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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
Pindar (search for this): chapter 11
of her charms in her portraits on the Lesbian coins, as engraved by Wolf, I must think that he is too easily pleased with the outside of the lady's head, however it may have been with the inside. The most interesting intellectual fact 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 of the lyric poetry of Greece, and therefore of the world. Anacreon was a child, or perhaps unborn, when they died; and Pindar was a pupil of women who seem to have been Sappho's imitators, Myrtis and Corinna. The Latin poets Horace and Catullus, five or six centuries after, drew avowedly from these Aeolian models, to whom 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 bound the storm-tossed ship to the moist shore, he sang of Bacchus, and the Muses, of Venus and the boy who clings forever by her side, and of Lycus, beautif
Miletus (search for this): chapter 11
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, Gongyla from Colophon, and others from Pamphylia and the isle of Telos. Erinna and Damophyla. study together the complex Sapphic metres: Atthis learns how to strike the harp with the plectron, Sappho's invention; Mnasidica embroiders a sacred robe for the temple. The teacher meanwhile corrects the measures of one, the notes of another, the stitches of a third, then summons all from their work to rehearse together some sacred chorus or temple ritual; then stops to re
Solon (search for this): chapter 11
ong thing, and she blushingly answers, I should think you would be ashamed. But whether the admiration of Alcaeus was more or less ardent, it certainly was not peculiar to him. There were hardly any limits to the enthusiasm habitually expressed in ancient times for the poetry of Sappho. In respect to the abundance of laurels, she stands unapproached among women, even to the present day. Aelian preserves the tradition that the recitation of one of her poems so affected the great lawgiver Solon, that he expressed the wish that he might not die till he had learned it by heart. Plato called her the tenth Muse. Others described her as uniting in herself the qualities of Muse and Aphrodite; and others again as the joint foster-child of Aphrodite, Cupid, and the Graces. Grammarians lectured on her poems and wrote essays on her metres; and her image appeared on at least six different coins of her native land. And it has generally been admitted by modern critics that the loss of her p
Voltaire (search for this): chapter 11
ls 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 imput the art of printing had remained undiscovered, that all contemporary 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 seeks to show this indirectly, through a minute criticism of her writings. Into this he carries, I regret to say, an essential coarseness of mind, like that of Voltaire, which delights to torture the most innocent phrases till they yield a double meaning. He reads these graceful fragments as the sailors in some forecastle might
Wolf (search for this): chapter 11
his day. Iliad, 9.129, 271.--as you please to render the phrase more or less ardently,--and Plutarch and Athenaeus use similar epithets. But when Professor Felton finds evidence of her charms in her portraits on the Lesbian coins, as engraved by Wolf, I must think that he is too easily pleased with the outside of the lady's head, however it may have been with the inside. The most interesting intellectual fact in Sappho's life was doubtless her relation to her great townsman Alcaeus. These a Greek physician is said to have copied it bodily into his book, and to have regulated his prescriptions accordingly. All that remains to us of Sappho, besides, is a chaos of short fragments, which have been assiduously collected and edited by Wolf, Blomfield, Neue, and others. Among the spirited translations by our own poet Percival, there are several of these fragments; one of which I quote for its exceeding grace, though it consists of only two lines : Sweet mother, I can weave the
Parthenia (search for this): chapter 11
of her husband; she dared not call him by his name, but addressed him with the title of Lord ; and this was hardly an exaggeration of the social habits of Athens itself. But among the Dorians of Sparta, and probably among the Aeolians as well, the husband called his wife mistress, not in subserviency, but after the English peasant fashion; Spartan mothers preserved a power over their adult sons such as was nowhere else seen; the dignity of maidenhood was celebrated in public songs, called Parthenia, which were peculiar to Sparta; and the women took so free a part in the conversation, that Socrates, in a half-sarcastic passage in the Protagoras, compares their quickness of wit to that of the men. The best authority in regard to the Spartan women is K. O. Muller's Dorier, Book IV. c. IV., also Book V. c. VIII. 5 (Eng. tr. Vol. II. pp. 290--300; also p. 311). For his view of the women of Lesbos, see his Literature of Greece (Eng. tr.), c. XIII. The Spartan women, in short, were fie
Hades (search for this): chapter 11
man, whom she had, perhaps, tried in vain to influence. This imaginary epitaph warns this pupil that she is in danger of being forgotten through forgetfulness of those Pierian roses which are the Muses' symbol. This version retains the brevity of the original lines, and though rhymed, is literal, except that it changes the second person to the third:-- Dying she reposes; Oblivion grasps her now; Since never Pierian roses Were wreathed round her empty brow; She goeth unwept and lonely To Hades' dusky homes, And bodiless shadows only Bid her welcome as she comes. To show how differently Sappho lamented her favorites, I give Elton's version of another epitaph on a maiden, whom we may fancy lying robed for the grave, while her companions sever their tresses around her, that something of themselves may be entombed with her. This dust was Timas'; ere her bridal hour She lies in Proserpina's gloomy bower; Her virgin playmates from each lovely head Cut with sharp steel their loc
Hipponax (search for this): chapter 11
uripides, 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 took up the tale 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
Thirlwall (search for this): chapter 11
, 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 more inclined than becomes a man and a professor to put a high estimate on literary women, declares of her that she has shared the fortunes of others of her sex, endowed like her with God's rich
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