LHMP #517 Lardinois 1994 Subject and Circumstance in Sappho's Poetry

Lardinois (who several years earlier wrote an excellent article digging into the actual known facts about Sappho’s life, and their likely interpretation – Lardinois 1989) examines the evidence for the context in which Sappho’s poetry was performed and the likely composition of her audience. In particular, he is responding to Parker 1993 (I have a copy but haven’t blogged it yet) who argues that rather than the received theory that Sappho’s audience/context was young, unmarried girls, that she was performing at banquets for adult women (i.e., in a symposium-like context). In addition to addressing this claim, Lardinois considers other popular paradigms: that Sappho taught at a formal school of some type, that she was the instructor of a girls’ chorus, and then she lead a thiasos (a religious association that participated in various ceremonies).

The first category of evidence under consideration are the “testimonia”, something like biographies, which include references to Sappho associating with young women (using various words that have a default understanding of young, unmarried women). The objections to this evidence are primarily that they were written about six centuries after Sappho’s lifetime and largely involve constructing biography out of the content of her poetry. However Lardinois notes that, unlike modern scholars, the authors of the testimonia had a much more complete corpus of that poetry available to them. One of Parker’s suggestions is that, in the testimonia, these biographers re-wrote the context of Sappho’s life into one more parallel to male pederastic relationships, substituting age-differentiated language for references to more egalitarian and age-matched relationships. Lardinois objects—not only on the basis that there’s no positive evidence for this—but that other authors in the same era as the testimonia had no trouble imagining and writing about f/f relations between mature women (albeit they wrote negatively about them). If the available evidence they worked from had indicated a mature audience, then Sappho would have been associated with representations like those in Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans, rather than being “translated” into an age-differentiated version.

This analysis doesn’t contradict the issue that later biographers often assumed that all ancient Greek poets were writing autobiographical poems. Sappho is not the only author whose works have been assumed to involve the poet speaking their own experience in their own person. One example that we know is the case, though even more clearly fictional, is how Ovid’s story about Sappho and Phaon was treated as truth and autobiography in later ages, aided by the fact that Sappho did write about Phaon (and Adonis) in the context of Aphrodite, sometimes writing in the goddess’s voice.

Trying to interpret which of Sappho’s poems might represent a personal, solo voice and which were compositions intended for (third-person) choral performance is not necessarily obvious. Some have argued that there is a clear metrical distinction, but Lardinois demonstrates that this is not the case, either for Sappho’s work or for her contemporaries. In a very few (surviving) cases, Sappho’s name appears in a poem, suggesting a more personal voice. Further, he points out, we can’t be absolutely certain that Sappho herself is a historic figure, rather than a poetic persona to whom work was attributed (as is a popular theory about Homer). But for the remainder of the article, Lardinois accepts that Sappho was a real historic figure and that, with the exception of poems clearly identifiable as “wedding songs” she is the “speaker” in the poem, though not necessarily the actual performer.

The significant time-gap between Sappho’s life and the composition of the testimonia does raise the question of whether they contain anachronisms. For example, there is no evidence for anything resembling formal schools for women in Sappho’s era. Young women might receive ad hoc instruction in songs and dances performed in ceremonies, and there is some evidence for instruction in reading and writing within the home, but the organized schools for girls found in later centuries (and indicated in the testimonia) had no parallel. Therefore references to Sappho as a “schoolteacher” in the testimonia is most likely an anachronistic fiction, leaving open the possibility that she did participate in instruction and leadership of choral groups.

The most substantial body of evidence for Sappho’s context is the poetry itself. In this section, Lardinois regularly notes that he’s analyzing the works that are not wedding songs, biographical poems (of other people), or mythological references. Within this, references indicating the age of the women she is singing to or about all use vocabulary normally associated with young, unmarried women (kore, pais, parthenon). (But at least one of the later testimonia makes a linguistic distinction between Sappho’s “pupils” (mathetriai) and the “companions and friends” (hetairai) who were responsible for her sexual reputation.) A few references are ambiguous, as when the poem says, “I love you once Atthis, long ago” which could be interpreted as referring to a time when they were both young women.

Moving on from the age of Sappho’s subjects/audience, Lardinois considers what her relationship was to them. It is clearly established that she wrote songs that other women/girls performed. It is also clear that Sappho expressed desire for some specific women (though it can’t always be determined whether they were part of the audience for the work’s performance). References to Atthis frame her as both a beloved and a performer. An unnamed addressee is reminded of a variety of sensual (and possibly erotic) activities they partook together, at a time when the addressee is leaving her. This is, perhaps, the most solid evidence of an erotic relationship between Sappho and a member of her chorus (who, presumably, is now leaving for marriage?).

The article moves on to consider various possible historic parallels for Sappho’s cultural context. Given that ancient Greek societies were not homogeneous, this can be tricky but Lardinois looks specifically for parallels to “expressions of desire for young women” and “composing songs for girls’ choruses.” This include Plutarch’s reference to noble women of Sparta having erotic relationships with young, unmarried women (parthenoi) similar to those that men had with boys. The poet Alcman uses the femining “aitis” in parallel with masculine “aitas” for the “beloved” in a pederastic relationship, and while there is not explicit reference to the gender of whom the girls are beloved by, the sexual logic of the day suggests that this was not a heterosexual relationship. In Alcman’s “wedding songs” voices representing the girls chorus express desire for their choral leader. A vase painting from Thera dating to Sappho’s era shows two women making an inviting gesture that, between a man and boy or between a man and woman, would indicate a sexual context. Taken all together, these suggest that there may have been a general Greek culture of female mentorship that included erotic relations.

For the second theme, there is extensive evidence in the archaic Greek period that the composer of choral songs for young women’s performance also trained them and led the performances. And there are some anecdotal examples representing one member of an adolescent group having an erotic relationship with a mentor and forming a connection to the group as a whole. (Tenuous, but possibly useful context.) Therefore one need not posit that Sappho had erotic relationships with all of her “students” but only that it was a context in which such relationships might be expected.

The article finishes by summarizing pros and cons for the four modern framings of Sappho: school teacher, chorus leader, thiasos leader, and symposium performer. Of these, Lardinois concludes the evidence is most congruent with chorus leader.