Chapter III: Part 3

Up with the rafters high,
Ho for the wedding!
Raise them high, ye joiners,
Ho for the wedding!
The bridegroom’s as tall as Ares,
Ho for the wedding!
Far taller than a tall man,
Ho for the wedding!
Towering as the Lesbian poet
Ho for the wedding!
Over the poets of other lands,
Ho for the wedding!

(EDMONDS 148)

Then follows a kind of lyrical marriage drama, the bridesmaids representing the tribe of the bride, the youths the clan of the bridegroom, in this respect foreshadowing Catullus’ double choir. The maidens answer the young men’s praise by chiding Hesperus, the evening star, whose coming heralds the union. The young men in turn reply with the famous words already quoted, to which the sequel probably was “even so bring home the bride to the bridegroom.” We think of Edmund Spenser’s _Prothalamion_ and _Epithalamion_ which have many of the motives of the Greek epithalamium, with their reference to Hesper, with their beautiful descriptions of bride and bridegroom. I quote the lines about Hymen, which is Sappho’s Greek refrain, rendered by the word “wedding” in Edmonds’ version:

Hymen, iö Hymen, they do shout;
That even to the heavens theyr shouting shrill
Doth reach, and all the firmament doth fill.

The men praise marriage bliss; the maidens, virginity (E. 152, “I shall be ever-maiden,” E. 159, “Can it be that I still long for my virginity?”). The bride says, “Maidenhead, maidenhead, whither away?” and the reply is, “Where I must stay, bride, where I must stay” (E. 164)[100]; a wonderful example of the way in which Sappho treats abstractions and inanimate things (cf. also E. 80, “Up, my lute divine and make thyself a thing of speech”). Sappho is the first to use such a personification[101] and it recalls Théophile Gautier in his reverse application in _Mademoiselle de Maupin_. At least it is difficult to think of the young Gautier independently conceiving the striking figure that is so characteristic of the genius of the Lesbian poetess. This is the Frenchman’s passage. It describes the fair heroine going out into the world dressed in masculine habiliments to test men’s fidelity in love:

“And, as I rode away down the alley of chestnut trees, all the
puerilities of my girlhood ran along by the roadside, blowing
me farewell kisses from the tips of their tapering fingers. And
one little spirit in white, in a clear, silvery voice, cried:
‘Madeleine, where are you going? I am your virginity, dear, but
you look so fierce in your boots and hose, with your plumed hat
and long sword, that I am not sure whether I should go with
you.’

“I replied: ‘Go home, sweet thing, if you are afraid. Water my
flowers and care for my doves. But in sooth you are wrong. You
would be safer with me in these garments of stout cloth than in
airy gauze. My boots prevent it being seen that I have a little
tempting foot; this sword is my defense against dishonor;
and the feather waving in my hat is to frighten away all the
nightingales who would come and sing false love into my ear.’”

In amoebean or antiphonic hexameter verses (E. 150 and 151), as exquisite as Heine’s _Du bist wie eine Blume_, the maidens liken the virgin state to the unplucked pippin, the married woman to the hyacinth or columbine, with which Aphrodite is also adorned in the passage from Himerius. As Tucker says: “a band of girls mock the men with failure to win some dainty maiden, and the men reply with a taunt at the neglected bloom of the unprofitable virgin. Say the maids (Pl. 9):

On the top of the topmost spray
The pippin blushes red,
Forgot by the gatherers—nay!
Was it ‘forgot’ we said?
’Twas too far overhead!

Reply the men:

The hyacinth so sweet
On the hills where the herdsmen go
Is trampled ’neath their feet,
And its purple bloom laid low;

and there unhappily the record deserts us.” These lovely lines are about as well known as anything of Sappho’s, owing to Rossetti’s adaptation in his _One Girl_, a title altered in 1881 to _Beauty_, which the reader can find in Wharton. In modern times, Maurice Thompson, Gamaliel Bradford, and others have been influenced by them, though often an un-Sapphic touch not in Sappho’s verses is given, as in Bradford’s _Topmost Bough_:

Don’t you love me now,
After I have set you
On love’s topmost bough;
God, then I’ll forget you.

The bridegroom now bears off the bride while the chorus of youths praise the bride and the chorus of maidens the bridegroom:

What may I best compare,
Dear groom, with thee?
A slender sapling, ere
It is a tree.

(EDMONDS)

But as to-day the bridegroom disappears in the society column of the newspaper behind the splendor of the elaborate description of the bride’s gown, so in Sappho the praise of the bride is far sweeter than that of the bridegroom. Recall the lines of Rossetti and these verses in the metre of one of Catullus’ _epithalamia_:

Bride, thy shape is all delight
And thine eyes shine soft and bright,
O’er thy fair cheek desire is shed
And honor showered on thy head
From the Lady of Love in heaven.

(EDMONDS)

Congratulations were offered also to the bridegroom:

No other maiden lives to-day,
Bridegroom, such as thine.

(EDMONDS)

Himerius seems to be quoting such a song of greeting to bride and bridegroom: “Bride that teemest with rosy desires, bride the fairest ornament of the Queen of Paphos, hie thee to bed, hie thee to the couch whereon thou must sweetly sport in gentle wise with thy bridegroom. And may the Star of Eve lead thee full willingly to the place where thou shalt marvel at the silver-thronèd Lady of Wedlock” (Edmonds). Himerius also tells us that Sappho “brings Aphrodite in her Grace-drawn car with a bevy of Loves” to the wedding. And the joy of the earthly festival is repeated far up among the clouds of Olympus where the celestial feast is described (E. 146) in verses the lilt of which Professor Gildersleeve has thus reproduced in his unpublished version:

The mixing howl yonder
Was filled with ambrosia,
And Hermes ’gan ladle
The drink to the gods all;
The gods all uplifted
Their beakers and pour’d out
Libations and utter’d
Fair wishes for bridegroom,
[For fair bride fair wishes.]

Stebbing in his _Friends of Man_ has the Gods descend to the modest hall wherein the marriage feast is spread.

All the High Gods from Olympus, to bless the Two, descend.
...
By an ample bowl Hermes, deftest of cupbearers, stands,
Crowning the Gods’ goblets from the full flagon in his hands.

The function of what we Americans used to call the first groomsman, in the primitive times of wife-stealing, was to protect the bridegroom from pursuit and the name “best man” perpetuates the tradition. In the Greek wedding, where the passing and closing of the door was so essential a part of the ritual, he was the door-keeper, and there was much bantering and chaffing at his personal appearance on the part of the maidens, who made much use of the same jokes which have since been applied to the feet of maidens of Chicago. The feet of the porter were put in the laughing stocks somewhat after this fashion (E. 154):

Full seven fathoms stretch the feet of the porter,
Full five ox-hides were used for his shoe-soles,
Ten stout cobblers were needed to make them,

(D. M. R.)

to which Edmonds would make the ingenious but doubtful addition based on Synesius “[and his father lived in other ways an honest life, but claimed to be better born than Cecrops].” The door is shut and the mocking subsides, as all chant for the groom, “Happy bridegroom, the marriage is accomplished, as you prayed it should be, and the maiden you prayed for is yours” (E. 155); and for the bride they sing, “O beauteous one, O lovely one, thine it is to sport with the rose-ankled Graces and Aphrodite the golden” (E. 157). If Edmonds’ tentative restoration of the end of the first book of 1320 verses is correct, “the maidens spend all the night at this door, singing of the love that is between thee, thrice happy bridegroom, and a bride whose breast is sweet as violets. But get thee up and go when the dawn shall come, and may great Hermes lead thy feet where thou shalt find just so much ill-luck as we shall see sleep to-night” (E. 47). Evidently the maidens saw little sleep that night, but finally silence falls and in the early dawn is heard the last song of the serenaders: “Farewell the bride, farewell the bridegroom” (E. 160, 162).

This chapter should not close without a mention of the epigrams. Many have been attributed to Sappho, but three especially (E. 143, 144, 145) have been included in most of the translations. They are, however, written in normal epic language without any essential traces of Sappho’s Aeolic dialect. One, which Wilamowitz would date as late as 400 B.C., according to Edmonds was inscribed on the base of a statue of a nameless infant, dedicated to Artemis in gratitude for her birth by her priestess-mother. I prefer the older interpretation:

Maidens, that pass my tomb with laughter sweet,
A voice unresting echoes at your feet;
Pause, and if any would my story seek,
Dumb as I am, these graven words will speak;
‘Once in the vanished years it chanced to please
Arista, daughter of Hermocleides,
To dedicate my life in virgin bliss
To thee, revered of women, Artemis!
O Goddess, deign to bless my grandsire’s line,
For Saon was a temple priest of thine;
And grant, O Queen, in thy benefic grace,
Unending fame and fortune to his race.’

(O’HARA’s adaptation)

The epigram on the fisherman (E. 145) is most unlike Sappho. Fawkes, Elton, Neaves, and many a modern poet have put it into verse:[102]

Above the lowly grave of Pelagon,
Ill-fated fisher lad, Meniscus’ son,
His father placed as sign of storm and strife
The weel and oar, memorial of his life.

(O’HARA)

The two elegiac couplets on _The Dust of Timas_, who died before her wedding day, are rather flat and hardly worthy of Sappho’s genius (E. 144); but if Edmonds’ restoration of one of Sappho’s fragments as referring to Timas is correct (p. 60 above), it may be genuine and in that case one of the very few surviving early metrical epitaphs. I give you the recent rendering by one of our best modern American poets, Edwin Arlington Robinson:

This dust was Timas; and they say
That almost on her wedding day
She found her bridal home to be
The dark house of Persephone.
And many maidens, knowing then
That she would not come back again,
Unbound their curls; and all in tears,
They cut them off with sharpened shears.

V. SAPPHO IN ART

The high regard of the ancients and moderns for Sappho appears especially in art. In olden days she was honored in town-hall and library. Many a statue and bust of her was erected and she was one of the few historical characters who were painted on Greek vases, which even quote her verses. She was sculptured also in terra-cotta and bronze.[103] It is well established[104] that her image was engraved on coins of Eresus and Mytilene,—a unique honor in early Greek days. Many (Pl. 10, 11) in the British Museum, in Paris, and elsewhere[105] bear representations sometimes of her head on the obverse with the lyre on the reverse, and sometimes her full figure standing or sitting. They differ much in the manner of the arrangement of her coiffure, some even showing the hair covered by a kerchief, a fashion still prevalent in modern Lesbus. They may be traced back to different types. Those which bear her name date from Roman Imperial times. In general Furtwängler[106] is right in contending that it was not the custom to honor distinguished persons in such a manner before the days of Alexander. But the beautiful head which appears on early Greek coins of Mytilene of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. may easily be Sappho and not her patron Aphrodite, even in cases where the type is adapted to that of the goddess of love. The lyre on the reverse and the individual features which resemble some of the busts of Sappho point that way. The beautiful face on the old coins was copied from some statue, perhaps one that was even earlier than that of Silanion. Farnell well says:[107] “the later hero cults of Homer at Smyrna, Sappho at Lesbus, and Aristotle at Stageira reveal the deep conviction of the Hellenic spirit that science and art are divine powers.” If the head on these Mytilenaean coins is really Sappho, it is a silent but eloquent testimony to the reverence her name acquired after her death and to the perfection of her living work.

The oldest possible representation of Sappho with which I am acquainted is an archaic terra-cotta relief from Melos in the British Museum.[108] It dates only a few years after Sappho’s time, and though not inscribed it may represent Sappho and Alcaeus. Sappho appears as a slender lady of average height (not of short stature as Ovid says), dressed in a long Ionic woven tunic and wearing sandals. She sits with lyre in left hand and plectrum in right, and the bearded Alcaeus stands before her with bowl in left and extending his right hand. He seems to be expressing with a smile his admiration of her new poetry, so different from his own archaic measure. There is probably no reference, as in the case of the Munich vase from Sicily,[109] to the famous lines which we have quoted (p. 27). On this vase the names Sapho (so spelt) and Alcaeus are painted beside the tall and stately figures who appear with lyre and plectrum. Sappho seems to be rebuking with almost a pouting expression her fellow-townsman Alcaeus, who bows his head as she speaks to him the famous lines. This pictorial translation of her verses and other representations show her great popularity in Athens in the fifth century B.C. This Munich _psycter_ or cooling mixing-bowl (Pl. 12) for wine may date as late as 460 B.C. and has been attributed to a fictitious lady painter of the Free Style by Hauser, but his attribution has not been generally accepted.[110] Furtwängler was probably right in connecting the vase with the Brygus painter. My learned friend, the great Oxford expert on vases, Mr. J. D. Beazley writes me that very likely it was not by the Brygus painter himself, but surely in his manner. On an earlier vase, now in the Czartoryski collection in Cracow (Pl. 13), dating from the end of the sixth or the beginning of the fifth century B.C., according to Beazley a vase roughly related in style to the Nicoxenus painter, a contemporary of Euthymides, we have the earliest certain representation of Sappho.[111] She is a tall, draped figure with smiling countenance, walking to right and holding a seven-stringed lyre in her left hand and a plectrum in her right. She appears on only this one black-figured vase, which would seem to indicate that she did not become popular in Athens till long after her death, when red-figured vases were the vogue. The story of Solon adds testimony to the same effect, and probably a _corpus_ or collection of her writings used by the later Alexandrian editions was in the book-stalls at Athens even in the last years of the sixth century. Otherwise it is difficult to account for her frequent portrayal on Attic red-figured vases. The lost Middleton vase,[112] (Pl. 14), probably of the South Italian (Lucanian) Style, shows Sappho, whose name is now thus spelt, seated on a four-legged stool while a nude winged Eros hastens towards her with a wreath. The painter probably knew the poems of Sappho which pictured Eros as bitter-sweet, and Sappho’s other word-pictures of the sorrows of love, for he has labelled Eros “wretched.” One thinks of Horace’s _querentem Sappho puellis de popularibus_. Mr. Beazley, however, suspects the inscription _talas_, and thinks that _kalos_ (beautiful) was written. It is greatly to be hoped that the vase will soon be found again so that we can have a rereading of the letters. On the Michaelis vase in late Polygnotan style,[113] which is in the Jatta collection at Ruvo in Italy (Pl. 15), we possibly have an apotheosis of Sappho. Aphrodite is painted with a cupid on her right shoulder like the Aphrodite of the Parthenon frieze, judging the contest of Thamyris. Near Apollo are three Muses, and near Thamyris are four. Sappho is evidently leaning for support on Aphrodite, receiving a little dove from a little Eros, and is pictured as a Muse herself, as in Plato’s epigram. On another red-figured vase[114] in private possession, Sappho is in the midst of her pupils.

Several vases even show knowledge of her writings. The most important is the hydria or water-jar in Athens (Pl. 16), dating about 430 B.C.,[115] which Mr. Beazley would put in the group of Polygnotus, somewhat in the style of the Hector painter, though not by him. Sappho is seated on a light-backed chair or _klismos_; she is reading from a papyrus roll, while Nicopolis behind holds a wreath over her head. Two maidens stand in front, one, Callis, holding a lyre. Scholars have long tried to make sense out of the letters on the papyrus, and several, such as Comparetti and Aly, have considered them un-Sapphic; but Edmonds, the great English expert on Sappho, has got a new reading for the last word and thinks this is column 1 of a book entitled _Winged Words_, a phrase borrowed from Homer. The verses are an introductory poem to Sappho’s works with an invocation to the Gods, after which follows the verse: “The words I begin are words of air, but for all that, good to hear.” I do not feel that the solution is satisfactory or Sapphic, and an examination of the vase itself proves that Edmonds’ reading will not stand; but no one has yet made a better proposal. On another vase, in the Louvre, attributed to Euphronius[116] we have an echo of Sappho in the words (E. 23), “I long and I yearn.” A beautiful fifth century cylix (Pl. 9) by the erudite and versatile Sotades,[117] whose wonderful signed terra-cotta horse, mounted by an Amazon, has recently been brought to Boston from Meroe in Egypt, pictures a girl on tiptoe trying to pluck the sweet apple which is reddening on the topmost bough. I have no doubt that Sotades was illustrating Sappho’s song.

Possibly on the so-called Steinhauser terra-cotta fragment[118] the seated figure is Sappho; she is nude above the waist and holds her lyre in her right hand. She is looking into the air enraptured and sublimely inspired.

Many vases have been interpreted as portraying Sappho and Phaon,[119] but in every case there is uncertainty about the interpretation. On two beautiful vases (Pl. 4, 5), the hydria in Florence certainly by the Meidias painter himself, and the crater in Palermo of the school of the Meidias painter, the beautiful Phaon is definitely pictured.[120] The inscription on the latter, “Phaon is beautiful,” leaves no doubt in the matter. But the girl called Chryse or Philomele is perhaps wrongly interpreted as Sappho. These vases are probably older than the comedy on _Phaon_, by Plato (not to be confused with the philosopher). Phaon is painted as handsome; all the girls are adorning themselves and making love to him, but he has had too much attention from the ladies and is sick of them (cf. p. 40 above). On another crater,[121] in Bologna (Pl. 17), in style not far removed from the vase-painter Polygnotus, Phaon appears seated at the oar in a boat, about to take aboard the tall goddess, who was to give him a perennial antidote against old age.

Before we leave ancient painting we ought to mention a picture of Sappho in a garb as a lutist which the encyclopaedic Pliny assigns to Leon.[122] We know nothing about him, but he was probably one of the numerous second rate artists of Hellenistic times. An epigram in the Anthology and the Christian Father Tatian[123] seem to have referred to this portrait. Several Pompeian frescoes, and one from Herculaneum representing a lady with a _stilus_ about to write her thoughts on a tablet, have been named Sappho. Only in the case of one[124] do I feel that there is any probability at all that Sappho was meant, and in that one Alcaeus appears standing by the side of the seated Lesbian poetess (Pl. 18).

There must have been statues and busts of Sappho, but so many have been called Sappho without definite evidence that it is difficult to know where to stop. We must always bear in mind that early Greek art in Sappho’s day did not believe in realistic portraiture and that all representations of Sappho are “study heads,” conceptions of later artists. The most famous statue mentioned in literature is that by Silanion, the Greek sculptor of the fourth century B.C., who was so noted for his Plato and Corinna.[125] We learn from Cicero’s _Oration against Verres_[126] and from Tatian’s _Complaint against the Greeks or Pagans_ that this bronze statue, on the base of which Cicero was still able to read the epigram, stood in the prytaneum at Syracuse, perhaps a memorial of Sappho’s sojourn in Sicily. Cicero tells us that it was stolen by Verres and praises it highly: “Could this work of Silanion, so perfect, so refined, so finished, be in fitter hands public or private than those of a man so refined and cultured as Verres?... And how sorely this stolen Sappho was missed is almost more than words can tell. Not only was the poetess exquisitely portrayed, but there was a world-famous Greek couplet inscribed upon the base.... For the inscription on the empty base declares to-day what the statue was, thus proclaiming the theft” (Edmonds).

We know from literature of the existence of two other later statues. We have spoken (p. 34) of the epigram of Damocharis which refers to a portrait of Sappho with bright eyes and mixed expression of gaiety and graveness. An epigram by Antipater[127] (p. 8) is thought to come from a statue at Pergamum and since part of an inscription found at Pergamum[128] mentions Alcaeus, it is a plausible conjecture that the lost portion contained the name of Sappho. This is probably the same bronze seated statue which in the fifth century A.D. stood in the gymnasium of Zeuxippus at Constantinople and which is described by Christodorus in his Greek Anthology:[129] “She seemed to be weaving a well-hymned song, concentrating her thought on the silent Muses.”

No full-size statue which we can certainly identify as Sappho’s has been preserved. The seated lady in the Vatican holding a volume in her left hand is hardly Sappho, and it is not safe to call the standing lady with lyre in New York in the Metropolitan Museum by her name. It would be interesting to believe, as some do, that the famous maiden of Anzio in the National Museum in Rome was Sappho, but some scholars of repute even go so far as to say that it is not even a maiden but rather a boy. Others say that a priestess, not a poetess, is portrayed. After repeated examination of the original I have no doubt of her sex and believe the statue to be that of a poetess, but whether of Praxilla or Sappho or some other cannot be definitely stated. We have, however, many Roman busts of different types[130] which have been conjectured to represent Sappho. One type in all probability is copied from Silanion, as it resembles closely in the features of the face and the arrangement of the hair, especially the little curls in front of the face and in the covering of the head, the portrait of Sappho on the early coins of Mytilene. The best example of this type is the bust in the Villa Albani in Rome (Pl. 19). It has the perfection, refinement, and finish to which Cicero referred, and Sappho is “exquisitely portrayed.” In the Biscari collection at Catania, Sicily, there is a Roman copy of a head meant to be inserted in a bust or statue. It is so poorly finished that it was probably placed in a niche or chapel to be seen from a distance. The oval face is young but placid and cold, a characteristic partly due to the Roman copyist. With its corkscrew curls and in other respects it is similar enough to the busts in the Villa Albani and the Galleria Geographica of the Vatican to be classed with them. If they represent Sappho, the Sicilian bust also does. If Rizzo is right that this is a muse or nymph, then a copy of Silanion’s statue still remains to be found.

The so-called head of Sappho in the Pitti in Florence is of a different type, more dream-like, and may not be Sappho at all. More likely to represent Sappho are the busts in Oxford (Pl. 20) and the Vatican. Other busts about which there is considerable doubt are in Naples, in the Riccardi Palace, in the Uffizi at Florence, and there is a double herm in Madrid which has been called Sappho and Phaon. Of the so-called Phaon in Madrid, Amelung has recently found in the storerooms of the Vatican a beautiful replica, and he has also discovered there another Sappho bust of the type on coins. In the summer of 1922 I photographed a bust, which is in the Borghese Palace, and I think that it may represent Sappho (Pl. 21). It resembles a colossal head from Smyrna in Constantinople, the bust in Naples, and the double bust in Madrid in its energetic and individualized features, such as the large nose and thick lips, and in the curl on the forehead beneath the middle of the fillet. Rizzo would trace the Naples bust back to about 420 B.C. and call it an ideal representation of a mortal or perhaps even a courtesan. But Sappho might easily have been represented in the type of a courtesan or even a muse. The large bronze bust in New York which has been published as a portrayal of Sappho can hardly represent the poetess, even if the bronze is genuine and has the sanction of great authorities such as Eisen,[131] Babelon, and André, since it resembles none of the known portraits of her. The Romans as well as the Greeks were undoubtedly very fond of statues of Sappho, and some day excavators will turn up for us more authenticated portraits. The recently discovered Roman stucco relief which we have already described (p. 42) shows what we may expect from future discoveries. Even such articles of every-day-use as scales have weights in the form of a Sappho head, such as that recently discovered.[132]

What we have said about the uncertainty of representations of Sappho in ancient sculpture applies equally to the portrait of her on gems. Cipollini has listed and illustrated many ancient and modern gems and miniatures, but even if those called ancient are forgeries or are from Renaissance times, the great number of them shows the unusual influence of Sappho on the glyptic art in precious stones.

After Roman days Sappho was often pictured and sculptured in various ideal ways.[133] Space fails us to discuss the almost endless works of later art influenced by her name and traditions; and it seems idle to detain the reader with a detailed catalogue. But to leave no doubt that Sappho has had a vast and powerful influence on art of all ages, I may mention some of the more important. During the last sixty years especially, sculpture has paid a frequent and international tribute to her. Now she is represented as sad and pensive, now meditating suicide, now about to make the fatal leap from the Leucadian rock as in Pietro Magni’s Saffo (1866), now even as a corpse on the surface of the sea. Magni’s statue (Pl. 22) was much admired during his lifetime and it reminds one of the Roman stucco relief, since it likewise represents Sappho, lyre in hand and with head wreathed, standing on the edge of the rock. She is holding back her skirts with her left hand and looking seriously at the waters below, with the intention of stepping off at the next moment. In 1878 the illustrious Lombard sculptor, Francesco Confalonieri, influenced it may be by the Vatican Agrippina, made a seated statue which represents Sappho in profile with sad and bowed head, clasping her hands on her left side, her lyre abandoned on the floor. France did not approve of this statue because some years before Pradier also had sculptured a draped and dreaming Sappho who was seated on the Leucadian rock with bowed head and hands clasped about her raised crossed left leg, her lyre lying neglected on the rock (Pl. 23). Pradier had also sculptured a standing, draped Sappho with bowed head holding her lyre in her left hand, and supporting her right on an Ionic column on which rest the rolls of her divine poetry.

The great German sculptor Danneker, who was so fond of classical subjects and was the sculptor of the famous Ariadne, chiselled a charming marble statuette of Sappho (1796). The beautiful bas-relief in Greek style in the Vienna Volksgarten, which R. Weyr sculptured for the Grillparzer Monument, represents Sappho’s farewell. She stands in drapery like that of the Erechtheum Caryatids. She is holding a lyre and kissing good-bye to a girl friend who gives her a last embrace. A shepherd kneels nearby and others in the background are recoiling in fear. She herself stands at the edge of the steps in front of Apollo’s temple, and there is much other Greek architecture in this relief.

In France, Claude Ramey (1801) exhibited a seated statue; Duret (1806), a Sappho writing to Phaon; Beauvallet (1817), a bust; Diebolt (1848), a dying Sappho of noble and poetical expression. Other statues of Sappho were made and exhibited in the Salon by Laurent (1849), Grootaers (1852), Travaux (1852, now in the Louvre), Aizelin (1853, bronze), Loison (1859), Grabowski (1859), Clésinger (1859, three statues, “Sappho singing her last song, Seated on the Leucadian rock,” “The youth of Sappho,” and a polychrome statue), Robinet (1861), Doriot (1872), and Signora Maraini. In America, too, from the days of Story and Hezekiah Augur to the bronze doors of the new Detroit Public Library Sappho has been a subject for sculpture. Many are the busts which are inscribed to-day with the name of Sappho, such as that by A. Gennai in the possession of Mrs. W. B. Hill of Baltimore, or that by Sheldon.

In painting, though not often a subject for the greatest painters, Sappho was represented in Greek and Roman days and ever since right down to the most famous modern picture of her and her pupils by Alma Tadema, of which we have given a description above (p. 32). Several pictures, such as Titian’s _Sacred and Profane Love_, have been supposed by great critics to represent Sappho, but it is difficult to agree with Poppelreuter that Titian really meant to paint a Naiad counselling Sappho, who is lamenting her love in the forest, to take the Leucadian leap.[134] In some cases fortunately the painters themselves have labelled them. Raphael is perhaps the greatest painter who pictured her. He brings her significantly in his _Parnassus_ (Pl. 24) into juxtaposition with Petrarch, who dedicated four verses of his tenth eclogue to her (see p. 136). She is represented prominently to the left of the doorway, resting her left arm on it and holding in her left hand a papyrus roll with the name Sappho upon it. Other minor painters who have painted Sappho are Treshain (1683, “The Adventures of Sappho”), Ansiaux (1801), Ducis (1812), Vafflard (1819, “Sappho rescued from the water by a stranger”), Girodet (1828, a series of compositions from her first love affair to the legendary leap), Lafond (1831), Vien (1833, “Sappho playing the lyre,” and “Sappho reciting to Phaon”), Chasseriau (1850), Chautard (1855), Agneni (1857, “Sappho rescued from the water by the Nereids”), Credès (1859), Kauffmann (two beautiful pictures, “Sappho inspired by love” and “Sappho talking with Homer;” these like many of the other pictures were also engraved). Barrias painted a sleeping, nude Sappho, with her lyre by her side, and represents her perhaps repeating the words: “The silver moon is set; The Pleiades are gone; Half the long night is spent, and yet I lie alone” (Merivale). Other painters of Sappho are Fragonard, Gros, Devosge, Bartolazzi, Picou (1863), Loir (1864), Chifflart (1865), Bertrand (1867, “Death of Sappho”), Gastaldi (1873, “Sappho meditating suicide”), Gleyre (“Couch of Sappho”). Hector Leroux in his “School of Sappho” represents her standing in the atrium of a Roman house, with lyre in her left hand, on a platform inscribed with the name of the Lesbian Sappho, evidently giving instruction to her many friends and pupils who stand and sit in various postures in the audience.

This is only a partial list and could easily be extended, but enough has been said to show that a knowledge of the real Sappho and her writings and the legends connected with her will help one to be a sound and intelligent critic of much in the realm of art.

VI. SAPPHO’S INFLUENCE ON GREEK AND ROMAN LITERATURE

If Sappho’s influence on art has been considerable, her place in literature has been far more remarkable. Nearly every thought in her fragments, which were known before the recent papyrus additions, has been borrowed or adapted by some ancient Greek or Roman poet or some modern poet in English, Italian, French, German, or modern Greek. Even the Spanish, Scandinavians, and Russians (p. 233) know her, though not so well acquainted with her as the authors of other nations. A very remarkable thing is that her writings have in all the ages been almost never unfavorably criticized from a literary point of view, no matter how her character was regarded. We have already, in giving a résumé of Sappho’s writings, cited many an echo, many a translation, many a dilation or dilution, but have seen that the real flavor of Sappho’s Greek cannot be transferred to any other language. In this and succeeding chapters, however, some of the names of writers who owe much to her will be brought together. She herself was original and coined many a new idea, many a new word, and perfected a new form of metre. Just as a modern poet, Tennyson for example, is indebted to his predecessors, Keats, Shelley, Shakespeare, for images and ideas, she was somewhat indebted in language and thought to Homer,[135] who filled the fancy of the Lesbians and was himself, probably, born at the neighboring Smyrna. She took little from Hesiod, although we find a few echoes of him which I cite in a note.[136] On the other hand, succeeding poets of the next hundred years seem to have taken little from her. Mimnermus probably knew the second ode, and his lines are included in the Corpus of Theognis.[137] If the fragment “Gold is Zeus’ child, no moth nor worm devours it (E. 110)” is Sappho’s and not originally written by Pindar himself, then Pindar took that idea from Sappho.[138] Herodotus tells the story of Rhodopis, and Plato, who would exclude poets from his ideal state, makes Socrates speak in the _Phaedrus_ of the beautiful Sappho as one of the wise ancients, and he calls her the Tenth Muse in his famous epigram.

Aristotle, who refers to her three times, is the first one definitely to quote her verses and that twice in the _Rhetoric_ (E. 91, 119, and p. 159). Aristotle’s pupil Theophrastus, who was also born in Eresus cites her (περὶ λέξεως, Mayer, 1910) as the representative of charm in all its forms. That essential element of charm is emphasized by Plutarch and by Demetrius, the rhetorician of the first century A.D., in his _Essay on Style_. Another pupil of Aristotle, Chamaeleon (310 B.C.), wrote a book about her.

Sappho’s influence was not great in the field of Greek and Roman tragedy. Aeschylus and Sophocles betray no acquaintance with her, but Euripides was considerably affected by her verses on love. When he writes in _Electra_ (l. 67), “I consider you a friend equal to the gods,” he is thinking of the first verse of Sappho’s second song. Plutarch cites Aristoxenus as saying that the tragedians learned the mixed Lydian mode from her. In comedy Aristophanes had a slight acquaintance with her, and he was thinking of Sappho’s first hymn in his suffragette play _Lysistrata_ (ll. 723 ff.), where a love-sick devotee of Aphrodite endeavors to escape from the Acropolis on the back of the sparrow, Aphrodite’s bird. Epicrates dealt with Sappho in his comedy, _Anti-Laïs_, before the year 392 B.C.; and Athenaeus applies the words of Epicrates to himself:

And all the songs that Sappho sang so sweetly,
Breathing of love, I know by heart completely.

_Sappho_ was the title of plays by six different Greek comedians, Ameipsias, Amphis, Antiphanes, Diphilus, Ephippus, and Timocles. Of those by Ameipsias and Amphis we have only a single word, and the fragments of the others throw little light on the question as to how much was taken from Sappho herself. To the plays of Plato, Menander, and Antiphanes on the legends of Phaon and the Leucadian Leap, we have already referred (p. 41).

In the Hellenistic Age, after the time of Alexander, Sappho was very popular. Clearchus, the Peripatetic philosopher (300 B.C.) drew on her for his _Treatise on Love Matters_.[139] In the third book of his _Biographies_ Aristoxenus, a writer on music (320 B.C.), classes her among inventors as did Menaechmus of Sicyon in his treatise _On Artists_. He says that “her books were her companions.”[140] The third century B.C. showed a serious interest in the Lesbians, and Theocritus has many imitations of Sappho in dialect,[141] metre, and content. In the second idyl Simaetha’s description of her feelings is taken from Sappho. In the seventh idyl, the picture of the farm to which two friends walked out from Syracuse in order to attend a harvest home festival, Theocritus is imitating Sappho’s Garden of the Nymphs, especially in ll. 135 ff.: “Close at hand the sacred water from the nymphs’ own cave welled forth with murmurs musical” (Lang). Probably the eighteenth idyl on Helen and Menelaus borrowed much from Sappho, since the first lines seem to be cited as Sappho’s by Himerius. Line 38, “O maid of beauty, maid of grace,” is lifted bodily from Sappho. The twenty-eighth idyl on _A Distaff_ undoubtedly employed Sappho as a model, and likewise the twenty-ninth and thirtieth idyls.

Callimachus (270 B.C.) in his first hymn (ll. 95 ff.) echoes the fragment which influenced Pindar (E. 100): “Wealth without virtue cannot make men happy, nor virtue without wealth, therefore grant both virtue and wealth.” It was about the same time that a fellow townsman, Callias, interpreted her poems as well as those of Alcaeus. Apollonius of Rhodes (260 B.C.) knew her, and so did the _Lament for Bion_, which has been attributed doubtfully to Moschus (150 B.C.): “Oh, Bion, Mytilene bewails thy song evermore instead of Sappho’s” (III. 91). Bion (100 B.C.?) in his _Lament for Adonis_ was probably influenced by Sappho’s words about the dying Adonis (E. 103) and used in l. 44 the same word as Sappho did in E. 29. The philosopher Chrysippus (240 B.C.) mentions her (fr. 36, 69), as does Cicero’s contemporary, the poet-philosopher Philodemus (60 B.C.). In fragment 57a he speaks of her, and in an epigram he uses as an “intelligence test” of an educated woman a knowledge of the poems of Sappho. Alexander the Sophist gave a university extension course of lectures on her poems. A little later in the Augustan Age the great literary critic and grammarian, Dionysius of Halicarnassus (20 B.C.), quotes the hymn to Aphrodite, and Strabo calls her a marvel. Living probably sometime in the first century A.D., the anonymous author of the _Treatise on the Sublime_ quotes the second ode. A little later, about 85 A.D., the golden-tongued orator, Dio, cites her, and his contemporary Plutarch often refers to her, in his _Essay on Love_, 18; in his _Dinner-table Problems_, VII. 8, 2; in his _Moralia_, 243b, 622c, and 406a, where there is a comparison with the practice of _Paiderastia_ of Socrates. Plutarch prefers Anacreon, but refers to at least four of the fragments which are preserved from Sappho (E. 2, 48, 71, 137).

Among the Romans Sappho was flattered abundantly, if imitation is the sincerest flattery. As Tucker says: “the most genuine lyric poet of Rome, Catullus, and its most skilful artificer of odes, Horace, both freely copied her. They did more than imitate; they plagiarised, they translated, sometimes almost word for word.” The flattery does not begin until the time of Cicero, for Latin comedy, unlike Greek comedy, paid little heed to the Lesbian poetess. Cicero refers to Silanion’s statue (p. 109). Lucretius must have taken his description at second hand, perhaps from some medical source, if he did not take the verses of the second ode of Sappho direct as his model for his description of fear.[142] Catullus (84-54 B.C.),[143] who caught the Greek rhythm even better than Horace, translated the same ode in his famous fifty-first poem, addressed to Lesbia, and adapted the fragments on the hyacinth and the evening star in his _epithalamia_, the sixty-first and sixty-second songs in the Catullian collection. Probably in the sixty-second he is imitating a lost poem of Sappho. The verse of Sappho (E. 142), “I flutter like a child after her mother,” referring perhaps to a wounded bird, has been used by Catullus in his well-known third poem, on the _Passer_, which probably also imitated a poem of Sappho.

In XI. 22-24, Catullus was perhaps thinking of Sappho’s stricken hyacinth, although some rustic proverb may also have been in his mind:

Qui illius culpa cecidit velut prati
Vltimi flos, praetereunte postquam
Tactus aratro est.

Think not henceforth, thou, to recall Catullus’
Love; thy own sin slew it, as on the meadow’s
Verge declines, un-gently beneath the ploughshare
Stricken, a flower.

(ROBINSON ELLIS)

From these lines and not from Sappho herself, of whom there is no echo in Virgil, Virgil took his description of the dying Euryalus:

And like the purple flower the plough cuts down
He droops and dies.

(_Aeneid_, IX. 435)

We are reminded of Robert Burns’ _To A Mountain Daisy_:

But now the share uptears thy bed,
And low thou lies!
...
Stern Ruin’s ploughshare drives, elate,
Full on thy bloom,
Till crushed beneath the furrow’s weight,
Shall be thy doom!

We refer on p. 9 to Catullus’ allusion to Sappho in XXXV. 17.

In the age of Augustus, even if Virgil neglects Sappho, in Horace (65-8 B.C.) she is re-born. If Edmonds[144] is right in his analysis of a passage in Dio’s _Corinthian Oration_, two fragments (E. 76, 77) of Sappho are incorporated there from a poem which Horace imitated in the same metre:

Exegi monumentum aere perennius.

Edmonds even goes so far as to suggest that Horace imitated not only the poem written by Sappho, but its position. For he thinks that this poem of Sappho was an epilogue to her collection; and Horace placed his imitation at the end of the third book, when he probably thought it would be his last. Horace seems to be adapting Sappho in the twelfth ode of the third book (see Landor’s imitation, p. 202). He composed twenty-six or more odes in the Sapphic metre, which he fitted to Italian measures, and he does them well, though in colder Latin. In him

Still breathed the love, still lived the fire
To which the Lesbian tuned her lyre.[145]

He pictures her in Hades’ home:[146]

Aeoliis fidibus querentem
Sappho puellis de popularibus.

The meaning is simply that she is “singing plaintively (or complaining) about the girls of her country,” perhaps because they did not all return her love, as Atthis deserted her for Andromeda (E. 81); not that she complained of her fellow-maidens for not loving Phaon. Unconsciously Horace helped to defame Sappho’s character, for the epithet “_mascula_,” in the _Epistle_ I. 19, 28, repeated by Ausonius, _Idyl_, VI. 21, has led to gross abuse of Sappho’s good fame.[147] It has no relation to _mascula libido_ and should be interpreted in the light of Statius[148] as referring simply to the fact that she was an imitator of the measures of Archilochus and the equal of men poets. Of elegiac writers, Tibullus and Propertius (II. 8, 33) were influenced only in a general way by the personal and ardent poetry of Sappho’s lyrics. Ovid in the fifteenth epistle of the _Heroides_ pictured Sappho as a passionate and voluptuous _hetaera_ who could not win the love of the beautiful Phaon. With passion she burns “as when through ripened corn By driving winds the spreading flames are borne,” and seeks release and ease, “from the raging seas.” Ovid (43 B.C.-18 A.D.) in this letter and also in the _Tristia_ (II. 365, _Lesbia quid docuit Sappho nisi amare puellas_) completed the Roman defamation of Sappho’s good name begun by Horace, and so led the way for the modern idea. From this disgrace she has been rescued by Madame Anne Le Fèvre Dacier (1681), by Welcker (1816), the bachelor who loved Sappho’s genius and who by his chivalrous vindication made himself her knight, and by Wilamowitz (1896),—her three great defenders.

Seneca (_circa_ 4 B.C.-65 A.D.) in his _Letters to Lucilius_ (88) quotes a book of the grammarian Didymus on the question _Whether Sappho was a prostitute_. In the Flavian period, Statius in his miscellaneous poems, called _Silvae_, mentions her:[148]

saltusque ingressa viriles
Non formidata temeraria Leucade Sappho,
Quosque alios dignata chelys.

About the same time Martial (c. 40-104 A.D.) cites a poem[149] of Canius on Sappho: “Sappho the lover praised a poetess: more pure is Theophila, yet Sappho was not more learned” (Ker).

In the second century A.D. Sappho was especially popular. In the time of Hadrian, Dracon of Stratonicea wrote a book about Sappho’s metres. In the days of Plutarch[150] the songs of Sappho were often sung at dinner parties. And Aulus Gellius (170 A.D.) in his _Attic Nights_[151] shows us that Sappho was all the rage in his day as in the time of Plutarch. It was the custom “after the chief courses were disposed of and the time was come for wine ... to have delightful renderings of a number of the songs of Anacreon and Sappho.” In the second century many writers on grammar, such as Apollonius Dyscolus and his son Herodian, Hephaestion (on metre), Demetrius (perhaps first century A.D.), Hermogenes, Maximus of Tyre, and Aristides (on rhetoric), Aelian, Pausanias, and Pollux quote Sappho abundantly. The great satirist Lucian (c. 120-c. 200 A.D.) calls her “the delicious glory of the Lesbians,”[152] makes her the standard for ladies of learning who write poems, and has her contribute to one of his pictures “the elegance of life.”[153] In _Loves_ (I, p. 905) he uses almost the very first words of the second ode. That Galen, another writer of the second century A.D., who knew not only medicine but also the popularity of Sappho, was speaking with authority on literature when he said that Sappho was “_the_ poetess,” is shown by the fact that most of the papyri with quotations from Sappho date from his time or from the third century, the century when Athenaeus and Philostratus, who cited much from Sappho, were living.

In the fourth century Eusebius, Themistius, and the Emperor Julian, as well as Himerius, often quote her. Ausonius in _Idyl_ VI says:

Et de nimboso saltum Leucate minatur
Mascula Lesbiacis Sappho peritura sagittis.

Claudian in his work on the _Marriage of Honorius and Mary_ (ll. 229-235) makes Mary “never cease under her mother’s guidance to unroll the writers of Rome and Greece, all that old Homer sang, or Thracian Orpheus, or that Sappho set to music with Lesbian quill” (Platnauer). In the fifth century the Christian writer Synesius and that compiler of chrestomathies Stobaeus often quote from Sappho. There is nothing to be gained by giving a long list of the writers on technical subjects to whom we owe so many fragments of Sappho not found on papyrus or parchment. Enough have been cited to prove that Sappho was much read in the first four and even the fifth centuries A.D. Himerius[154] especially proves her popularity in the fourth century, for he rewrites many of her songs in poetic prose and makes much use of Sapphic epithets and repetitions of words. The fragments (E. 68, 101) have influenced him in his _Orations_,[155] and in the _epithalamium_,[156] which he dedicated to his friend Severus in 354 A.D., Sappho’s influence is very apparent (see above pp. 88 ff.). The bride is likened to an apple and the bridegroom to Achilles, although in the fragments preserved we have no Achilles but rather Ares.

The many epigrams[157] referring to Sappho, from Plato’s couplet written in the fourth century B.C. to the time of Paul the Silentiary (who died 575 A.D.), some of which we have quoted above, bear out the testimony for Sappho’s continuous influence through these thousand years; and now we can trace the reading of Sappho down to the seventh century, thanks to the finding in Egypt of two manuscripts of that century (E. 34, 82-86). Probably, however, Sappho’s works were not much read even as early as the end of the sixth century. If so, Paul the Silentiary would never have written the epigram that appears in the Greek Anthology.[158] I give a literal translation: “Soft Sappho’s kisses; soft the embraces of her snowy limbs, soft every part of her, but her soul is of unyielding adamant. For her love stops at her lips; the rest belongs to her virginity. And who could endure this? Perhaps one who has borne it, will endure the thirst of Tantalus easily.” As Professor Gildersleeve[159] says: “Could Paulus have ever read anything of burning Sappho? We often envy the Byzantines their richer stores, but they seem to have been more familiar with Menander than with the early lyrists.... Tell us, Pothos and Himeros, why has Paulus taken the name of Sappho in vain? We forgive him for playing with Theocritus’ Galatea but he ought to have let Sappho sleep alone.” Perhaps Paulus had heard of the question debated in school and society ever since the days of Didymus; and so he came to her defence with an interesting compromise on her tantalizing chastity.

VII. SAPPHO IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCE

How long after the seventh century Sappho was read we cannot say, but in mediaeval days men were either entirely ignorant of her or had erroneous ideas. By the ninth century she seems to have become almost unknown, otherwise the critic and compiler Photius[160] would have preserved some of her works. He refers only to the tradition of her love for Phaon and the Leucadian Leap, and to the hypothesis that she was different from Sappho the courtesan, as she had been branded by that father of the church, Tatian (about 140 A.D.), who called her a female harlot, love-mad, γύναιον πορνικὸν ἐρωτομανές. That idea undoubtedly led to the burning of her books, according to Cardan, under Gregory Nazianzen, about 380 A.D. According to Scaliger, the burning took place in Constantinople and Rome in 1073. In any case, no manuscript has survived in Europe; and it is strange that now not even her legendary adventures with Phaon appear in the popular literature. The _Etymologicum Magnum_ (1000 A.D.?) mentions her only five times, but in that way preserves for us five fragments. After the time of that lexicon and Suidas, the mediaeval encyclopaedias and the _Speculum Historiale_ of Vincent de Beauvais of the thirteenth century make no mention of her, though they cite many another Greek poet. Georgius Cedrenus (1015 A.D.?), a Greek monk, who in his _Compendium Historiarum_ said that she was “the first of the Muses,” is about the only one of this time who notices her. Anna Comnena,[161] daughter of the Emperor Comnenus I, quotes as Sappho’s the verses supposed to be addressed to Sappho by Alcaeus (E. 119). And the archbishop Eustathius preserves a few fragments. Dante makes no reference to her, unless possibly very faintly in the verse “le muse lattar più ch’altri mai.” Boccaccio (1313-1375), who seems to have been forgotten by modern writers on Sappho, includes her among his _Delle Donne Famose_, “ma confortata da più caldo fervore d’animo (i suoi versi sono famosi) ... e certamente non sono più famose che la sua corona le corone dei re, nè le mitre de’ sacerdoti, nè le lauree de’ trionfanti.” Petrarch (1304-1374) mentions Sappho in his _Triumph of Love_ (IV. 25):[162]

Una giovane Greca a paro a paro
Coi nobili poeti già cantando
Ed aveva un suo stil leggiadro e raro.

In his Tenth Eclogue he dedicated four verses to her:

Altera solliciti laqueos cantabit amoris
Docta puella, choris doctorum immixta virorum
Cinnameus roseo calamus cui semper ab ore
Pendulus et dulces mulcebant astra querelae.