The Laughter of Aphrodite: A Novel about Sappho of Lesbos

by Peter Green

Best-selling classicist Peter Green recreates the life and times of the Greek lyric poet Sappho in this beautifully conceived, sharply detailed work of historical imagination. We meet Sappho at the age of fifty, when she is shaken by her fatal and final love affair with Phaon. She narrates her own story from the vantage point of self-questioning middle age, and her candid meditations make intimate, engrossing reading.

Only fragments of Sappho's poetry survive. In imagining Sappho's life Green found his task "rather like that of an archaeologist reassembling some amphora from hundreds of shards—of which more than half are missing." Yet, in his synthesis of historical evidence and ebullient invention, Green produces a seamless, moving, and persuasive portrait. He recreates Sappho's life by interweaving her surviving poetry into the narrative, not as quotations, but as her own imagined speeches and thoughts.

Sappho's life spanned one of the most exciting periods in Greek history. Green's novel, full of details about daily life on ancient Lesbos, draws the reader into the political and social climate of her the civil strife accompanying the transition from aristocracy to mercantilism, the household relations between slave and aristocrat, the details of sea travel in the Aegean. Green wrote the novel while living on Lesbos, and his graceful rendering of the landscape, the rhythms of the seasons, and the varied flora of Sappho's island pervades the narrative.

Sappho's poetry reveals a direct, spontaneous woman who eschewed artifice and embellishment. Green's extraordinary talent captures those qualities and brings this woman of unflinching honesty very much to life.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Greece, Mythology, Queer, Classics, Poetry

274 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1965

About the author

There is more than one author by this name in the database.

Peter Morris Green was a British classical scholar and novelist noted for his works on the Greco-Persian Wars, Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age of ancient history, generally regarded as spanning the era from the death of Alexander in 323 BC up to either the date of the Battle of Actium or the death of Augustus in 14 AD.

Reviews

[Atena · Rating 1 out of 5]

TW: sexual abuse, misogyny, homophobia, pedophilia, incest, racism, ableism, suicide.

I think the best way to summarise my feelings for this piece of literature is admitting that I read most of it while I was in the bathroom, and I regret nothing except giving it a chance.

This review is for all my fellow wlw who, like me, saw the title of this book and instantly grabbed it, albeit a bit reticently when discovering that the author was, actually, a man. If you’re thinking, “Well, he might not be the person I would’ve chosen to write this specific biography, but let’s not be too harsh, the book might be good” or “Hey, even if the book is terrible, I might learn some cool and interesting historical facts about our lady and saviour” let me stop you right there. Been there, done that, and no, you’d be wrong on both accounts, so please throw this book as far away as possible and run in the opposite direction. I mean it. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Just leave it where you found it, you’ll be better off without it.

I see you’re still reading. Maybe you’d like to know the magnitude of the disaster, or you’re simply curious to see where this rant is going, or maybe both. Fine by me, I did make myself go through it, so might as well get something out of it, even if it’s just an unwarrantedly long review on Goodreads.

However, before we start, I’d like to state the fact that we know absolutely nothing of who Sapho was, or what kind of life she led; not only because she wasn’t the type of person that History remembers, but also because any recounts, contemporaneous or otherwise, or mentions of her that have survived to this day, must be taken with a pinch of salt, considering who and what she was. The author not only acknowledges this fact, but also admits, unapologetically may I add, that he has completely made up the ages, relations, and circumstances of the characters. The only thing that has remained unchanged are the cold historical facts, like the names of kings or whatever wars were happening during the period the story is set in.

Why do I make a point to state the above, specially since it may be considered obvious?

Because it means that whatever happens in this book happens because the author said so. There is no “historical accuracy”, which is always the main argument against this type of reviews in historical fiction, and certainly no indisputable existence of some historical events in Sappho’s life. We literally have nothing on her. The author actively chose to write the book the way he did. I cannot stress this enough. Whatever happens in the book, it was his decision. Just, remember this while we’re going forward.

With that being said, let’s get to it.

As I said before, reading this book was, quite honestly, torture, so I’m not gonna make you read a fully detailed review of every single one of its 360 pages (even though it probably was what you were expecting since it has taken me this long to finally get to it, and you’re probably thinking that I could’ve just summarised everything in like half a page or so, but hey, this is my review, and its going to be as long as I deem necessary. Also, you’re the one who decided to click on it, so I feel that it kinda is on you too.) Instead, I decided to make something like a Table of Contents of everything we can find inside this amazing book. Oh, and I won’t be calling the protagonist Sappho, since it clearly isn’t Her and it feels slightly insulting to give this random woman that name, so I decided to just call her S.

Here we go.

-Absolutely No Understanding Of Sapho’s Poems.

-A Sprinkle of Ableism.

-All Women Being Cruel And Manipulative.

-And Bitchy Because That’s The Way Women Are.

-S And Their Mother Having A Horrible Relation Because Of Reasons That Are Never Explored.

-S’s Mother And Aunt Hate Each Other And No We Will Not Specify Why, We Have Already Made Clear That Women Don’t Need Reasons To Hate One Another, They Simply Do.

-Every Single Female Character Being Called A Whore At Some Point, Even Multiple Times On Special Occasions (but none of the male ones are ever called a dick even though they’re all one.)

-Simultaneously, Random Slut Shaming And Absolutely No Respect For Sex Workers.

-Calling POC Women Exotic.

-Sexualising Every Single Thing A Woman Does (which includes, but is not restricted to, touching a wall, brushing off her dress, being spanked by her father as a child and committing suicide.)

-Every Single Man Having Lewd Thoughts For S (to the point that it’s almost comical. Almost.)

-An Obsession With Breasts (and not even in a relatable way, but more in a sick and creepy kind of way, where women are nothing more than a pair of walking mammaries.)

-An Obsession With Little Girls’ Breasts (or more specifically an obsession with describing how they’re not even there because we are, in fact, talking about children.)

-An Obessession With The Concept And Value of Virginity (while at the same time not understanding it at all.)

-Constantly Describing Grown Women As Childlike.

 -Using Adjectives Like Innocent and Ingenue To Describe Female Characters.

-S Blaming Herself For Provoking Her Rapist (you know, the way an 11-year-old girl provokes a 50-year-old man) And Then Trying To Convince The Reader Of How Much Of A Nice Guy He Is Since He Didn’t Actually Rape Her In The End.

-S’s Mother Dying Of A Tumour In Her Uterus That Made Her Extremely Horny And Sexually Inappropriate (while heavily implying that it’s a genetic pathology and that S will probably suffer from it, too.)

-Everybody Hating On The One (1) Non-Traditionally Feminine Female Character.

-Understanding Being Gay As Simply Looking At Women’s Breasts And Thighs And Constantly Sexualizing Them.

-S Being Attracted To Every Single Woman She Sees And Sexualising Every Single Interaction With Them (which includes but is not restricted to her mother, her cousin, her slave, her aunt, her daughter, her friend’s little sister.)

-S’s First Lover Is A Sugar Mommy And Also The Woman Married To Her Aunt’s Brother (and ends up brutally murdered and left to rot to the side of the road.)

-Her Aunt’s Brother Mansplaining To S Her Own Relationship With Her Wife.

-Comparing S’s Relationship With Her First Lover To The One She Has With Her Mother And The One She Will Have With Her Daughter.

-S’ Husband Manipulating and Coercing Her Into Marriage (and then the author trying to convince us that he is, in fact, a Great guy.)

-S’s Husband Mansplaining Her Own Queerness To Her.

-S’s Husband Mansplaining Feminism To Her.

-S’s Husband Being The One To Name S’s School.

-The Author Being Uncapable Of Letting Women Live Their Lifes Alone And Deciding That Every Time S’s Group Has A Meeting, At Least One Man Will Also Be Present (to mansplain their own problems to them, I assume.)

-Straight Up Looking For Any Man That Could Have Any Kind Of Interaction With S, And Then Focusing The Entire Narrative On Them (because that’s exactly what I wanted when I picked up this book.)

-Men Just Being Completely Unable To Shut Up And Accept That Not Everything Is About Them.

-Honestly, There Are Way Too Many Men Monologuing For Absolutely No Reason.

-S’s Second Lover Being Seventeen While She Is Twenty-Six.

-S’s Having Dreams Where She is Abused By Men and Liking It When She Becomes A Middle-Aged Woman.

-S’s Seducing Her Daughter’s Future Husband.

-S Killing Herself For Some Random Dude (yes, this is how the author chose to end the book.)

And I’m going to stop there because I think we get the gist of it. What I don’t get is why this book exists. The author clearly did not want to write it. For most of the book it’s almost as if he’s forgetting who the protagonist truly is. And then, when he remembers that he is writing the story from the POV of a woman, he makes some crass comment about her own breasts or uterus, and afterwards, remembering that she’s also supposed to be gay, turns his attention to other women’s attributes.

But it is painfully obvious that what he really wants to write about is the man who shared Sappho’s time period. He uses any excuse he can find to bring the narrative to them, to let them speak, and S slowly becomes a background character whose only job is to listen and admire them (because she is just a Dumb Female who needs every single thing explained to her by some Smart Man.) There’s no focus on who she was, on her school, on her lovers, or on any of the topics that would made someone want to read this story. He shows absolutely no interest in her whatsoever.

So, why?

Why not write of Periandrus, or Alceus, or any of the other male characters that he is so invested in, to the point that S is simply an excuse for the author to maintain a dialogue with men that have been dead for thousands of years (which is the only thing remotely relatable because, to be honest, who doesn’t have a historical character whom they wish they could be BFFs with.) There’s also some projecting going on if you squint a little, specially with the poet Alceus who is both ardently admired through S’s eyes and has a large part in the book, while simultaneously being constantly shitted on for being gay (and I did squint because I was extremely bored since I didn’t give two fucks about him.)

Why did he have to bring Sappho into it? Why did he have to bring me into it? And why do it in such a degrading way. Why did he have to grab someone like her and drag her to the mud in the most offensive way possible. Why throw her name around as if it was a simply vulgar word.

Just, why? Who is this book for? What was the thought process behind it? Why does it exist?

I don’t have the answers, and honestly, I don’t think the author does either. A part of me is actually grateful that he didn’t care to go into specifics with Sappho, or his version of her, because that means that every single one of my personal headcanons about her and her school are left unchallenged.

So yeah, let this be the lesson we take away from this experience: the real Sappho is the one that lives inside each and every one of us sapphics. Oh, and if you’re gut ever tells you to not read a book, listen to it. Life is too short to waste on shitty books written by shitty misogynistic men.
 

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

First published in 1965 this pretends to be an autobiography by the 7th century BCE Greek lyric poet Sappho, who lived on the island of Lesbos and indirectly contributed to the modern term lesbian. Very little is known about the real Sappho. Only one complete poem survives, along with many fragments ranging from a few tens of lines to isolated partial words. There are a few references about her from antiquity, most from several hundred years after her death. Everything else is conjecture. Peter Green is a well-respected historian of antiquity and a close reader of what is left of Sappho's work. He incorporates what he can and makes up the rest as plausibly as possible. But overall the novel seems more to be avoiding mistakes than presenting a vivid picture--Sappho describes a scene, then later says her first description wasn't accurate and describes it again. Then later revises it yet again. Various characters offer various opinions about situations, and no final decision on what actually happened ever is determined. One can almost feel Green trying to cover all the scholarly bases. Even on the final page Sappho offers this: "We are Aphrodite's playthings, there it begins and ends: our passions flare or fade at her cold whim, the self is nothing, the will is nothing....I Sappho of Mytilene deny, irrevocably, the words I have just set down. What I do now, I do by free choice and knowledge. My will is sovereign...No God, not immortal Aphrodite herself, can act through me if I will it otherwise." OK, so...? There are beautiful descriptions of the natural world and apt evocations of some of Sappho's sharpest poetic lines. There are also memorable metaphors--a merchant who could sniff out a profit as a pig sniffs out truffles, or a slave standing there grinning like a split melon. But overall a frustrating book that left me no closer to the world of Sappho than I was before.

[Rozonda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was deeply impressed by this book. I really love Sappho's poetry- the few fragments of her work that survive are so powerful that they're worth the whole works of other poets. But we know so little about her life, beyond the myths, legends and stories that posterity has built about her.

In spite of this, Green succeeds in writing a credible,beautiful and rich novel: before committing suicide, Sappho looks back on her life, her lovers and her passion for poetry. The complexities of love and sex are shown in this novel with intense beauty and yet without sentimentality. Great work.

[Elizabeth Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

He's a genius, Peter Green. I love his non-fiction but this is a real novel. Exquisite descriptions and a deep understanding of the ancient world. My favorite book of the year so far.

[Matthew Barotz · Rating 4 out of 5]

really enjoyed the writing style - its written as though sappho is writing her own autobiography, but also switches to the present at times - and the writing was very descriptive and beautiful, but it was also very dense and a little hard to get through at times

[Celestis · Rating 5 out of 5]

To jedna z najlepiej napisanych książek, jakie kiedykolwiek czytałam. Jestem przez nią zrujnowana, lecz być zrujnowanym przez poezję to zaszczyt

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sappho is a woman in the ancient world I wanted to learn a little something about. This novel was surprisingly enthralling and educational.

The middle-aged Sappho is in the midst of an affair with a boatman, Phaon. He hasn't come to meet her for several days and she is concerned. Her brother, Charaxas, the merchant, comes to see her. Scandalized by her "vulgar lust", [differences in class, differences in age], he has made sure the lover has shipped out on one of Charaxas's own merchant vessels, bound for Sicily. Charaxas comes to tell her of this and to suggest certain financial arrangements he'll make for her, as she is close to destitution, if she does not see Phaon ever again. When he leaves, she decides to write her reflections on her life and on family and others whose lives have touched hers. So she sits in the farmhouse her husband had bought her and begins to think..."It is hard to detach myself from the present...[there is] only a series of vivid images, caught from time's flow, held and treasured. I walk in the gallery that is my past, pause by this or that picture, smile or sigh, and then move on."

She begins with her childhood, her family--"When I try to recall my earliest childhood, what I am most conscious of is sunlight...". She begins to write poetry. She meets Alcaeus, a fellow poet, who becomes a life-long friend. Because of her part in a failed coup, she is exiled and we are with her in those years. We see her growing fame as a poet. Between each episode, we return to her present until her thinking will take her on a different tangent. We see her husband, child, and her liaisons, her joys and her sorrows. Her husband has her exile rescinded and they return to Lesbos, where he buys her the farmhouse. She is widowed. She decides to go to Sicily after she finishes writing. Through the whole story runs a thread of melancholy. Sappho is devoted to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, but she feels as though Aphrodite is laughing at her, mocking her.

I applaud the author for taking what little we know of Sappho's life--fragments of history and snippets of Sappho's poetry itself--and fashioning something plausible. Most of it is from the writer's imagination but hung on a few pegs of fact. Excerpts from Sappho's poetry are cleverly incorporated into the text as part of Sappho's thoughts. The novel was well written and intense [but not crass]. I could see small details in front of my eyes: those of Sappho's study, her daughter's bedroom, physical descriptions of the well fleshed-out characters. The Chronology and the list of characters were very useful and I kept referring to them.

My conception of ancient Greek women was that they were segregated from males and mostly stayed at home, Spartan women being an exception. The women in this novel seemed to be as free and outspoken as 20th century women, with 20th century attitudes. I wonder how accurate the author's conception was.

Highly recommended for a picture of Greece in 500-600 BC and of one of the most famous woman poets ever!

[telen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book really pulled me through kicking and screaming. Normally put off by the dramatic pessimism, the cynical pathos (if that's not too much of an oxymoron) that, in my opinion, tends to characterize fiction set in ancient Greece (especially if any of the protagonists happen to be women), in this case I found myself unable to resist the lure of Green's writing and finished the book almost despite myself.

The story is built using some of my least favorite narrative instruments: a hard-to-like protagonist; plenty of ominous foreshadowing on the part of the narrator; a lot of talk about events and relationships at the expense of more detailed descriptions of them, to name a few. In the end, though, I have to recognize the remarkably good fit of these aspects of the story to the mode of its telling. In the end, I felt close to the seriously flawed but enticing person that is Green's Sappho, and I feel the loss of having to leave her behind, despite having been uncomfortable almost throughout the book.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book--fantastical historical novel that rises well into the literary realm. Up in my top 20 of all time, I think. Peter Green is a Classical History professor, but the best kind, for this book was written by flesh and blood, by someone who understands desire and disappointment, idealism and urgency; that is, "The Laughter of Aphrodite" was written by a person who could combine with consummate art knowledge of the past with awareness of the eternal in humanity.

I've read this novel half a dozen times, and I am always surprised by how young Peter Green was when he wrote it, for the wisdom and folly of long life, of the stages in our lives, provides one of the cornerstones on which this fine novel is built.

Read this book.

[Devon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite a chore to get through. Sappho comes across as a person wholly clueless about herself. It seemed almost every statement or observation she made ended in a question mark. Her love affairs are very shallowly treated. One never knows just what she loves in anyone. The best thing about the book is its physical descriptions of people, places, and things, but even these became tedious and even, perhaps, formulaic after a while. I couldn't wait to get it over with. Myopic, repetitious, boring.

[Yuliia Boiko · Rating 3 out of 5]

Містиний, тягучий роман про життя поетеси Сапфо.

[Łukasz · Rating 3 out of 5]

sensual and suggestive, agile in back-and-forward time excursions: simply a neat ancient narrative even though it could have been better developed in the terms of the plot...