LHMP #515 Petropoulos 1993 Sappho the Sorceress

The poem by Sappho identified as “fragment 1,” which isn’t a fragment but the only surviving complete poem, is also the one where Sappho as a woman-desiring-woman is most overt. This is not only because she names herself within the poem, but also because it is specifically about asking divine help to attract the love of another woman.

In this article, Petropoulos draws strong parallels between the structure of this poem and Greek magical texts that are also designed to attract (or manipulate) erotic/romantic attention. That is, the poem is not simply one expressing desire, but has the format of a magical charm to achieve that desire, albeit through the intervention of the goddess Aphrodite.

I’m not going to go into the details of the evidence—which largely consists of analyzing grammatical parallelisms and fixed formulas—but I found the argument compelling. Specifically in the context of f/f desire, the article mentions two Greek magical papyri from Egypt that are clearly love-magic directed by one woman at another. (See e.g., Brooten 1997) One difference from the Egyptian love-spells is that, in Sappho’s poem, the desired result is not simply overcoming the resistance of the target, rather Aphrodite promises that the target will become an active lover: pursuing Sappho and offering her gifts, indicating that a reciprocal relationship is desired, rather than the hierarchical structure of male same-sex relations at the time. Another difference from more standard love-magic texts is that the agency is placed in the goddess's hands, rather than the power behind the compulsion coming from Sappho’s working of the spell.