WEBVTT - Sappho 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:04.080 Welcome to stuff you missed in History class from how 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:14.280 Stuff Works dot com. Hey everyone, Before we get started today, 0:00:14.360 --> 0:00:16.599 we wanted to let you know that there are only 0:00:16.680 --> 0:00:20.760 a few spots left on our upcoming trips to Paris. Yes, 0:00:21.000 --> 0:00:23.439 which startles and delights me. I thought no one would 0:00:23.440 --> 0:00:28.440 want to come with us, and it turns out everybody does. So, Yes, 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:33.159 we are going to Paris June second through night. If 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:35.559 you come to our website, which is missed in history 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:39.320 dot com, you can click the link that says Paris 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:42.560 trip exclamation point in either the top menu bar or 0:00:42.600 --> 0:00:44.880 under the little menu icon. If you're on a mobile device, 0:00:45.080 --> 0:00:46.920 that will take you to the site we can learn 0:00:46.960 --> 0:00:49.400 all about the trip and sign up for it. Yes, 0:00:49.400 --> 0:00:51.080 so we hope to see you in Paris. We're going 0:00:51.120 --> 0:01:00.440 to have a splendid time. We're both extremely excited. Hello 0:01:00.600 --> 0:01:03.840 and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and 0:01:03.920 --> 0:01:08.000 I'm Holly Fry. The poet Sappho is the first known 0:01:08.200 --> 0:01:11.320 woman writer in the European literary tradition, and she is 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:15.560 described as the greatest female poet of Ancient Greece or 0:01:16.480 --> 0:01:20.440 the greatest Greek lyric poet period regardless of gender, or 0:01:21.040 --> 0:01:24.000 even the greatest female poet of all time. There's a 0:01:25.040 --> 0:01:27.840 addition to her work where C. R. Haynes, who edited 0:01:27.840 --> 0:01:30.679 that edition, put it this way quote with the possible 0:01:30.720 --> 0:01:34.720 exception of Shakespeare, Homer is still the supreme poet, and Sappho, 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:39.560 without any exception, the poetess par excellence. Except those last 0:01:39.560 --> 0:01:41.560 two words were in Greek, so I got to figure 0:01:41.560 --> 0:01:46.360 out how to translate them, which was a challenge. Sappho's 0:01:46.560 --> 0:01:49.760 reputation as one of the world's finest poets has persisted 0:01:49.800 --> 0:01:53.720 for more than hundred years, and that's fascinating because the 0:01:53.800 --> 0:01:57.920 overwhelming majority of her work has not. And then also 0:01:58.120 --> 0:02:01.880 fascinating is that the words sapphic and lesbian, which is 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:04.840 derived from the island of les Boss, where Sappho lived, 0:02:05.280 --> 0:02:09.360 they've become synonymous with same sex relationships among women. But 0:02:09.639 --> 0:02:12.640 we actually know very very little about Sappho's life or 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:16.560 her relationships, and two thousand years ago those terms had 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:19.360 really different meanings from what they do now. So we 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:22.240 are going to get into all of this today. Sappho 0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:25.040 is also a frequent listener request and over the past 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:28.480 few years we've gotten requests from Helen Sillian pat Esther 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:30.800 and one person who didn't have a name on their emails, 0:02:31.360 --> 0:02:34.200 and then as a heads up, we talk about people's 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:38.200 relationships often enough on the show, we don't usually need 0:02:38.240 --> 0:02:41.960 to mention a specific sex act. That is not the 0:02:42.000 --> 0:02:45.760 case today, so use discretion if it seems like that 0:02:45.840 --> 0:02:48.280 sort of territory might be an issue for you or 0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:52.240 people that you listen with. Now, I feel like we 0:02:52.280 --> 0:02:55.960 need to do a show called sexy History, be a 0:02:55.960 --> 0:03:00.120 whole other thing, completely different, and we wouldn't need as 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:04.120 Runnings new. So the most referenced source of information about 0:03:04.160 --> 0:03:09.080 Sappho's life is a tenth century Byzantine compendium called the Puda. 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:12.520 In the Studa is sort of a lexicon or encyclopedia 0:03:12.639 --> 0:03:16.600 of the ancient Mediterranean. It has two Sappho entries, and 0:03:16.600 --> 0:03:18.480 we'll get into why that is a little bit later. 0:03:19.480 --> 0:03:22.520 Sappho's name also comes up in lots of other entries 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:26.480 in the Suda, including ones for her relatives, places she lived, 0:03:26.760 --> 0:03:31.240 people she knew, and definitions of various literary terms. She's 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:33.960 also mentioned in lots of other historical writing that has 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:38.440 survived until today, although usually those references are shorter and 0:03:38.560 --> 0:03:41.240 less detailed than what's in the Pseuda. This all makes 0:03:41.280 --> 0:03:44.920 it very tricky to piece together Sappho's biography. The Pseudo 0:03:45.000 --> 0:03:48.840 was compiled more than a thousand years after Sappo actually lived, 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:51.600 and then on top of that, it's not exactly reliable 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:54.680 all the time. It's cobbled together from all kinds of 0:03:54.720 --> 0:03:57.720 different sources, and some of its entries pick up information 0:03:57.720 --> 0:04:01.360 that is clearly not factual. In terms of the entries 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:03.960 on Sappho, it's just not clear how much of the 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:07.760 information came from historical sources, how much from what people 0:04:07.840 --> 0:04:11.840 just knew in quotation marks about Sappho in the tenth century, 0:04:11.880 --> 0:04:14.280 and how much of it was gleaned from things that 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:17.840 are mentioned in her poetry. It's always tricky to try 0:04:17.880 --> 0:04:21.839 to use poems as a source for the poet's biographical details, 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:24.360 but it's even more of a challenge here because by 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:26.880 the tenth century a lot of Sappho's work had already 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:29.760 been lost, so we don't know the full context of 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:33.640 those lines that we have. According to the Suda, Sappho 0:04:33.760 --> 0:04:36.800 was born in the forty two Olympiad, which was between 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:40.440 six twelve and six O nine b C. But the 0:04:40.520 --> 0:04:43.640 wording of it could also be translated as flourished and 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:45.760 not born, which would mean that those years were the 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:49.160 height of her career and not her birth. The pseudolists 0:04:49.240 --> 0:04:53.960 eight different men as Sappho's potential father. Herodotus, on the 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:57.240 other hand, lived about two hundred years after Sappho did, 0:04:57.320 --> 0:05:01.480 and he wrote that her father was named scam Andronymus, 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:03.039 and that's one of the eight men that the sud 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:06.800 elicit as a possibility. Hundreds of years later, Sappho's mother 0:05:07.000 --> 0:05:09.479 may have been named Claius, and we have to say 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:12.839 may have been, because a couple of Sappho's fragments mentioned 0:05:12.880 --> 0:05:16.160 a daughter named Claius, and it was traditional for daughters 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:19.039 to be named after their grandmother. But even that is 0:05:19.040 --> 0:05:22.200 pretty murky because the the word that's used for daughter 0:05:22.320 --> 0:05:25.240 could also just mean child, and in some cases it 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:29.360 could actually be translated as slave. So this Claius, who 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:31.640 may or may not have been named after Sappho's mother, 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:34.320 may or may not have been her child. This is 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:39.560 like the most provisional discussion of history ever. I feel 0:05:39.560 --> 0:05:42.400 like if you've heard the words possibly and may have been, 0:05:42.720 --> 0:05:46.960 you've heard most of Sappho's biography. We do know she 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:49.520 lived on the island of Lesbos and the aegan C 0:05:49.920 --> 0:05:52.880 and that's just across the water from what's now Turkey. 0:05:53.000 --> 0:05:55.240 At the time that was Sartists, which was the capital 0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:59.039 of Lydia. Sappho's place of birth on the island was 0:05:59.080 --> 0:06:02.839 probably the town of Heiressis or the capital of Middlini. 0:06:03.480 --> 0:06:06.479 She most likely lived most of her life in Middlini, 0:06:06.839 --> 0:06:09.320 although it is possible that she and her family either 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:13.120 moved or fled to Sicily for a time, either because 0:06:13.120 --> 0:06:16.600 of general political upheaval on Lesbos or because of their 0:06:16.640 --> 0:06:21.120 own political affiliations. She may have had three brothers. The 0:06:21.160 --> 0:06:25.960 Suda names them as Larkos, Caraxos, and Eurygios, and two 0:06:25.960 --> 0:06:28.560 of those names appear in a poem that was unearthed 0:06:28.600 --> 0:06:31.520 in which we talked about in one of our Unearthed 0:06:31.520 --> 0:06:34.919 episodes that year, and that poem has been nicknamed the 0:06:34.960 --> 0:06:39.120 Brother's Poem because it contains these two names. From here, 0:06:39.320 --> 0:06:43.920 the pseudo wanders into some more questionable territory. It says 0:06:43.960 --> 0:06:49.000 that Sappho's husband was Kirklius of Andros, but Kirklius is 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:51.960 very close to a slang term for the word Penis 0:06:52.000 --> 0:06:54.479 and Andross was a real place, but was also the 0:06:54.560 --> 0:06:58.760 word for man. So the suitas name for Sappho's husband 0:06:58.880 --> 0:07:01.240 is sort of like saying he was Dick Johnson of 0:07:01.320 --> 0:07:04.480 Man Island. So this is more likely to be a 0:07:04.480 --> 0:07:07.839 crude joke than her husband's actual name. I want to 0:07:07.880 --> 0:07:12.920 make a sitcom now about Dick Johnson on man Island. Uh. 0:07:12.960 --> 0:07:18.040 And then the suda names three of Sappho's friends, Athis, Tellusippa, 0:07:18.040 --> 0:07:21.080 and Megara, using a word to describe them that could 0:07:21.120 --> 0:07:25.000 mean companion, but it could also mean cortisan, and the 0:07:25.040 --> 0:07:27.400 studha says her relationship with them led her to be 0:07:27.440 --> 0:07:30.840 accused of a friendship or a love that was shameful. 0:07:31.240 --> 0:07:34.280 From there, the student goes into some more mundane territory, 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:37.400 naming a few of Sappho's students, saying that she wrote 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:41.920 nine volumes of poetry and crediting her with inventing the plectrum, 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:44.280 which is like a pick for plucking the strings on 0:07:44.360 --> 0:07:48.640 a liar. It also describes her poetry as including epigrams, 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:53.200 l j x iambics and monodies. Her surviving work also 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:56.680 includes a lot of epithalamia, and these are poems that 0:07:56.720 --> 0:08:00.320 were celebrating a marriage which she was probably commissioned to right. 0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:04.040 In addition to the Sudas mentioned of students, a number 0:08:04.080 --> 0:08:08.000 of classical sources described Sappho as a teacher, but none 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:11.720 of these sources mentioned what or where she taught. In 0:08:11.760 --> 0:08:14.400 spite of that lack of detail, a lot of articles 0:08:14.400 --> 0:08:18.440 that exist today definitively say that Sappho ran a thesos, 0:08:18.440 --> 0:08:21.280 which is sometimes described as a sort of finishing school 0:08:21.320 --> 0:08:24.640 for women waiting to get married, and it's also sometimes 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:29.040 described as a religious community dedicated to Aphrodite, and sometimes 0:08:29.080 --> 0:08:32.400 as a group of temple courtisans. But really there's no 0:08:32.480 --> 0:08:35.960 substantiation to any of this or for the idea of 0:08:35.960 --> 0:08:39.760 a Theosos as an actual established school of some sort. 0:08:40.520 --> 0:08:44.160 None of sappho surviving writing mentions that the asos at all. 0:08:44.559 --> 0:08:48.240 You will see a lot of just incredibly definitive saying 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:51.640 with a h confidence, statements that are like, Sappho ran 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:55.200 this the ass that taught these young women how to 0:08:55.320 --> 0:09:01.360 be wives and mothers, and maybe it's not documentation of that. 0:09:01.559 --> 0:09:04.840 And then there is the story of Sappho and Phayon, 0:09:05.400 --> 0:09:07.920 and the basic gist of this story is that Sappho 0:09:08.040 --> 0:09:11.080 fell in love with a ferryman named Phayon, and when 0:09:11.080 --> 0:09:14.200 he rejected her, she threw herself off a cliff. That 0:09:14.520 --> 0:09:18.679 story makes up the bulk of the Suda's second Sappho entry, 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:23.679 which says that this supposedly different Sappho was also from Middelini, 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:27.080 also played a harp and may have written lyric poetry 0:09:27.120 --> 0:09:31.400 as well. This story about the ferryman is repeated over 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:34.720 and over and over. It's depicted in numerous works of 0:09:34.880 --> 0:09:39.200 art and literature, including in Avids herodes or epistles of 0:09:39.200 --> 0:09:42.960 the heroines. But Phayon was a mythical figure, and it 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:46.120 seems like this idea that the real Sapphos threw herself 0:09:46.160 --> 0:09:48.840 over a cliff for him dates back to a comedy 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:52.360 by Menander written about two hundred years after Sappho died, 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:55.679 and in the thousands of years since then, the fact 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:58.960 that at least one of Sappho's fragments mentions Phayon has 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:02.520 been used to try to substantiate this fictional story as 0:10:02.520 --> 0:10:05.640 though it were fact. So when it comes to Sappho's biography, 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:08.960 we have a whole lot of contradictions and questionable sources, 0:10:09.000 --> 0:10:11.079 and in some cases or poetry has been used to 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:14.160 try to substantiate those claims. So we are going to 0:10:14.240 --> 0:10:17.080 take a look at her poems and some more detail 0:10:17.480 --> 0:10:27.720 after we take a quick sponsor break. Sappho was a 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:31.120 lyric poet, meaning that she composed poems that were meant 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:35.280 to be sung accompanied on a liar in In ancient Greece, 0:10:35.480 --> 0:10:38.760 lyric poetry tended to be short and very personal, often 0:10:38.920 --> 0:10:42.360 sung from one person to another or written in the 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:46.760 voice of one person addressing another. Many of Sappho's poems 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:50.160 that have survived until today either are or are believed 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:53.120 to be love poems. It's hard to tell sometimes because 0:10:53.320 --> 0:10:56.880 what survives can be incredibly short. Homer, on the other hand, 0:10:56.920 --> 0:10:59.720 wrote epic poetry, and this was much longer, with a 0:10:59.800 --> 0:11:02.680 narrative that told the story of the heroic deeds of 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:05.480 the characters in the poem. And we should also note 0:11:05.480 --> 0:11:08.440 that it's very possible that the work attributed to Homer 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:12.760 was really written by several people and not just one. Regardless, 0:11:12.800 --> 0:11:15.600 though in the ancient Western world he was called just 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:20.280 the poet and Sappho was the poetess. Lyric poetry really 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:23.520 flourished in ancient Greece between about six hundred and four 0:11:23.640 --> 0:11:27.440 fifty b C. So that was when Sappa lived. It 0:11:27.520 --> 0:11:31.040 wasn't newly invented during that time. This was more a 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:35.320 revival of an earlier poetic form. And then two people 0:11:35.360 --> 0:11:38.320 were considered to be the most notable lyric poets of 0:11:38.360 --> 0:11:41.400 this period. They were Sappho and I'll see Us, both 0:11:41.440 --> 0:11:44.000 of whom were from Lesbos and may have known each 0:11:44.040 --> 0:11:47.360 other and even written to each other. Sappho wrote her 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:51.400 poems in Aolic Greek, which is sometimes also called Lesbian Greek, 0:11:51.840 --> 0:11:54.640 and in that dialect her name was more like Shapa 0:11:54.840 --> 0:11:57.280 than the Sappho that we know today. In about the 0:11:57.360 --> 0:12:00.920 third century b c. E Sappho's poet Tree was compiled 0:12:01.200 --> 0:12:04.960 into an eight or nine volume collection in Alexandria, Egypt. 0:12:05.720 --> 0:12:08.880 The volumes were arranged by the meter used for each poem, 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:12.200 which set it apart for most other compilations, which tended 0:12:12.240 --> 0:12:15.960 to be organized instead by subject or seem. There were 0:12:16.000 --> 0:12:19.320 as many as ten thousand lines of poetry in this compilation, 0:12:20.000 --> 0:12:22.760 but it's possible that Sappho wrote much more than that, 0:12:23.000 --> 0:12:26.160 especially since many of her works were commissioned for special 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:29.520 occasions like weddings, and they might not have been preserved 0:12:29.600 --> 0:12:32.920 after they were performed. Today, Sappho was known most for 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:36.319 one particular poetic form, and that's the Sapphic, which is 0:12:36.360 --> 0:12:40.400 also called Sapphic meter or Sapphic stanzas. We don't really 0:12:40.440 --> 0:12:44.160 know whether Sappho developed this form herself or refined a 0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:47.240 form that already existed, but she was so skilled at 0:12:47.280 --> 0:12:50.040 writing in this form that it ultimately carried her name. 0:12:50.679 --> 0:12:54.320 The Sapphic used four line stanzas, with three longer lines 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:57.400 followed by one shorter line, and then within those lines. 0:12:57.480 --> 0:13:00.320 The meter came from Lesbian Greek's pattern of long and 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:04.960 short syllables. When people are translating Sappho's work today, sometimes 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:08.600 they approximate the meter using the characteristics of whatever language 0:13:08.640 --> 0:13:11.600 they're working in. So, for example, in English, there's a 0:13:11.600 --> 0:13:15.760 pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, with the stressed syllables 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:18.600 standing in for the long syllables in Greek, and the 0:13:18.679 --> 0:13:22.360 unstressed syllables taking the place of the short ones. These 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:26.520 tend to be very personal, passionate, and emotional poems, and 0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:31.520 they're simultaneously very simple and elegant. During Sappho's lifetime, poetry 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:34.640 was also believed to be magical, so poetry was thought 0:13:34.640 --> 0:13:38.319 to be able to influence or shape reality. So Sappho's 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:42.280 poetry was considered to be beautiful and melodic and powerful. 0:13:43.040 --> 0:13:46.959 But we have unfortunately very little of this poetry today, 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:49.800 and even less of it in the form of complete poems. 0:13:50.440 --> 0:13:53.640 The vast majority of what we have is just short fragments, 0:13:54.240 --> 0:13:56.560 and some of these fragments are from damaged pieces of 0:13:56.559 --> 0:14:01.079 writing material or pieces of clay pots. Other are quotations 0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:06.000 from other people's surviving work. For example, Cassius Longinus quoted 0:14:06.000 --> 0:14:09.560 four stanzas by Sappho in on the Sublime, which was 0:14:09.600 --> 0:14:13.400 published around one hundred CE. Today, out of those ten 0:14:13.440 --> 0:14:16.360 thousand or so lines that we think that Sappho wrote, 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:20.640 we have roughly six hundred and fifty lines of poetry remaining. 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:24.840 That is spread out across about two hundred and fifty fragments, 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:28.200 And of those six and fifty lines, fewer than a 0:14:28.280 --> 0:14:30.840 third of them or even complete lines of poetry. A 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:34.240 lot of them are partial lines. Six of the fragments 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:38.200 are longer and more substantive, but still not entirely intact, 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:41.280 and one of those longer fragments is the brother's poem 0:14:41.360 --> 0:14:44.160 that we mentioned earlier, which is missing only its first 0:14:44.160 --> 0:14:48.400 few stanzas. Only one of Sappho's poems is believed to 0:14:48.400 --> 0:14:51.680 be complete today, and that is the Ode to Aphrodite. 0:14:52.040 --> 0:14:55.480 Different collections of Sappho's poetry use different numbering systems to 0:14:55.560 --> 0:14:58.200 keep up with all of these fragments, but most of 0:14:58.240 --> 0:15:02.440 the time Owed to Aphrodite, sometimes translated as Him or 0:15:02.560 --> 0:15:06.040 Prayer to Aphrodite is number one. Here's the beginning of 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:09.800 Ode to Aphrodite, translated by T. W. Higginson in event 0:15:09.960 --> 0:15:15.600 one quote beautiful throned immortal Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus beguiler. 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:19.560 I implore THEE weigh me not down with weariness and anguish. 0:15:19.600 --> 0:15:23.080 Oh Thou most holy, come to me now, if ever thou, 0:15:23.120 --> 0:15:27.239 in kindness harkenist my words. And in the poem, Aphrodite 0:15:27.240 --> 0:15:31.000 does come and says, who has harmed thee? Oh, my 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:34.600 poor Sappho. Though now he flies ere long, he shall 0:15:34.640 --> 0:15:38.240 pursue THEE. Fearing thy gifts. He too, in turn, shall 0:15:38.280 --> 0:15:43.040 bring them loveless. Today tomorrow he shall Woozee, though thou 0:15:43.200 --> 0:15:46.600 should spurn him. Another of the longer fragments is the 0:15:46.600 --> 0:15:48.960 one that was quoted in On the Sublime, which we 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:53.120 mentioned earlier, and it describes the speaker's response to sitting 0:15:53.160 --> 0:15:56.120 across from a woman that the poem is addressing. This 0:15:56.280 --> 0:15:59.920 is usually interpreted as Sappho herself describing her own response 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:02.400 of the woman that she's facing, but that's not really 0:16:02.440 --> 0:16:07.000 clear here. It is as translated by John Addington Simmons 0:16:07.040 --> 0:16:11.200 in three Peer of the Gods. He seemeth to me 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:14.560 the blissful man who sits and gazes at the before 0:16:14.640 --> 0:16:18.720 him close besides these sits and in silence, here's the 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:24.840 silverly speaking laughing Love's low laughter. Oh this this only 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:28.160 stirs the troubled heart in my breast to tremble. For 0:16:28.240 --> 0:16:31.640 should I but see thee a little moment? Straight? Is 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:36.040 my voice hushed? Yea, my tongue is broken, and through 0:16:36.120 --> 0:16:40.520 and through me neath the flesh impalpable fire runs tingling 0:16:41.040 --> 0:16:45.080 nothing see mine eyes and our noise of roaring waves 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:48.880 in my ear sounds. Sweat runs down and rivers. A 0:16:49.000 --> 0:16:53.120 tremor seizes all my limbs, and paler than grass in autumn, 0:16:53.240 --> 0:16:57.280 caught by pains of menacing death, I falter lost in 0:16:57.360 --> 0:17:00.720 the love trance, But almost all the aments are not 0:17:00.800 --> 0:17:05.240 nearly so long as this. Here is an example, Sweet mother, 0:17:05.440 --> 0:17:08.280 I cannot weave my web broken as I am by 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:12.439 longing for a boy at soft aphrodite's will. One that 0:17:12.560 --> 0:17:15.720 we think from a wedding poem goes neither honey nor 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:18.960 be for me. I don't know why I love that 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:24.440 I do neither of the above. Another fragment just says 0:17:24.880 --> 0:17:28.639 shot with a thousand hues, and one reads and I 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:32.400 flutter like a child after her mother, And one fragment 0:17:32.520 --> 0:17:36.640 is simply the words you burn me. Sappho's fragments can 0:17:36.640 --> 0:17:41.600 be really evocative, and then combined with her pretty mysterious biography, 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:44.720 they can just be beguiling. But the fact that they're 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:48.719 so fragmented and scattered makes her work really difficult to study. 0:17:49.280 --> 0:17:51.920 We have a sense that she wrote lots of love poems, 0:17:51.960 --> 0:17:55.040 and that she wrote lots of poems for people's weddings. 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:58.080 Her work seems to carry a lot of affection as well, 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:02.520 including physical affection from and women, but we don't necessarily 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:05.520 have the greatest sense of what the whole body of 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:09.120 her work is like. There's some guesswork going on, especially 0:18:09.119 --> 0:18:11.520 since some of the fragments are so short that we're 0:18:11.600 --> 0:18:15.160 not even a hundred percent sure that Sappho really wrote them, 0:18:15.320 --> 0:18:18.040 And we'll get into why there's so little of Sappho's 0:18:18.080 --> 0:18:27.520 work left today to study after we have another sponsor break. 0:18:28.520 --> 0:18:30.960 As far as we know, during her lifetime and at 0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:34.560 least for a while afterwards, Sappho was deeply respected and 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:38.000 admired as a poet and a person. Plato, who lived 0:18:38.080 --> 0:18:40.760 roughly two hundred years after she did, wrote quote some 0:18:40.880 --> 0:18:44.400 say them uses are nine, but how carelessly look at 0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:49.120 the tenth Sappho from Lesbus. It doesn't seem as though 0:18:49.160 --> 0:18:53.120 her contemporaries really questioned her character in any way. I mean, 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:55.520 after all, she was getting a lot of commissions to 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:59.600 write poetry for people's weddings, and that doesn't seem like 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:02.919 it would be happening if she were socially reviled. But 0:19:03.000 --> 0:19:06.399 in the century since then, people have interpreted Sappho in 0:19:06.560 --> 0:19:11.040 vastly different ways. In the words of Holt and Parker quote, 0:19:11.080 --> 0:19:14.640 every age creates its own Sappho, and many of these 0:19:14.680 --> 0:19:18.080 creations have imagined Sappho as being, at least in the 0:19:18.080 --> 0:19:22.600 morality of the time, deviant or depraved. Some of these 0:19:22.600 --> 0:19:24.720 shifts are thanks to her being from the island of 0:19:24.800 --> 0:19:28.480 les Bus. While she was living, les Bus was considered 0:19:28.520 --> 0:19:31.800 to be a place full of passion and poetry and sensuality, 0:19:32.119 --> 0:19:35.840 although also with a lot of political turmoil and in fighting, 0:19:35.960 --> 0:19:38.800 which is why Sappho and her family may have fled 0:19:38.880 --> 0:19:42.920 at some point possibly see our Haynes, who we quoted 0:19:42.960 --> 0:19:44.880 at the top of the show, described it this way 0:19:44.960 --> 0:19:49.000 quote the Aoliens of Lesbas were a vigorous and gifted race, 0:19:49.160 --> 0:19:53.760 brave and war enterprising and trade, vehement and politics eminent, 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:57.240 and poetry and music. But within a few centuries after 0:19:57.320 --> 0:20:01.240 her death, prevailing opinion of the island of Lesbas had shifted. 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:05.680 That tendency towards passion and wealth moved more into perceived 0:20:05.760 --> 0:20:09.800 hedonism and excess. Lesbis went from being thought of as 0:20:09.840 --> 0:20:13.280 a place of beauty and refinement to one of licentiousness 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:18.040 and corruption. The Greek word lesbias in meaning acting like 0:20:18.119 --> 0:20:22.919 someone from Lesbus, became associated with impurity and one specific 0:20:22.960 --> 0:20:27.000 sex act, that being Fallacio. It wasn't just about the island, 0:20:27.160 --> 0:20:32.440 though eventually this also extended to Sappho herself. Greek comedy 0:20:32.640 --> 0:20:35.320 tended to be in one way or another satirical, although 0:20:35.359 --> 0:20:38.680 the exact nature and the primary targets of the satire 0:20:38.840 --> 0:20:42.439 shifted over time. In the in the sort of history 0:20:42.440 --> 0:20:45.960 of Greek comedy, and starting a couple of centuries after 0:20:46.000 --> 0:20:49.680 she died, Sappho became the target of this satire. Her 0:20:49.760 --> 0:20:53.280 name was used for characters in several Greek comedies, and 0:20:53.320 --> 0:20:58.040 those characters were usually depicted as wanton and lustful and 0:20:58.160 --> 0:21:03.800 just excessively sexual with young men. Society's understanding of relationships 0:21:03.840 --> 0:21:07.720 and gender roles shifts over time, so it's certain that 0:21:07.880 --> 0:21:11.760 romantic and physical relationships were viewed very differently on Lesbos 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:14.440 in the seventh century b c. Than they are in 0:21:14.560 --> 0:21:19.360 various cultures today. But we know virtually nothing about the details, 0:21:19.440 --> 0:21:21.879 and many of the authors who have speculated about it 0:21:22.160 --> 0:21:26.080 have tried to draw conclusions based on ancient Sparta. But 0:21:26.119 --> 0:21:29.760 our understanding of Spartan society is also limited, and it 0:21:29.880 --> 0:21:33.520 was a completely different society from Lesbi's, located in a 0:21:33.560 --> 0:21:36.960 different part of Greece, and it flourished starting two hundred 0:21:37.080 --> 0:21:41.120 years or so after Sappho's death. However, we do know 0:21:41.359 --> 0:21:45.399 that same sex relationships became increasingly taboo in parts of 0:21:45.400 --> 0:21:48.720 Europe in the centuries after Sappa lived, so they don't 0:21:48.760 --> 0:21:51.359 really know how they were regarded while she was living 0:21:51.440 --> 0:21:53.720 and where she was living, but we do know that 0:21:53.800 --> 0:21:57.800 it became more and more taboo afterward, and as that happened, 0:21:57.840 --> 0:22:01.280 the idea that Sappho was dv because of her lust 0:22:01.359 --> 0:22:04.520 for young men morphed into the idea that she was 0:22:04.600 --> 0:22:08.359 deviant because of her lust for young women. The first 0:22:08.400 --> 0:22:10.600 reference to this that we know about was written in 0:22:10.640 --> 0:22:14.440 the second or third century CE. In the sixteenth century, 0:22:14.720 --> 0:22:19.480 humanist scholars claimed that Christian Church officials had burned Sappho's 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:23.560 work for this reason at least twice. That Bishop Gregory 0:22:23.640 --> 0:22:26.720 nazi Enzen of Constantinople had done so in three eighty, 0:22:26.920 --> 0:22:30.280 followed by Pope Gregory the Seventh in ten seventy three, 0:22:30.560 --> 0:22:34.160 but it's not clear whether these burnings actually happened, especially 0:22:34.200 --> 0:22:38.600 since Bishop Gregory himself was known to quote from Sappho. Yeah, 0:22:38.600 --> 0:22:41.840 it's there's some conjecture that over the centuries, two different 0:22:41.880 --> 0:22:46.080 Gregory's were conflated together into this one person who supposedly 0:22:46.200 --> 0:22:50.160 did this burning. Even if her work was burned by 0:22:50.200 --> 0:22:54.840 the church because of perceptions about Sappho's morality, that would 0:22:54.840 --> 0:22:57.280 not account for so much of its loss. There were 0:22:57.320 --> 0:23:00.800 also floods and accidental fires, and that aging of the 0:23:00.840 --> 0:23:04.600 material that the poetry was recorded on, and fewer and 0:23:04.720 --> 0:23:08.320 fewer people speaking a Olian Greek, meaning that there was 0:23:08.440 --> 0:23:11.040 less and less demand for new copies of her work 0:23:11.119 --> 0:23:15.399 to be printed or written or copied. Sappho didn't fade 0:23:15.440 --> 0:23:18.840 into total obscurity, though we mentioned in our Christine to 0:23:18.880 --> 0:23:21.119 Pizzant episode that she's named in the Book of the 0:23:21.160 --> 0:23:23.680 City of Ladies, which was written in fourteen o five. 0:23:24.359 --> 0:23:28.040 By the sixteenth century, though, what most people knew about 0:23:28.040 --> 0:23:32.560 Sappho really came from Ovid's Herodies rather than from anything 0:23:32.600 --> 0:23:36.320 about her actual biography or her work. By the eighteenth century, 0:23:36.400 --> 0:23:39.199 even less of Sappho's poetry was known to the world 0:23:39.440 --> 0:23:42.639 than the six hundred fifty lines we have today, and 0:23:42.680 --> 0:23:46.240 the words Sapphic and lesbian had taken on entirely different 0:23:46.280 --> 0:23:49.960 meanings than what they'd initially meant, which was basically related 0:23:49.960 --> 0:23:54.400 to Sappho or related to the island of Lesbis. Lesbian 0:23:54.600 --> 0:23:57.080 was first used in writing to describe a woman who 0:23:57.160 --> 0:24:00.760 is physically or romantically involved with another woman in seventeen 0:24:00.800 --> 0:24:05.040 thirty two, and saffic was used in association with same sex, 0:24:05.080 --> 0:24:09.439 desire and relationships among women. A few years later. The 0:24:09.480 --> 0:24:12.359 first appearance of the word sapphic in writing was in 0:24:12.400 --> 0:24:15.760 a seventeen sixty one translation of Plato, which read quote, 0:24:16.000 --> 0:24:19.199 their affections tend rather to their own sex, and of 0:24:19.240 --> 0:24:23.359 this kind are the sapphic lovers. So by the Romantic 0:24:23.520 --> 0:24:27.400 era in Europe, both Sappho and the island of Lesbus 0:24:27.400 --> 0:24:32.399 had become inextricably connected to the idea of homosexuality among women, 0:24:32.560 --> 0:24:37.040