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We are told that at the Athenian Adonia women gathered on rooftops and engaged in loud obscenity (Aristophanes, Lysistrata 387–96), and celebrants prepared gardens of fennel and lettuce (regarded as an anaphrodisiac).
Athenaeus cites this fragment as evidence that ‘the more a thing is bedecked with flowers, the more delightful it is to the gods’ (Scholars at Dinner 15.674e).
Their number is eventually fixed at nine, and they acquire names and specific spheres of influence – Calliope, the muse of epic poetry; Erato, muse of erotic poetry, etc.
After warning the poet Hesiod that ‘they know how to tell many lies that sound like truth’ but also ‘know how to sing reality, when [they] wish’, they proceed to fill him with the ability to sing of the past and the future (Theogony 26–8).
Plutarch
Once lost in Hades’ hall You will be homeless and invisible – Another shadow flittering back and forth With shadows of no worth.
In Hesiod’s Theogony Eros is ‘limb-loosening’, and in Homer a hero’s limbs are loosened in battle when he loses consciousness or dies.
‘Like a gale smiting an oak’
Acheron is a lake in the underworld across which the boatman Charon ferries the shades (or ghosts) of the dead. Lotuses (probably the Ziziphus lotus), associated with forgetfulness, grow along its shore.
Hermes Psychopompus (or ‘conductor of souls’ to the underworld)
That impossible predator, Eros the Limb-Loosener, Bitter-sweetly and afresh Savages my flesh. Like a gale smiting an oak On mountainous terrain, Eros, with a stroke, Shattered my brain. But a strange longing to pass on Seizes me, and I need to see Lotuses on the dewy banks of Acheron.
Just this sort of lust for love crouched at my heart And, after he had stolen the gentle senses from my breast, Kept pouring thick mist down over my eyes.
Myrrh is the reddish-brown dried resin of the tree Commiphora myrrha, native to north-eastern Africa. Mixed in oil, myrrh has been used for embalming and for anointment in the Eastern Orthodox Church. It is still used in perfumes and lotions.
‘In all honesty, I want to die.’ Leaving for good after a good long cry, She said: ‘We both have suffered terribly, But, Sappho, it is hard to say goodbye.’ I said: ‘Go with my blessing if you go Always remembering what we did. To me You have meant everything, as you well know. ‘Yet, lest it slip your mind, I shall review Everything we have shared – the good times, too: ‘You culled violets and roses, bloom and stem, Often in spring and I looked on as you Wove a bouquet into a diadem.
‘Time and again we plucked lush flowers, wed Spray after spray in strands and fastened them Around your soft neck; you perfumed your head ‘Of glossy curls with myrrh – lavish infusions In queenly quantities – then on a bed Prepared with fleecy sheets and yielding cushions, ‘Sated your craving…’
denies.
The greek poet wove thaxios (enchantment.)
May gales and anguish sweep elsewhere The killer of my character.
You were at hand, And I broke down raving – My craving a fire That singed my mind, A brand you quenched.
‘I truly do believe no maiden that will live’ may simply mean: ‘I think no girl will ever be as sophos (clever) as this one.’
Plato argues that the soul is the source of vision, he cites light rays coming from the eyes as evidence.
But I love extravagance, And wanting it has handed down The glitter and glamour of the sun As my inheritance. I truly do believe no maiden that will live To look upon the brilliance of the sun Ever will be contemplative Like this one. Stand and face me, dear; release That fineness in your irises.
makarismos (blessing) of the couple:
addition to roses, we find chervil (Anthriscus cerefolium), an annual herb with white flowers related to parsley, and sweet clover or melilot (Melilotus), a plant which has flowers in a variety of colours.
Just as, when the sun Has set, the rosy-fingered Moon surpasses The stars surrounding her. With equal grace She casts her lustre on The flower-rich fallows and the sterile seas. Dew is poured out in handsome fashion; lissome Chervil unfurls; Rose And Sweet Clover with heady flowers blossom.
Through refinement she has acquired charis (‘grace’) but, by implication, lost many things, including an appealing innocence.
You will have memories Because of what we did back then When we were new at this, Yes, we did many things, then – all Beautiful… I loved you once, years ago, Atthis, When your flower was in place. You seemed a gawky girl then, artless, Without grace. Atthis, you looked at what I was And hated what you saw And now, all in a flutter, chase After Andromeda.
Gay in the queer sense not in the lesbianic
As each character is both subject and object, this song perfectly exemplifies the ‘circular, Sapphic law according to which beauty demands love and love, in turn, creates the beautiful’ (Burnett 1983, p. 229).
That last legible word is a tantalizing ‘… I wish…’
As you are dear to me, go claim a younger Bed as your due. I can’t stand being the old one any longer, Living with you.
The Muses here are ‘violet-bosomed’ like the bride in ‘And may the maidens all night long’ and Dawn is ‘rosy-forearmed’ like the Graces in ‘Untainted Graces’
In the last four lines Sappho cites the story of Dawn and Tithonous as an exemplum (myth used as evidence).
The goddess Dawn takes the beautiful youth Tithonous as her husband and then spirits him away to the eastern edge of the known world from which she rises every morning. At her request Zeus grants Tithonous immortality but she forgets to ask for eternal youth as well, and he withers away with age. In some accou...
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The old and withered Tithonous recounts his sad decay in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s dramatic monologue Tithonus ...
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Sappho invokes the same goddess in ‘Nereids, Kypris, please restore’, along with the Nereids, the sea deities who had a cult centre on Lesbos.
I have a daughter who reminds me of A marigold in bloom. Kleïs is her name, And I adore her. I would refuse all Lydia’s glitter for her And all other love. I do not have an Ornately woven Bandeau to hand you, Kleïs. From Where would it come?
Athenaeus explains that ‘the towels [mentioned in this poem] are a decorative head-covering, as Hecataeus, or whoever wrote the travel-account entitled The Asia, evinces: “The women wear towels on their heads” ’ (Scholars at Dinner 9.410e).
Aimitybion, the word Sappho uses for ‘handkerchief’, refers to a piece of cloth smaller than our towels and of some thinner material, such as linen. This rare word appears again in Aristophanes’ comedy Wealth, 729 (388 BCE): ‘he took out a clean handkerchief and wiped his eyes’.
‘dripping’ (stalasson, related to ‘stalagmite’)
With slim-tapering ankles.
Further confusion has resulted from reading Helen as love object instead of active subject.
It would take seven fathoms to span The feet of the doorkeeper (the best man); His sandals are five cows’ worth of leather And ten shoemakers stitched them together.
gnomē as ‘a statement not about particular things, such as what sort of man Iphicrates is, but about generalities, and not about all things, such as that straight is the opposite of crooked, but about kinds of actions and whether they should be taken or avoided’ (Rhetoric 1394a21–6).
‘Nothing in excess
‘Know thyself.’
aidōs, which I have translated as ‘good taste’
I don’t know what the right course is; Twofold are my purposes.
