Sappho and Epic

chapter 4 Sappho and Epic Adrian Kelly* οὔνομά μευ Ϲαπφώ, τόϲϲον δ’ ὑπερέϲχον ἀοιδῶν θηλειᾶν, ἀνδρῶν ὅϲϲον ὁ Μαιονίδαϲ. My name is Sappho, and so far did I surpass female poets, as the (grand)son of Maeon the males. Antipater of Thessalonica,Greek Anthology 7.15 (test. 57) Ancient tradition readily sought to connect Sappho with the greatest of all Greek epic poets, Homer,1 and a particular and direct interplay between the two has been prominent in recent scholarship. Yet Sappho’s relationship with epic poetry as a whole is a larger and more complex issue, since neither figure was the first or only artist of their sort in the earliest period, and Sappho certainly knew epics and stories not associated with the Iliad and Odyssey, and may not have known those two poems at all.2 When one considers the many sources, textualised or not, with which Sappho and her audiences must have been familiar, then one must be alive to the depth and range of possibilities for her interaction with this material, and more than a little resentful that almost all of it is lost. Formally, archaic epos (epic poetry) and melos (‘melic’ or lyric poetry) can be differentiated in several ways. The former uses the dactylic hexameter and an artificial dialect which mixes Aeolic and Ionic forms from several different periods, while the metres of Sappho’s melos are more varied in rhythm and arrangement, and her dialect is basically Lesbian * 1 2 I am grateful to Bill Allan, Felix Budelmann, Patrick Finglass, André Lardinois, Lucia Prauscello, Henry Spelman, and to audiences in Cambridge and São Paulo, for their assistance with this chapter. Maeon is named as either Homer’s father (Contest of Homer and Hesiod 3) or grandfather (4). Cf. Burgess 2001: 65–7, 114–31, Kelly 2015a: 28–9, Spelman 2017a: 743–5. I do not rehearse my earlier arguments against a direct relationship between Sappho and Homer, since Sappho is interacting with epic poetry for broadly the sorts of reasons scholars have identified.  Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford, on 26 May 2021 at 21:15:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316986974.005 54 Adrian Kelly Aeolic.3 As in other matters, an appreciation of definitional boundaries is useful, as long as they are not treated as impermeable. While, for instance, epic poets usually stand at a distance from the mythical content of their works, and lyric poets are inclined to refer directly to the contemporary world, some epic poets like Hesiod freely draw upon their own contexts (however fictively), and lyric poets can tell mythical tales (as we shall see). In terms of scale, epos generally fosters larger compositions than melos, and this may also be related to performance setting, with epic more readily associated with public contexts and lyric with private ones, though these too should not be considered strict boundaries: choral melos, for instance, straddled the public/private divide quite evenly, and the sixthcentury lyric poet Stesichorus stands as a notable exception to almost all the above dichotomies. Now that scholarship has moved beyond mapping early Greek literary history into discrete periods (where epos simply precedes melos), the possibility for recognising cross-germination and mutual interaction can only increase if, as some have argued, Sappho and Alcaeus knew of local epic traditions more thoroughly Aeolic than those which have survived,4 and we should also remember that the (probably sixthcentury bc) Little Iliad was held in antiquity to have been composed by a Lesbian epic poet, Lesches of Pyrrha or Mytilene.5 Add to this the island’s geographical proximity to Troy and its profile in Homer,6 and we might well think that Sappho’s interaction with epos, particularly to do with the Trojan War, was unavoidable. The complexity of that process is clear when we look more closely at Sappho’s language.7 Scholars have long noted similarities between her dialect and that of the (largely) Ionian epic poets, as for instance the genitive singular of masculine o-stem nouns in –οιο alongside Lesbian –ω, or ἐθέλω (‘I wish’) alongside Lesbian θέλω. These epicisms have been explained as traces of an older Aeolian dialect, simple borrowings from Ionian epos, or even as the common inheritance of Indo-European poetry but, whatever the truth,8 the Lesbian singers interacted with epic language as an evolving and contemporary creature. 3 4 5 6 7 8 Cf. Tribulato on language, Battezzato on metre; also below, pp. 56–7, for Sappho’s experiments with the dactylic hexameter. West 2002: 218 = 2011–13: i 406–7. Kelly 2015b: 318. Iliad 9.128–30, 664–5, 24.544–5, Odyssey 3.169, West 2002: 208 = 2011–13: i 393–4. Cf. Tribulato. This is not unconnected to the controversy surrounding the Aeolic elements in the epic language itself, which have been seen as evidence for a purely Aeolic phase in the evolution of epos: cf. Willi 2011: 460–2. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford, on 26 May 2021 at 21:15:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316986974.005 Sappho and Epic 55 This applies to the most obvious sign of interaction, the shared possession of the noun–epithet combinations (e.g. Ἔροϲ . . . λυϲιμέληϲ, ‘love limb-loosening’) so characteristic of hexameter epic.9 Among the usual links with Homer (Broger, for instance, lists 117 expressions held in common with the Iliad and Odyssey), a large proportion can be paralleled in non-Homeric epic.10 Indeed, one of the most famous of Sappho’s epithets for Aphrodite, ποικιλόθρον’, usually translated ‘with cunningly-wrought throne’ or similar, has also been interpreted to mean ‘wearing a dress with flowers woven in’ and linked with the depiction of the goddess’s beautification with flowers in the Cypria.11 Comparable too is the phrasing of Aphrodite’s promise for the human object of Sappho’s prayer (‘since if now she flees, soon she will pursue’), which may be linked with Zeus’s pursuit of Nemesis in the Cypria (‘for she fled and did not wish to mix in love . . . she fled, and Zeus pursued, and desired in his soul to seize her’).12 One need not assume that Sappho has drawn these expressions directly from a fixed text – and our uncertainty about the date of the Cypria, somewhere in the seventh and sixth centuries, allows the possibility that the influence ran the other way13 – but it is a salutary lesson on the limitations of the surviving evidence. We may see Sappho interacting with the remains of non-Homeric epic poetry, but only by the merest chance. The Iliad and Odyssey dominate the extant records of early narrative epos, and the former poem in particular plays a prominent role in the study of Sappho’s epic interactions,14 though one notes the high proportion of obviously formulaic expressions in any list one could compile, as below for fr. 1: 9 10 11 12 13 14 Fr. 130.1 ~ Hesiod, Theogony 120–1, 910–11. But cf. Archilochus fr. 196 IEG, ἀλλά μ’ ὁ λυϲιμελὴϲ ὦταῖρε δάμναται πόθοϲ, ‘but I, my friend, am tamed by limb-loosening desire’; associations with non-epic poetry – much less well preserved in this period – need to be remembered throughout. Broger 1996: 253–69. Steinrück 1999: 146–9 argues that the Iliad and Odyssey were much less important to Sappho than other texts, such as the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. Cf. below, pp. 62–4 (on fr. 44). Fr. 1.1; Cypria fr. 5 GEF. Cf. Scheid and Svenbro 1994: 61–7 ≈ 1996: 53–8; contra Jouanna 1999 (with pp. 102–3 on the variant reading ποικίλοφρον’, ‘cunningly-minded’). Fr. 1.21; Cypria frr. 10.4, 10.7 GEF. Cf. Currie 2015: 281. It is doubtful that the Odyssey was known to the Lesbian poets: cf. Meyerhoff 1984: 13, West 2002: 214 = 2011–13: i 401; contra M. Mueller 2016 (below). Winkler 1990: 178–80 reads the makarismos (‘blessing’) opening of fr. 31 next to Odysseus’ praise of Nausicaa (Odyssey 6.158–61). Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford, on 26 May 2021 at 21:15:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316986974.005 56 Adrian Kelly μή μ’ ἄϲαιϲι μηδ’ ὀνίαιϲι δάμνα, | θῦμον (3–4) οὐ γάρ πώ ποτέ μ’ ὧδε θεᾶϲ ἔροϲ οὐδὲ γυναικόϲ | θυμὸν ἐνὶ ϲτήθεϲϲι περιπροχυθεὶϲ ἐδάμαϲϲεν (Iliad 14.315–16) δάμαϲον θυμὸν μέγαν (Iliad 9.496) ἄρμ’ ὐπαϲδεύξαιϲα (9) ζεύξειεν ὑφ’ ἅρμαϲιν (Iliad 24.14) ζεύξαθ’ ὑφ’ ἅρματ’ (Odyssey 3.476) etc. περὶ γᾶϲ μελαίναϲ (10) γαῖα μέλαινα (8x Homer) πύκνα δίννεντεϲ πτέρ’ (11) δινεύουϲαν ὑπὸ πτερύγοϲ βάλε (Iliad 23.875) ἔνθ’ ἐπιδινηθέντε τιναξάϲθην πτερὰ πυκνά (Odyssey 2.151) etc. ἀπ’ ὠράνωἴθεροϲ διὰ μέϲϲω (11–12) δι’ αἰθέροϲ οὐρανὸν ἷκεν (Iliad 2.458) οὐρανὸν εἴϲω | αἰθέροϲ ἐκ δίηϲ (Iliad 16.364–5) οὐρανὸν ἷκε δι’ αἰθέροϲ (Iliad 17.425) etc. αἶψα δ’ ἐξίκοντο (13) αἶψα δ’ ἔπειθ’ ἵκανον (Iliad 3.145) etc. αἶψα δ’ ἵκοντο (Iliad 18.532) etc. μειδιαίϲαιϲ’ ἀθανάτωι προϲώπωι (14) μειδιόων βλοϲυροῖϲι προϲώπαϲι (Iliad 7.212) ἐφ’ ἱμερτῶι δὲ προϲώπωι | αἰεὶ μειδιάει (Hymn to Aphrodite 10.2–3) φιλομμειδὴϲ Ἀφροδίτη (6x Homer, Hymn to Aphrodite 5.56) etc. κὤττι μοι μάλιϲτα θέλω γένεϲθαι | μαινόλαι θύμωι· (17–18) ὅϲον ἤθελε θυμόϲ (Iliad 9.177) etc. ἤθελε θυμῶι (Iliad 16.255) etc. εἰ ϲύ γε θυμῶι | ϲῶι ἐθέλοιϲ (Iliad 17.488–9; cf. 23.894) κωὐκ ἐθέλοιϲα (24) καὶ οὐκ ἐθέλουϲ’ ὑπ’ ἀνάγκηϲ (Odyssey 2.110) ὅϲ μ’ ἔθελεν φιλότητι μιγήμεναι οὐκ ἐθελούϲηι (Iliad 6.165) ἐμεῖο μὲν οὐκ ἐθελούϲηϲ (Iliad 24.289) οὐκ ἐθελούϲηι (Odyssey 2.50) None of these parallels is so distinctive as to compel a particular intertextual reference to the Homeric passage(s),15 but they have been taken to show how thoroughly immersed in epic language and phraseology this poem is – naturally, given its theme. It is therefore no surprise that Sappho herself experimented with the hexameter, of which a few fragments survive. 16 Here the poet’s 15 16 Cf. contra Marry 1979, Rissman 1983: 1–4 (and below, n. 20). Frr. 105(a), 105(c), 106, 142, 143, perhaps frr. 107–9; see Battezzato p. 125. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford, on 26 May 2021 at 21:15:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316986974.005 Sappho and Epic 57 interactions extend to prosody and scansion: like the epic bards, she allows a regular pause (‘caesura’) in the middle of the verse, substitution of a spondee (two heavy syllables) for the dactyl (three syllables, one heavy + two light), and the treatment of an otherwise heavy open syllable as light (‘epic correption’) when that syllable is placed before another vowel (‘hiatus’). None of these practices is typical in Aeolian versification and, their size notwithstanding, these fragments are illuminating examples of Sappho’s epic interactions. In fr. 105(a), perhaps from an epithalamium (wedding song),17 Sappho deploys a vegetation simile reminiscent of epic examples to compare the object of her comparison to the ‘sweet apple’ which cannot be plucked (for lines 1–2, ἄκρωι ἐπ’ ὔϲδωι, | ἄκρον ἐπ’ ἀκροτάτωι, ‘on the top branch, | top on the topmost’, cf. Iliad 2.312, ὄζωι ἐπ’ ἀκροτάτωι, ‘on the topmost branch’; also 4.484), but here the forceful polyptoton expresses the exquisite rarity of the fruit in an obviously erotic way, where martial epic mainly uses floral similes to suggest mortality and death.18 Fr. 105(c) does it again, this time with the image of shepherds trampling the hyacinth, and the loss of its ‘deep-red bloom’ (πόρφυρον ἄνθοϲ), to foreshadow the wedding itself.19 Frr. 142 (Λάτω καὶ Νιόβα μάλα μὲν φίλαι ἦϲαν ἔταιραι, ‘Leto and Niobe were true friends, companions’) and 143 (χρύϲειοι δ’ ἐρέβινθοι ἐπ’ ἀιόνων ἐφύοντο, ‘and golden chickpeas were growing on the banks’) do not give away much, but show an intriguing interchange of dialect forms (e.g. Aeolic Λάτω for epic-Ionic Λήτω, but also epic-Ion. χρύϲειοι for Aeol. χρύϲιοι) to suggest fruitful experimentation in cross-generic and -linguistic composition, seen again in fr. 106 (πέρροχοϲ, ὠϲ ὄτ’ ἄοιδοϲ ὀ Λέϲβιοϲ ἀλλοδάποιϲιν, ‘outstanding, as when a Lesbian bard among foreigners’), with specifically Aeolic vocalism (πέρροχοϲ for Ionic περίοχοϲ) and psilosis (ὠϲ / ὄτ’ / ὀ for ὡϲ / ὅτ’ / ὁ). Sappho’s recreation of themes found in epic poetry is not restricted to these few formally similar fragments; we can see a range of interactive possibilities throughout her corpus, stretching from appropriation to open opposition, sometimes within the same poem. Fr. 1 is the obvious 17 18 19 For this genre, see McEvilley 2008: 186–214, F. Ferrari 2010: 117–33, Dale 2011a, Ferrari pp. 110–11, Prauscello pp. 227–9. Himerius, Oration 9.16 tells us that Sappho was here contrasting those who pick the ‘fruit before its season’ (i.e., before marriage) with those who wait until the proper moment: see Bowie. Kelly 2007: 289–90; also Hesiod, Works and Days 681, Ibycus fr. 317(a) PMGF. For Sappho’s other vegetation similes cf. frr. 115, 194 with Rissman 1983: 98–104. DuBois 1995: 46–7 suggests a direct intertext with the Iliad passage above, which would colour the fragment with intimations of death. For these two poems, see duBois 1995: 40–53, 2015: 70–1, Snyder 1997: 104–5. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford, on 26 May 2021 at 21:15:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316986974.005 58 Adrian Kelly example, especially given its saturation of epic language (above), and its theme – a request to Aphrodite for renewed aid in an erotic venture – invokes a widespread motif in epic narrative, where heroic males summon a helpful god at a moment of distress, and some scholars have suggested that Sappho is referring particularly to Diomedes’ appeal to Athena in Book 5 of the Iliad.20 With or without this direct link, Sappho relocates the usually male-dominated heroic associations of such an action into a female-centred and erotic context, endowing herself and her endeavours with an importance usually bestowed upon others.21 Epos is not unaware of sex, as we can see in the rather prosaic frankness of the Odyssey or the seduction scenes throughout the tradition,22 but it does not prioritise or foreground, as Sappho does here and throughout her work, the female experience and perspective of sexual desire.23 Repurposing of this sort is pervasive in the poem: the sparrows drawing Aphrodite’s chariot (9–13) deliberately counterpart the more impressive beasts of burden we find in analogous circumstances in epic, as the horses (surrounded by sea beasts) drawing Poseidon’s chariot to Aegae or those conveying Hera and Athena to the Trojan plain.24 Sappho’s playful relationship with her patron deity can be compared with that between Athena and Odysseus in the Odyssey, Athena and Diomedes in the Iliad, or even Helen and Aphrodite in the same poem; and Sappho’s appeal ‘be my ally’ (ϲύμμαχοϲ ἔϲϲο, 28) militarises the whole erotic programme.25 The combined effect suggests the poetic seriousness of the theme, that love is an important endeavour, as well as showcasing the artist’s and audience’s ability to recreate and play off shared themes and expressions. If fr. 1 seems to clothe erotic narrative in military garb, other more directly oppositional stances are possible, as in fr. 16, where Sappho 20 21 22 23 24 25 For this poem, see Marry 1979, Rissman 1983: 1–29, Winkler 1990: 169–76, Greene 1994: 50–4 = 1996a: 243–6, duBois 1995: 7–10, Snyder 1997: 7–17, Stehle 1997: 296–9, M. Johnson 2007: 41–8, Blondell 2010: 373–7, Swift pp. 203–6. Thus Winkler 1990: 168–70 plausibly argues that fr. 1 is antipatriarchal in asserting Aphrodite’s power and influence specifically as a response to her negative portrayal in this portion of the Iliad, but Aphrodite – unlike her various Near Eastern relatives – is generally treated in early Greek epic in negative and trivialising terms, so the point remains even without a direct link to this passage in Homer. Cf. Forsyth 1979 on seduction scenes, D. Campbell 1983: 1–4 for a summary. This common theme in Sappho’s epic interactions is not evidence for the theory that her works were principally intended for and performed in women-only zones, or were only of interest to women; cf. Parker 1993: 343 = Greene 1996b: 180 (‘there is no theme, no occasion, in Sappho that we do not find in other poets’), Bowman 2004: 13–15, Lardinois. Iliad 13.23–31, 5.730–2, 5.767–77. Cf. the swans for Apollo’s chariot in fr. 208, Alcaeus fr. 307(c). For the unusual nature of Sappho’s relationship with Aphrodite in the context of early Greek melos, see Swift. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford, on 26 May 2021 at 21:15:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316986974.005 Sappho and Epic 59 memorably opens by contrasting the highest values of the militaryminded (1–3) with her own valorisation of ‘whatever someone loves’ (κῆν’ ὄττω τιϲ ἔραται, 3–4).26 Keeping in mind the multiform deployment of military themes in the personal poetry of her contemporary Alcaeus (and elsewhere in the Greek world, e.g. in Archilochus and Tyrtaeus), the contrast here may well include some epic poetry, and not necessarily just the Iliad, in its apparent dispreferral of the martial focus,27 and some of its language may recall epic phraseology: ἰππήων ϲτρότον . . . πέϲδων, ‘army of horsemen . . . of foot soldiers’ (1) resonates with formulaic πέζοι θ’ ἱππῆέϲ τε, ‘foot soldiers and horsemen’ (3x Hom.), while ἐπ[ὶ] γᾶν μέλαι[ν]αν, ‘on the black earth’ (2), unusual here as it comes straight after ‘ships’ in the same verse, may represent a fusion of the epic habit of so qualifying both earth (γαῖα) and, much more commonly, ships.28 Once more, whether referring to a single text or not, Sappho emphasises the independence of the female perspective and its power to create alternative modes of valuation in a male-dominated world. These reversals tap into the widespread early epic motif of feminine unsuitability for war,29 and celebrate it as a positive, apparently even superior virtue, foregrounding the female experience of violence in the lives of Sappho and her contemporaries, while also suggesting once more that love is a powerful and serious topic for poetry (as also in frr. 31, 47, 130, etc.). Yet fr. 16 is not simply anti-epos.30 Sappho deploys the story of Helen to explore the poem’s opening contention about what is καλλίϲτον (‘fairest’, 3), but the continuing presence of the epic background suggests that its apparent negation in the priamel is not straightforward. While the paradigm begins by suggesting that Helen is the love object referred to in lines 3–4, it is Aphrodite (and Paris) who led her to abandon husband and homeland (6–12) and, when the poet compares her beloved, absent Anactoria (15–16) to Helen, she concludes by casting herself effectively as Menelaus: Sappho’s new, personalised and eroticised κάλλιϲτον, therefore, is not 26 27 28 29 30 For this poem, see Winkler 1990: 176–8, Tzamali 1996: 130–65, Snyder 1997: 64–71, Pfeijffer 2000a, Hutchinson 2001: 160–8, Pallantza 2005: 61–79, E. Bowie 2010: 67–9, Blondell 2010: 377– 87 (~ 2013: 111–16), Swift 2015: 105–6. As Hutchinson 2001: 161 puts it: ‘The Iliad may be one element in the male militarism which the poem dismisses; but the structure of the stanza presents rather a crowd of contemporary men.’ Cf. Rissman 1983: 34–8; contra Tzamali 1996: 135–6. These are, once more, formulaic expressions in epic, and hard to link with any specific Homeric passage. They are common in melos as well (e.g. fr. 20.6, Alcman fr. 89.3 PMGF, ‘Theognis’ 878), complicating any straightforwardly epic resonance. Iliad 8.163, Kelly 2007: 190. Cf. Hutchinson 2001: 160; contra M. Johnson 2007: 68, ‘a rejection of the Iliad in particular and its martial heroism.’ Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford, on 26 May 2021 at 21:15:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316986974.005 60 Adrian Kelly unequivocally celebrated by the end of the poem. Thus, her relationship with the epic past is not just contrarian, since she relies on the audience to invoke its characters and their stories to explore the tensions and uncertainties in the poetic world that she constructs. The dynamic between love and war tends to dominate discussions of Sappho’s relationship with epic, but other themes at home in the latter’s tradition played into the lives and concerns of her audiences. Travel and trade were vital for the prosperity and wealth of archaic Lesbos,31 and here as well the epic heritage had something to offer. Narrating the voyage home of a stranded hero, the return song (nostos) was a type long thematised in epic poetry before Sappho, obviously in the Odyssey itself, and in archaic poems called Nostoi, one an epic, one a lyric by Stesichorus, which told the other heroes’ returns from Troy.32 Such a story pattern would have held particular resonance for Sappho and her audiences, however much Homer or his characters may seem to oppose the heroic with the mercantile (Odyssey 8.159–64), and her somewhat sceptical attitude towards sailing mirrors the tone with which Hesiod gives advice about sailing for the purposes of trade (Works and Days 618–94). In several poems, Sappho explores the roles allowed by this theme to those left behind, waiting for the return of the men upon whom their own safety and prosperity depended. The new Brothers Poem shows Sappho taking on a considerably authoritative role, not only rebuking the unreasonably hopeful attitude of someone (perhaps his lover Doricha; cf. fr. 15) towards Charaxus’ current voyage (1–4), but also turning her ire upon the unimpressive brother Larichus, in the hope that he should live up to his potential and fulfil his duty towards his family (17–20). The bulk of the poem between these two points contains a reflection on the gods’ power to save or destroy those whom they will (9–16) and advice to the unnamed addressee properly to consider that fact (5–9). It has been suggested that Sappho may be reflecting Homer’s Odysseus in her depiction of the absent Charaxus, channelling Penelope in her selfportrait as an anxious woman waiting for the male’s return, even making Larichus into a Telemachus figure.33 But many female characters in early 31 32 33 See Thomas. Danek 2015, Davies and Finglass 2014: 470–81. Obbink 2014b, 2016c: 212. Stehle 2016: 275–7 suggests an intertext between Odysseus’ wish that he ‘return to find his wife at home with her steadfast friends’ (εὕροιμι . . . ἀρτεμέεϲϲι, Odyssey 13.43) and Sappho’s desire that Charaxus ‘find us steadfast’ (κἄμμ’ ἐπεύρην ἀρτ̣έ̣μεαϲ, 9), but the adjective is formulaic in the context of a warrior returning from battle (Iliad 5.515 = 7.308) and in a nostos setting likely to be an underrepresented formula. The influence of the Odyssey on the Lesbian poets is generally doubted in most recent scholarship (above, n. 14). Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford, on 26 May 2021 at 21:15:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316986974.005 Sappho and Epic 61 epic and myth – wives, mothers, and sisters – could just as well, or even better, be implicated in this role (Andromache, Clytemnestra, Electra, etc.). Sappho once more foregrounds the perspective on this situation of the family members and specifically, though not only, of the women left behind. These voices and views are not unheard in epic, since the situation of the absent hero’s wife, family, and community are constant elements in epic nostoi, but once more Sappho puts this experience at the poetic centre, and makes it the determinative voice. She takes an active role in configuring Charaxus’ activity for her addressee, and asserts an authoritative understanding of the gods’ workings – a cautious attitude towards male behaviour once more familiar from epic, in Andromache’s restraint of Hector (Iliad 6.407–39) or Hecabe’s attempt to temper Priam’s adventurism (24.200–16). However, unlike those cases, Sappho’s view is not silenced by male counteraction. There is no attempt to put her back into a confined space, as Telemachus so forcefully represses Penelope (Odyssey 1.345–59); instead, Sappho continues by pronouncing on her other brother’s shortcomings as well (Brothers Poem 17–20)! In doing so, she appropriates the conventions more readily associated with warning-figures like Nestor and Theoclymenus, and even with poets like Hesiod and Theognis.34 Sappho returns to the nostos theme several times.35 In fr. 5, she prays to the Nereids directly for the safe homecoming of an unnamed brother (perhaps Charaxus once more), while in fr. 17 she focuses on Hera as the source of her family’s safety and prosperity,36 and gives a history for the goddess’s cult established by the Atridae on Lesbos which differs from the Homeric version of the Greek army’s nostos from Troy.37 In fr. 15 Sappho turns her ire (once more? cf. above) on Doricha, expressing a desire that her boasting should end. We cannot be certain that all of these cases engage with specific epic exemplars, any more than, say, any story about Helen must draw on the Iliad. At times, indeed, we may suspect that nothing is owed to epos, especially but not only when Sappho’s language does not show the same kinds of saturation as fr. 1 (and even there the use of hymnic conventions need not only resonate with epic, since prayers and invocations have a lyric background too). Thus, for instance, there are many points of 34 35 36 37 Cf. Swift 2018 on the brother theme, Kelly 2008 on paraenetic conventions. Boedeker 2016. Cf. P.Sapph.Obbink 5–9. For this devotional aspect, see Rösler, Swift. In Homer, the Atridae quarrel in Troy before they leave, and Menelaus comes to Lesbos without his brother: cf. Odyssey 3.167–9 with Meyerhoff 1984: 223–6, West 2002: 212–13 = 2011–13: i 399, Lidov 2004: 401–2, Spelman 2017a: 745–6. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford, on 26 May 2021 at 21:15:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316986974.005 62 Adrian Kelly agreement between her and Hesiod about ‘poetic theology’, including the notion that Pieria is the home of the Muses (frr. 55.3, 103.8; Theogony 52–4, Works and Days 1) or that Leto was the daughter of Coeus (fr. 44 A(a).2; Theogony 404–8), but it is not at all clear that this ‘derives from Hesiod’ rather than reflecting simply the same general store of tradition.38 In fact, Sappho’s poetry can sometimes help us to see more clearly the lively and varied discourse between and within other traditions, and flesh out our rather exiguous picture of early Greek storytelling. For instance, her emphasis on the weakness of the aged mortal Tithonus in the Tithonus Poem suggests a tension with his wife, the goddess Dawn, and aligns Sappho more closely with Mimnermus (fr. 4 IEG) and the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (218–38),39 against the story assumed in the Homeric formulae (Iliad 11.1–2, etc.) where Dawn rises from Tithonus’ side each day without any such hint. But none of these qualifications seem to apply when it comes to fr. 44, ‘Sappho’s most Homeric poem’,40 which tells the wedding of Hector and Andromache.41 Once considered an epithalamium even though it does not refer to any contemporary setting, it tells in deliberately epic language and style, and with a pronounced dactylic rhythm, the entrance of the couple into Troy.42 Given that Homer mentioned their wedding on several occasions (Iliad 22.470–2, etc.), it is tempting to follow those scholars who see here Sappho drawing directly on several Homeric passages to create a pastiche of the Iliad in miniature, to herald their foreboding and unhappy future even at the moment of their happy marriage. Certainly, formular expressions abound, such as ‘glory unperishable’ (κλέοϲ ἄφθιτον, 4; cf. Iliad 9.413, etc.) and ‘over the brackish sea’ (ἐπ’ ἄλμυρον | πόντον, 7–8; cf. ἁλμυρὸν ὕδωρ, 8x Hom.) but these are formulae, while the epithet ‘alike to the gods’ (θεοεικέλο[ιϲ, 34; cf. ἴ]κελοι θέοι[ϲ, 21), confined in the Iliad to Achilles (1.131) and so sometimes interpreted as a pointed reference to Hector’s killer, is used in early hexameter for a number of figures (Odyssey 3.416, Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 279, etc.). Similarly, the Trojan herald Idaeus, who marks the couple’s arrival into the city 38 39 40 41 42 West 2002: 215–16 = 2011–13: i 403, with more examples, going on to suggest that other similarities are ‘Hesiodic in spirit, if not in the letter’. Cf. Faulkner 2008: 270–1. For the Tithonus Poem, see Obbink 2009 and the other essays in Greene and Skinner 2009. Rissman 1983: 121. For this poem cf. Rissman 1983: 119–41, Meyerhoff 1984: 118–39, Schrenk 1994, Suárez de la Torre 2008, E. Bowie 2010: 71–4, Kelly 2015a: 28–9, Sampson 2016, Spelman 2017a. Page 1955: 64–74, A. Bowie 1981: 32–5, Broger 1996: 54–73. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford, on 26 May 2021 at 21:15:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316986974.005 Sappho and Epic 63 (fr. 44.3–11), is known to us only from the Iliad, where he conveys to the Greeks Paris’ unsatisfactory peace offering in Book 7 and accompanies Priam to Achilles’ tent in Book 24, yet he is also likely to be a traditional figure in any story concerned with the city before its sack.43 Perhaps, then, we might consider other stories and epic texts, such as the Cypria or its antecedents, as another or more likely background for this poem.44 That narrative arc would have naturally included the story of this Trojan couple, but it definitely contained a far more foreboding pairing – Helen and Paris – an episode which left an early imprint on the visual traditions of the Trojan War.45 Weddings in epos are in any case often rather ambivalent affairs:46 for instance, the Lapiths and Centaurs quarrel at one (Iliad 1.262–8), the Trojan War was caused by two marriages involving Helen, first to Menelaus in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (frr. 196–204 M–W) and then to Paris in the Cypria (Argumentum 2 GEF) – not to mention her further marriage to Deiphobus after Paris’ death (Little Iliad Argumentum 2, fr. 4 B) – while the slaughter of the suitors in the remarriage contest in the Odyssey is the most obvious extant case. More directly, the marriage of Hector and Andromache is inevitably bound up with the destruction of Troy and the death of Astyanax, which seems to have gained early purchase within literary and visual discourse on war, with e.g. the Iliou persis (Argumentum 20 B) and the Little Iliad (fr. 21 B) bothering to differ on the identity of the boy’s killer (Odysseus/Neoptolemus).47 Whatever the immediate inspiration of Sappho’s narrative, fr. 44 still evokes Troy’s destruction, a generic statement which pointedly contrasts epic subject matter with the apparent purpose of an epithalamium. Aside from the question of its mythological sources, the poem shows us once more the fronting of the female experience, participation, and perspective: Idaeus’ praise of Andromache’s appearance and her dowry (8–10) finds its Trojan correspondence in the joyful participation of the women, including singing from maidens and older women as well 43 44 45 46 47 Wathelet 1988: i 598–600 (§157). Spelman 2017a; contra West 2002: 213 = 2011–13: i 399–400. For other links with the Cypria, see above, p. 55. This story is also treated elsewhere in Lesbian melos, e.g. fr. 16 (above) and Alcaeus fr. 283, so that once more we should be wary of confining our conception of the poetic background to epos. Haubold 2000: 137–43, Cingano 2005: 124–7. Anderson 1997: 54–6, Burgess 2012: 176–82, Davies and Finglass 2014: 438–9. Scodel p. 198 and n. 21 suggests that Sappho may have known later attested stories of Scamandrius (i.e. a separate figure, and not simply Astyanax’s original name, as in Iliad 6.402–3) in which he refounds Troy, intimating a less uniformly negative outcome. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford, on 26 May 2021 at 21:15:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316986974.005 64 Adrian Kelly (14–16, 25–7, 31). The pair’s ‘glory imperishable’ (4) certainly encompasses the wife’s contribution, and the gloomy future is contrasted with her promise, so that we can see Sappho positioning her recreations of epic stories and themes again in an ambitious way, juxtaposing the loss and violence of that world – in its entirety – through an unbearably heavy contrast with the hope and expectation represented in the figure of Andromache herself. Once more, as Sappho asks us to venture into her reframing of the epic world, it is a version where the female presence is as prominent, articulate, and visible as the male.48 *** Perhaps the gaps in the evidence do not matter: whether Sappho drew on her audience’s knowledge of the Iliad (or any other text) and/or simply invoked a shifting and generic understanding of the stories and norms of epos, we can still see her thorough and varied engagement with that tradition. This is no straightforward process of rejection or preclusion, but an (ant-)agonistic and subtle appropriation of an avowedly patriarchal form to foreground the participation and determinative abilities of women. The epigraph to this chapter captures something of that reframing, but not all, since Sappho’s attempts to reorient the epic world and its perspectives are redolent not so much of a separate poetic aimed at women, but a universalising encouragement to hear and appreciate the vibrant female voices otherwise kept behind the curtain of early Greek poetry and culture. Further Reading The fundamental intertextual examination of a direct relationship between Sappho and Homer is Rissman 1983 (with counterarguments in Steinrück 1999, Kelly 2015a), while the broader epic interaction of the Lesbian poets is surveyed by West 2002 = 2011–13: i 392–407. Graziosi and Haubold 2009 comment sensibly on the relationship between epos and melos in early Greek literary history; R. Fowler 1987 remains indispensible for the whole question. The treatment of fr. 44 in Spelman 2017a is particularly illuminating, as is the commentary on early lyric, including Sappho, in Budelmann 2018. 48 The loss of Sappho’s treatment of the story of Prometheus and Pandora (fr. 207) is to be regretted all the more keenly for this fact; Swift p. 213. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford, on 26 May 2021 at 21:15:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316986974.005