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572 BC (search for this): chapter 11
qeoglw/ssous. Brunck, 2.114. Of these Sappho was the admitted chief. Among the Greeks the poet meant Homer, and the poetess equally designated her. There flourished in those days, said Strabo, writing a little before our era, Sappho, a wondrous creature; for we know not any woman to have appeared, within recorded time, who was in the least to be compared with her in respect to poesy. The dates of her birth and death are alike uncertain, but she lived somewhere between the years 628 and 572 B. C.: thus flourishing three or four centuries after Homer, and less than two centuries before Pericles. Her father's name is variously given, and we can only hope, in charity, that it was not Scamandronimus. We have no better authority than that of Ovid for saying that he died when his daughter was six years old. Her mother's name was Cleis, and Sappho had a daughter of the same name. The husband of the poetess was probably named Cercolas, and there is a faint suspicion that he was a man of
1816 AD (search for this): chapter 11
onster of profligacy, unless some possible Welcker had appeared, long centuries after, to right the wrong. The remarkable essay of Welcker, Sappho von einem herrschenden Vorurtheil befreit, Welcker, Kleine Schriften, II. 80. See also his Sappho, a review of Neue's edition of her works, first published in 1828 (K. S., 1. 110), and Sappho unmd Phaon, published in 1863, a review of Mure and Theodor Kock (K. S., V. 228). from which all modern estimates of Sappho date, was first published in 1816, under the title, Sappho vindicated from a prevailing prejudice. It was a remarkable instance of the power of a single exhaustive investigation to change the verdict of scholars. Bishop Thirlwall, for instance, says of it: The tenderness of Sappho, whose character has been rescued, by one of the happiest efforts of modern criticism, from the unmerited reproach under which it had labored for so many centuries, appears to have been no less pure than glowing. And Felton, who is usually not mo
1828 AD (search for this): chapter 11
rary memorials of this maiden had vanished, and posterity had possessed no record of her except Voltaire's Pucelle. In place of that heroic image there would have remained to us only a monster of profligacy, unless some possible Welcker had appeared, long centuries after, to right the wrong. The remarkable essay of Welcker, Sappho von einem herrschenden Vorurtheil befreit, Welcker, Kleine Schriften, II. 80. See also his Sappho, a review of Neue's edition of her works, first published in 1828 (K. S., 1. 110), and Sappho unmd Phaon, published in 1863, a review of Mure and Theodor Kock (K. S., V. 228). from which all modern estimates of Sappho date, was first published in 1816, under the title, Sappho vindicated from a prevailing prejudice. It was a remarkable instance of the power of a single exhaustive investigation to change the verdict of scholars. Bishop Thirlwall, for instance, says of it: The tenderness of Sappho, whose character has been rescued, by one of the happiest ef
1863 AD (search for this): chapter 11
had possessed no record of her except Voltaire's Pucelle. In place of that heroic image there would have remained to us only a monster of profligacy, unless some possible Welcker had appeared, long centuries after, to right the wrong. The remarkable essay of Welcker, Sappho von einem herrschenden Vorurtheil befreit, Welcker, Kleine Schriften, II. 80. See also his Sappho, a review of Neue's edition of her works, first published in 1828 (K. S., 1. 110), and Sappho unmd Phaon, published in 1863, a review of Mure and Theodor Kock (K. S., V. 228). from which all modern estimates of Sappho date, was first published in 1816, under the title, Sappho vindicated from a prevailing prejudice. It was a remarkable instance of the power of a single exhaustive investigation to change the verdict of scholars. Bishop Thirlwall, for instance, says of it: The tenderness of Sappho, whose character has been rescued, by one of the happiest efforts of modern criticism, from the unmerited reproach und
1865 AD (search for this): chapter 11
s a compensation, they make for their husbands such admirable bread, that it has preserved its reputation for two thousand years. The old Greek poet Archestratus, who wrote a work on the art of cookery, said that if the gods were to eat bread, they would send Hermes to Eresus to buy it; and the only modern-traveller, so far as I know, who has visited the village, reports the same excellent receipt to be still in vogue. Travels and Discoveries in the Levant, by C. T. Newton, 1.99. London, 1865. It was among these well-trained women that the most eminent poetess of the world was born. Let us now turn and look upon her in her later abode of Mitylene; either in some garden of orange and myrtle, such as once skirted the city, or in that marble house which she called the dwelling of the Muses. *mousopo/lwZZZ oi)ki/an.> Let us call around her, in fancy, the maidens who have come from different parts of Greece to learn of her. Anactoria is here from Miletus, Eunica from Salamis, Gon
Adonis (search for this): chapter 11
er. And thus we might go on through the literature of Greece, peering after little grains of Sappho among the rubbish of voluminous authors. But perhaps these specimens are enough. It remains to say that the name of Phaon, who is represented by Ovid as having been her lover, is not once mentioned in these fragments, and the general tendency of modern criticism is to deny his existence. Some suppose him to have been a merely mythical being, based upon the supposed loves of Aphrodite and Adonis, who was called by the Greeks Phethon or Phaon. It was said that this Phaon was a ferryman at Mitylene, who was growing old and ugly till he rowed Aphrodite in his boat, and then refused payment; on which she gave him for recompense youth, beauty, and Sappho. This was certainly, Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee, as in Uhland's ballad; but the Greek passengers have long since grown as shadowy as the German, and we shall never know whether this oarsman really ferried himself into the favor of
Adv (search for this): chapter 11
of Sappho, conjured up a certain Phaon, with whom she might be enamored, and left her memory covered with stains such as even the Leucadian leap could not purge. Finally, since Sappho was a heathen, a theologian was found at last to make an end of her; the Church put an apostolic sanction upon these corrupt reveries of the Roman profligate, and Tatian, the Christian Father, fixed her name in ecclesiastical tradition as that of an impure and love-sick woman who sings her own shame. Tatian, Adv. Grecos, c. 33. Ovid, Heroid., 15.61-70. The process has, alas! plenty of parallels in history. Worse, for instance, than the malice of the Greek comedians or of Ovid — since they possibly believed their own stories — was the attempt made by Voltaire to pollute, through twenty-one books of an epic poem, the stainless fame of his own virgin country-woman, Joan of Arc. In that work he revels in a series of impurities so loathsome that the worst of them are omitted from the common edition
Alcaeus (search for this): chapter 11
in Sappho's life was doubtless her relation to her great townsman Alcaeus. These two will always be united in fame as the joint founders ofom nearly all their metres have been traced back. Horace wrote of Alcaeus: The Lesbian poet sang of war amid the din of arms, or when he had these fine lines to the lover of Sappho. And indeed the poems of Alcaeus, so far as they remain, show much of the grace and elegance of Horn on direct evidence; for there remain to us only two verses which Alcaeus addressed to Sappho. The one is a compliment, the other an apologtire into oblivion, and add no more, what a comfort it would be! Alcaeus unhappily went one phrase further, and therefore goes down to futuue. Now this apology may have had the simplest possible occasion. Alcaeus may have undertaken to amend a verse of Sappho's and have spoiled hould think you would be ashamed. But whether the admiration of Alcaeus was more or less ardent, it certainly was not peculiar to him. The
Alcibiades (search for this): chapter 11
the real Lesbian society in the reports of Maximus Tyrius, whom Felton strangely calls a tedious writer of the time of the Antonines, but who seems to me often to rival Epictetus and Plutarch in eloquence and nobleness of tone. In his eighth dissertation he draws a parallel between the instruction given by Socrates to men and that afforded by Sappho to women. Each, he says, appears to me to deal with the same kind of love, the one as subsisting among males, the other among females. What Alcibiades and Charmides and Phaedrus are with Socrates, that Gyrinna and Atthis and Anactoria are with the Lesbian. And what those rivals Prodicus, Gorgias, Thrasymachus, and Protagoras are to Socrates, that Gorgo and Andromeda are to Sappho. At one time she reproves, at another she confutes these, and addresses them in the same ironical language with Socrates. Then he draws parallels between the writings of the two. Diotima says to Socrates that love flourishes in abundance, but dies in want.
Ameipsias (search for this): chapter 11
Better Aspasia than a learned woman who had the effrontery to set up for the domestic virtues. The stories that thus gradually came to be told about Sappho in later years — scandal at longer and longer range — were simply inevitable, from the point of view of Athens. If Aristophanes spared neither Socrates nor Euripides, why should his successors spare Sappho? Therefore the reckless comic authors of that luxurious city, those Pre-Bohemians of literature, made the most of their game. Ameipsias, Amphis, Antiphanes, Diphilus, Ephippus, Timocles, all wrote farces bearing the name of a woman who had died in excellent repute, so far as appears, two centuries before. With what utter recklessness they did their work is shown by their naming as her lovers Archilochus, who died before she was born, and Hipponax, who was born after she died. Then came, in later literature, the Roman Ovid, who had learned from licentious princesses to regard womanly virtue as only a pretty fable. He to
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