sappho poetic context

• Loeb 1 - Aphrodite, goddess of the embroidered throne


  Homeric epithets - “Aphrodite, goddess of the embroidered throne/Daughter of Zeus, weaver of wiles”

  Homeric imagery - “swift, beautiful sparrows, their close-packed wings whirling across the dark earth”
• Loeb 2 - Come to me, leave Crete behind!


  Homeric imagery - “sleep flows down from the trembling leaves”
• Loeb 16 - the most beautiful sight in the whole world


  Starts with a priamel where she uses examples to build up to and contrast her point, “a group of cavalry, others say infantry, and still others a fleet of ships”

  Homeric comparison evident in the use of epithet - “the most beautiful sight in the whole world”
• Loeb 17 - Come, Queen Hera 


  Homeric allusions. Mentions the “sons of Atreus, those famous kings” who prayed to Hera.

  Using Agamemnon and Menelaus as a reminder of what Hera has achieved before.

  Retells their journey from Troy, and their failures until they called on Hera, “Zeus the defender”, and “Dionysus, Thyone’s charming son”

  Asking Hera to achieve some sort of nostos - “helped me as you helped in the past”
• Loeb 31 - He is as blessed as a god


  Homeric allusion - watching this scene, “strikes terror into the heart in my breast”

  Sensory overload desire causes is the first time someone in the West discussed love so passionately/powerfully
• Loeb 32 - Who gave their works 


  Give thanks to her poetic inspirations - “who gave their works and made me honoured.”

  Could be referring to Homer or her rivalry of Alcaeus
• Loeb 47 - Love shook my soul


  Homeric simile - “Love shook my soul, like a wind buffeting oak trees”, elevating love
• Loeb 50 - A handsome mann is only good to look at 


  Moralising fragment - different from the rest of her work
• Loeb 51 - I do not know what I am going to do 


  Short fragment, could not have anything to do with love BUT Sappho frequently discusses love

  • "I do not know what I am going to do/I am in two minds."
• Loeb 55 - When you die 


  Apostrophe - “when you die..and no one will ever remember you and no one will ever long for you”

  
  

  Sappho addressing an unnamed person, perhaps unnamed because they have not been remembered after death.

  Bitter tone - person not achieving much/prophetic because she feels low about this person already

  Person will “fade into the house of Hades” and “wander” “among the dim shades” - this place reserved for unfulfilled people in the underworld, like Dido was in Book 6 of the Aeneid - Could be talking to herself - self depreciation.
• Loeb 81 - Put garlands, around your lovely hair, O Dika!


  Didactic - telling girls what the gods like to see from girls - they being decorated with flowers
• Loeb 95 - Gongyla 


  Asks “Lord” to take the speaker to the “banks of the Acheron” (the underworld) - Lord could be Hermes
• Loeb 96 - Often she turned her thoughts here 


  Homeric allusion - “rosy-fingered moon”, Homer describes dawn as “rosy-fingered” in the Odyssey. Distortion of Homer.

  Use of epithet “gentle Atthis”

  There are three different people in this poem
• Loeb 102 -Sweet mother! 


  “Sweet mother!” - apostrophe, Sappho gives her voice to a child, the only time anyone speaks from a child’s POV in the ancient world.

  Translated to “boy” but is gender neutral and can mean child, but usually means boy
• Loeb 104a Hesperus 


  Catallus 62 mimics this fragment
• Loeb 105a - Just like the sweet apple


  Epic simile - “Just like the sweet apple reddening at the highest height of the highest branch”
• Loeb 105c - Just like the hyacinth 


  Apollo turned the blood of his lover Hyacinth into a beautiful flower, a symbol of death and the rebirth of nature. Hints at the violence of men
• Loeb 118 - Come my divine Lyre 


  “Come my divine Lyre” - akin to Homer calling upon the Muses

  Sappho a channel for the divine Muse?
• Loeb 130 - Love which loosens the limbs 


  Homeric allusion - “love which loosens the limbs.

  Odyssey says sleep does this. Important in Book 23 after Odysseus tells Penleope his story, he falls into a sleep which loosens his limbs. Sappho suggests that love does this - centralising love and desire
• Loeb 131 - Atthis, the thought of me 


  Fulfils the motif of Sappho’s lovers leaving her (Ilkay)

  Mythological exempla - Andromeda is the princess of Ethiopia who Perseus saves from a sea dragon, could be an alias for a sex worker/poet -> "you run off to Andromeda"
• Loeb 137 - I want to say something 


  Poem is Sappho’s rebuttal to an unknown speaker. Poem quoted by Aristotle who theorised that Sappho was talking to Alcaeus - a lyric poet who was contemporary to Sappho and lived on Lesbos.

  Sappho could be talking to an adversary/lover/pupil
• Loeb 146 - Neither the honey


  Proverbial fragment - fulfils Calame’s view
• Loeb 148 - Love without virtue 


  Proverbial/moralising fragment - fulfils Calame’s view

  • “Wealth without virtue can be a harmful neighbour”
• Loeb 160 - Now, for my companions


  A statement of intent - “Now for my companions, I will sing these songs beautiful”