LHMP #519 Skinner 1989 Sapphic Nossis

Nossis was a female poet of the Greek Hellenistic period (approximately 2 centuries after Sappho), 11 of whose poems have survived. This article discusses how her work reflects a self-conscious identity specifically as a female poet and as one who sees herself as following in the tradition of Sappho.

Two of the poems are believed to be end-pieces to what was originally a collection of her work. The first uses literary allusion to invoke Sappho while the second calls her out by name. Other of her poems emphasize Nossis’s function within female traditions of poetry and religious performance. Skinner considers the body of work to offer evidence for a homoerotic understanding of the lost body of her love poems, emphasizing the sweetness of eros.

(Note: This article works on the assumption that its audience will not need to have any of the Greek translated, so some of the evidence for the arguments can be hard to follow.)

There is an extensive examination of the metaphors of poems as roses, or as honey that emerges from the poet’s mouth, as well as comparisons of the sweetness of eros to that of honey. In this, Nossis positions herself within the tradition of feminine poetry, exemplified by Sappho, which concerned itself with the celebration of beauty and love, in contrast to the themes of male-authored poetry.

The poem considered a conclusion to Nossis’s collection is a mock funerary inscription, asking the reader, if they sail to Mitylene in Lesbos to be inspired by Sappho’s work, to tell people there that Nossis, too, loved (philia) Sappho and the Muses.

Although the “bookends” of the collection indicate that its contents focused on eros, the other surviving poems do not reflect this. They are, however focused on female activities, especially the dedication of votive offerings to Aphrodite. The female maker or subject of the offering is praised for skill, beauty, or grace, and the poems indicate that the expected audience of them poems is female. All these themes find parallels in Sappho’s work.

Ancient writers with access to a greater surviving corpus of Nossis’s work described it as strongly female-oriented, even more so than typically expected as a woman poet. This is one basis for Skinner proposing that the lost erotic epigrams are likely to have been addressed to women (similarly to Sappho). In turn, this hypothetical content is suggested as a reason why her love poetry was not preserved through the ages, as literary opinions were beginning to turn against female homoeroticism in poetry, affecting even Sappho’s reputation. And similarly to Sappho’s fate in Athenian comic theater, Nossis was turned into a comic character in theater who rejected heterosexual relations.