than the actual family line. These have been examined for linguistic links to Near Eastern languages, and there is a suspicion that Sappho's name as well as those of some of these fathers may be of eastern origin.
Simon Ecrytos Semos and Camon do not seem to be Greek names, and the final name Scamandronymos is "Named from (river) Scamndros" which was near Troy.
"Flourished in the 42nd Olympiad when Alcaeus Stesichorus and Pittacus were living......" We now calculate the Ol.42 to be 612-608 BC. Alcaeus is thought to have been born after 625, Stesichorus is traditionally dated at Ol.37, and Pittacus born somewhat earlier in OL 32 is said to have died in 570. So this establishes a relative frame of reference for Sappho's date.
"She had three brothers, Larches, Charaxos and Eurygios. She was married to a wealthy man called Cercylas working out of Andros, and she had a daughter from him named Cleis...." The name of the daughter is traditional after her grandmother, or it could be the other way around, but by ancient tradition one of the other could well be a real name. The name Cercylas is unusual, and one serious scholar has thought it was a pun on 'kerkos' meaning "tail of an animal; penis ", especially since the island Andros would be taken etymologically to be related to 'andra' or "man". This is the kind of ribald joke Aristophanes would have enjoyed: "Mr. Dick from the Isle of Man". Compare Yiddish "schmuck" as a penile pejorative, also from a normal German word "decoration" as something hanging down. Or it could be the man's legitimate name coming with a punning background, like "Smucker's Strawberry Jam ["With a name like that, it's got to be good"]".
"She had three companions and friends, Atthis, Telesippa and Megara, and she got a bad name for an indecent friendship with them. Her pupils were Anagora of Miletus, Gongyla of Colophon, and Eunica of Salamis...."
The names are interesting since they are tied to cities at a distance from Lesbos, and a papyrus fragment of a commentary on Sappho notes that her students came from the noblest families of Ionia. This geographical spread across the sea to Turkey on the one side and mainland Salamis on the other implies some sort of school for young women, perhaps a cult oriented academy in the name of Aphrodite as suitable for future brides. In this case it could be seen, perhaps with a whimsical turn of mind, as pre-Jane Austen academy: "St. Aphrodite's Finishing School for Young Ladies of Quality".
The twofold classification of girls is interesting, since the first group are listed as 'hetairai' which could mean associates, although the word is later used for sexual partners and geishas. It could be that the Suda is aware of the matter of Sappho's supposed homosexuality, and it is the writer who chooses the word 'hetaira' as being sexual in his time. But the other three girls who are given much more identity by their homeland origins, are clearly listed as "students" or 'mathetai'. Perhaps the two name groups came from different sources, and are only here lumped together while listing girl associates. "She wrote nine books of lyric poems, and invented the 'pléctron'. She also wrote epigrams, elegaic couplets, iambics and monodic songs." The number of books she wrote is variable, other sources say seven, but since we have almost nothing of these collections, the number is inconsequential. From what we have, we associate Sappho with pure lyric poetry, but apparently she wrote in a wide variety of styles and forms, and the last term 'monodia' or Solo Song would have been her N us out on the wrong foot when approaching an ancient poet, we miss the message of the acoustic part of the composition, and tend to busy ourselves with what the poem "means" in terms of word and sentence communication. We will go into this in more detail later in the Commentary, as a critical pathway into the full mean of Sappho's poetry.
Curiously the Suda has a second entry for Sappho, which maintains that there were two people of the same name: "Sappho, a woman from Mitylene on Lesbos, lyre-player (psaltria). This Sappho, because she was in love with Phaon of Mitylene, threw herself into the sea from the Leucadian cliff. Some state that she also composed lyric poetry."
It seems odd that the Suda would have two entries, which should mean that there were two sources of information at hand. It has been assumed by some that this is the same Sappho and perhaps someone wished to avoid the associations with various girls as prejudicial to her reputation, but this story have a very different cast. Sappho # I was married, had a child, and some sort of educational projects in hand, while Sappho # II has none of this but a fatal attraction for a local boy and she commits suicide. Note that Phaon can also be the present participle of the verb 'pha-o' as 'phaon, phaontos' meaning "the bright shining (one)' and this accords with the name of the Leucadian cliff as 'leukados' from 'leukos' or "white".
Hesychius has a gloss for 'melanouros' or "black tailed" (of the bullhead fish avoided by Pythagoreans) as 'leuko-kerkos' or 'white-penised', only worth mentioning here because of the Leuk=adian Cliff and the husband Cerkylos of Sappho I. (?).
The geographer Strabo 10.2.9 notes a ritual annually practiced at the Leucadian cliff, involving someone leaping or hurled down into the sea as a rite of aversion of evil. But the person is saved by villagers waiting at the sea level. He mentions this in conjunction with Sappho's supposed leap, but this 'footnote' to her story sounds like something quite different from a lover's leap to death. This will probably remain a mystery. A papyrus account of Sappho from around 200 AD has much the same account but adds an interesting detail which would surprise the many painters and sculptors of the l9th century who envisioned the poet as soft, delicate and radiantly beautiful.
"In appearance she seems to have been contemptible and bad-looking, being rather dark skinned (phaios) in appearance, and in stature very short. The same is true of Alcaeus, who was also rather small.... (a part missing)......"
Since we are talking about the eastern side of the Greek world, and there is now much evidence that there were ethnic strains other than Hellenic Greek in that area, it may be tentatively suspected that Sappho might be from an ethnic Hattic population group. Sappho's name is clearly non-Greek, especially with her original and authentic spelling "Psapph-o". Her countryman Alcaeus rejoices in the death of a local tyrant named Mursilos, who has a clearly Hittite name (the dysphonic King Mursilis III of the tablets).
So the trait to follow would seem to be small stature in any skeletal remains from Ionia as compared to stature on the Greek peninsula. But what is more important is to revise our mental portrait of the Greek Lady of Poetry, as less Aphroditic perhaps but more real according to this ancient description, a historical woman of flesh and bone.
Six centuries later the Roman Horace refers in passing to 'mascula Sappho' (Epistulae I 19,28) temperat Archilochi musam pede mascula Sappho "masculine Sappho tempers the style (Musam) of Archilochus with meters" The commentator Porphyrio remarks "mascula autem Saffo, vel quia in poetico studio
In other words she is at least in his opinion clear on all sexual counts. Could it be that there is some further meaning to Horace's remarks, that he sees what he considers a firm and positive manner of using words, involving daring or unusual expressions, especially expressing her sexual feelings? We know little about women's sexuality in the ancient world, but the only female Roman poet was have, Sulpicia, writes in the few lines we have from her about her erotic emotions in a very man-like mode, which may have surprised Romans who thought that love-poetry was for men to write about women. Horace's word "masculine" could possibly refer to such an expectation, perhaps made the clearer by his own role as a male love-poet writing in the footsteps of the famous Sappho who was a female love-poet.
Since the poem which Dionysos uses for his analysis was famous in antiquity and certainly well known to Horace, it may be that the next to last word in the poem, 'summachos' or "Ally" could have been the reason for his word 'mascula'. This word is used in the world of Hellenic politics by the historians, it is a word from the male controlled confederations of states and armies, and its use as an emphatic keyword in Sappho's prayer could call up masculine associations for Horace. Why would Sappho ever talk about her treaty-based military Ally? When we read Sappho in our modern print-conscious habit, we must remind ourselves that throughout the ancient world, the craft of poetry was a musical art, and the line between a poem and a song performance was thin or often non-existent. Even as late as the second century AD, the litterateur Aulus Gellius could tell in his academic Noctes Atticae (19.9.3) a story about an evening at the home of a literary gentleman: "Is (the rhetorician Antonius Julianus) ubi edulis finis et poculis mox sermonibus tempus fuit, desideravit exhiberi, quos habere eum adulescentulum (the host) sciebat, scitissimos utriusque sexus, qui canerent voce et psallerent. Ac posteaquam introducti pueri puellaeque sunt, iucundum in modum ajnakreovnteia pleraque et Sapphica et poetarum quoque recentium elegeia quaedam erotica dulcia et venusta cecinerunt."
What is important here is that a group of youthful singers who could also play the lyre (psallerent) were able to furnish entertainment at a formal sumptuous dinner, and do a set of classical pieces from the Lyric poets of yore as well as recent compositions. This must mean that the ancient modes of song-art were still current in the 2nd c. AD Greco-Roman world. It is not clear from the wording if the Anacreon and Sappho songs were done in formal classical style, as against the modern compositions which are noted as "love-styled, sweet and charming". But what is important to note is that still at this late date Sappho was sung as a set performance by groups of well trained and effective singers along with instrumental accompaniment. It would seem that educated and literary Romans, aware of the supreme position of Greek art of poetry, would probably have tried to be faithful to what they felt were the standards of the ancient poets, just as we try to recreate the original mise en scene by staging Shakespeare in a replica of the Globe theater of l606 . The complete poetry of Sappho was readily available to read throughout the Empire, but here we have an unudusl apercu into an actual performance.
While at Rome, a word is due about Catullus' lady love "Lesbia" and why he applied this name to Clodia, the infamous and profligate sister of an equally profligate brother Publius Clodius. The standard view seems to be that since Sappho was a poet, and perhaps Clodia had (or had had) an interest in poetry and literature in general (?), hence as an educated woman or 'docta' she could also be called Sapphic, i.e. "Lesbia". Clodia was not "lesbian' in any sense, rather a devourer of attractive young men like Catullus, and anathema to the Puritanical Cicero who attacked her in his speech "Pro Caelio. Could Catullus have named her thus with tongue in cheek, aware of the sexual scandals attributed by then to the poet Lady of Lesbos? Or could Clodia have shown some bisexual inclinations, (not impossible in an age when Caesar was publicly twitted as boyfriend of Prince Nicomedes), something which Catullus could have been tolerantly aware of, but lost to us in the far mist of history?
At a later date, Apuleius somewhere in the second century AD, could make a note in his Apologia (Section 9), speaking about Sappho and erotic or love-poetry: "..etiam mulier Lesbia, lascive illa quidem tantaque gratia ut nobis insolentiam linguae suae dulcedine carminum commendet......" "Aside from the erotic or lascivious quality of her content, thesweetness of her language seems to make amends to us for the unusualness (insolentia) of her writing. "
In the term 'insolentia' we can understand the unfamiliar Greek of the Aeolic dialect which even then, in a time when much Aeolic lyric poetry was available to read and study in the academies of the Empire, seemed strange beside normal Attic as currently taught to Roman readers. Just so we might find Chaucer 'unfamiliar' beside modern school anthology reading, and be charmed by his quaintness, as Apuleius is charmed by the 'sweetness' of Sappho. As a footnote regarding Apuleius, who was certainly well versed in Greek literature, witness his curiously unfamiliar style of writing Latin in a highly Grecistic mode, if he found Sappho hard to read, then her writing was clearly "antique Classical" by then, rather than classical in the sense of belonging to a continuing living tradition. From the large number of papyri from Egypt with poems of Sappho, it would seem she was part of the "background reading " of literature in the academies. So Apuleius' note about the esthetic quality of her poetry points to poetic life of her poetry, which within the school tradition is still valid. There is a remark about the impression which Sappho's poetry could make on a receptive and esthetic mind, which comes down to us by a circuitous route. It is from the great Lawgiver Solon, as noted by Aelian around 200 AD and re-quoted by Stobaeus several centuries later. This is especially interesting since Solon lived from about 640-560 BC, which makes him a full contemporary of the poet from Lesbos across the sea in the Aeolic isles. If the story is true, it speaks for a pan-Hellenic literary awareness reaching from Turkey to central Greece, something for which we have no other evidence. It has been questioned whether the story really pertains to Solon at all, but it is the flavor of the content rather than the source of the story which seems important here:
Sovlwn oJ Aqhnai`o~ oJ Exhkestivdou para povton tou
adelfidou` autou` mevlo~ ti Sapfou`~ av/santo~, hJvsqh tw/
mevlei kai prosevtaxe tw`/ meirakivw/ didavxai autovn.
erwthvsanto~ de tino~ dia poivan aitivan tou`to espouvdasen,
oJ de evfh iJna maqwn auto, apoqavnw.
"Solon of Athens the son of Execestides, once when his nephew was singing a song of Sappho's over the wine, was much beguiled by the song, and asked the lad to teach it to him. When someone asked him the reason for this, he replied: I just want to learn it and die!"
Beyond the question of whether the story is about Solon or someone else, this passage does tell something important about the immediate effect of Sappho's poetry. We live now in a world where poetry is usually read in a finely printed edition, in the quiet of one's study and in a contemplative mood which smoothes out the roughnesses of the day. This was precisely the way Cicero thought about poetry, he says as much in his defense of the poet Archias, and it may be less chance than similarity of character which put the Roman and the American so often on the same side of the esthetic gateway.
Critics of the current scene sometimes note the placid and easy subjectivity which much modern poetry evinces, and would wish for a stronger approach, even a mind gripping quality of ecstatic feeling which could reinvigorate the way we think of poetic creativity. In the Greek world which continued after the 4th century into a comfortable literary ambiance well furnished with libraries of Classic Literature and academies whose work was to deal out the libraries of writing to the educated public, the esthetic spark was no longer alive. Love poetry became pre-configured, just as Roman wall painting became room-decoration, and the poetry written in the long centuries from the age of Alexander through the Byzantine beginnings never claimed a place in what we think of as world-literature.
But as we push back even beyond the famous 5 th c. BC into the shape of the Archaic Period, we find much ferment of form and content in a matrix of intense esthetic activity. Homer had an finely focused vision which came from an intense perception of life and men doing things in a re-created epic style tableau. Archilochus reaching against the epic mold, personalized his own world, and was the first poet to speak from his own person, pushing the Homeric curtain back to see little people living seamy lives on isolated islands where the gods never really interfere.
Sappho goes one step further, proceeding inside the heart and mind of a woman who feels things strongly, and somehow she finds words to serve as carriers of her emotional activity. Just so the figures on black-figure vases are always rushing ahead, dancing in a hurry to war, staring with intense gaze across the six inches of a pottery scene. Action, motion, and passion are the earmarks of these centuries, and Sappho is right in the middle of a period of vast change of mentality.
I believe the quotation about Solon may be historically accurate, by the fact that it would take a man from that very period to get the full impact of a poem of Sappho as newly written in that exciting and moving age. If later scholars would commend Sappho's writing as lovely and charming, sweet and delightful, that is a mark of their own later sensibilities. But it would be someone living in that live period who would get the meaning straight-on.
Solon's idea about learning the poem and then expiring on the spot, does show what the intensity of a full confrontation with the poems' words could be like in that alive Archaic Age.
When you see something quite beautiful, it is an overwhelming experience. And you know at that moment that as you go on with your hour and your life, that experience is going to be retained only as a memory of an experience, the shadow of a flash and nothing more. So if there were a way to hold onto it and keep yourself at that point of intense and even excruciating appreciation, it could be done only by something like ceasing to exist completely, staying at that moment forever. Is there a way to stop Time so the beauty can remain? Is Death not like that, a staying at that moment forever?
There are certain books you don't want to finish reading, because when the last page is folded over, there isn't going to be any more. Reading a poem of Sappho is like that, despite the difficulties of the broken papyrus text, the problems with untranslatable words from a distant language written in on obscure local dialect. We want to hold onto the poem, keep the sense of that minute of perception, beyond which everything else is going to be in some way a disappointment. Love is like that, and Sappho is the poet of the world of loving hearts.
But as we step away from the age which contains the creative moment, we tend to see things differently. When T.S.Eliot's "Wasteland" appeared some eighty years ago, it drove right into the solar plexus of a whole generation of thinking readers, just as Duchamps' "Lady Descending a Stairway" or Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" shocked the public mind into fright first and then learning about new ways to see. But now a century later these experiences are no longer the same, they are items taught in a college course about "Art in the 20th Century", a calm reassessment of the relics of a long buried movement. But it is possible to go back again and get the spirit of the early 20th century volcanic upheaval, which can be done by forgetting the critics and the commentators and going back to face what was then being breathed out of pure spirit and ecstatic improvisation. This can be done with the poetry of the Greek Archaic period, which has a contagious fire about itself, even though represented in scraps and bits and pieces. Yes, scraps, but very rare and precious scraps!
Tzetzes writing in the twelfth century, opens his discussion on the Odes of Pindar, with this sad reminder of the ravages of time:
epeidh paranavlwma tou crovnou egegovnei
kai hJ Sapfw kai ta Sapfou`~, hJ luvra kai ta mevlh,
fevre, soi pro~ paravdeigma qhvsomai stivcou~ avllou~.......
"Since there has occurred a wasting away of time,
and Sappho and all her stuff, the lyre and the songs,
come, I will find you an example of some other poetry...."
These sad words which mark for him the end of the Sapphic trail, could be taken as the threnody for the poet from the island of Lesbos, were it not for the discovery of papyri from the dry sands of Egypt toward the end of the l9th century. Much from that source is broken and useless, but there is a handful of readable poems to add to the old list, and for anything at all we have to be grateful. And as Tzetzes remarks, we do have something else with which we can console ourselves. We do have Pindar.
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