Searching for Sappho

by Philip Freeman

  . . . you put on by my side,

  and many woven garlands

  made from flowers

  around your soft throat,

  and with much perfume

  costly . . .

  fit for a queen, you anointed yourself.

  And on a soft bed

  delicate . . .

  you let loose your desire.

  And not any . . . nor any

  holy place nor . . .

  from which we were absent.

  No grove . . . no dance

  . . . no sound

  Victorian scholars outdid themselves trying to explain this poem as chaste, with one claiming that its subject was nap time at a school for girls. Even more recent interpreters have been reluctant to see it as homoerotic, but an honest reading makes it hard to escape the fact that this poem is about a highly sensual encounter between two female lovers.

  The structure of the poem requires three lines for each stanza, so the opening line of the first stanza is missing, and the speaker in the next line is uncertain. Is it Sappho, who is named in the second stanza, or is it the departing lover? While we can’t be sure, the better argument is that the speaker is the latter, since the two women in the poem are very different in how they react to their fateful goodbye. The one leaving is distraught, while the other, the poet, takes a more detached tone. A wish for death, even taken as hyperbole, hardly seems to fit with the manner of the Sappho character in the rest of the poem.

  “Oh, this has turned out so badly for us, Sappho,” cries the unknown woman, but the poet calmly assures her that the memory of their time together will sustain them, particularly one intense encounter heightened by flowers and perfumed myrrh. Roses are an especially powerful symbol of female sexuality in classical poetry, here woven with other flowers on her lover’s head, soon followed by garlands on the soft skin of her throat. And just as Hera anoints herself with perfumed oil before seducing Zeus, the unknown lover here anoints herself for Sappho. The climax of the encounter is clear enough for any but the most prudish of interpreters:

  And on a soft bed

  delicate . . .

  you let loose your desire.

  The same sixth-century-AD parchment also yielded another fragmentary song by Sappho:

  . . . Sardis

  . . . often turning her thoughts to this

  . . . you like a goddess

  and in your song she delighted most of all.

  Now she stands out among

  the women of Lydia,

  like the rosy-fingered moon after sunset

  surpasses all the stars. Its light

  spreads alike over the salty sea

  and fields rich in flowers.

  The dew is poured forth in beauty,

  roses bloom along with tender chevil

  and flowering melilot.

  She wanders to and fro remembering

  gentle Atthis, and her tender

  heart is consumed.

  Here, Sappho sings of a woman who has gone to the wealthy kingdom of Lydia and its famous capital, Sardis, on the mainland of Asia Minor. This unnamed person misses terribly her beloved, who is not Sappho, but another woman, Atthis. The song would seem fairly straightforward, with Sappho singing of two lovers who are now separated from each other, but it is more complicated than that. Atthis appears in several of Sappho’s poems and is mentioned by later commentators as a lover of Sappho. In a line quoted by Hephaestion in his handbook on poetic meters, Sappho sings: “I loved you, Atthis, once long ago.” And a badly damaged papyrus from Oxyrhynchus has the simple words “for you, Atthis . . .” The Suda encyclopedia names Atthis as one of the companions of Sappho who earned her a bad reputation because of their “shameful friendship.”

  But however close Sappho and Atthis were at one point, another woman came between them, so that Atthis rejected the poet she once loved. Hephaestion again quotes Sappho:

  But Atthis, it’s become hateful to you to think

  of me, and you’ve flown off to Andromeda.

  Several Sappho fragments mention the poet’s bitterness toward her rival, Andromeda, including one brimming with aristocratic distain:

  What country girl bewitches your mind . . .

  dressed in her country clothes . . .

  not knowing how to pull her ragged dress over her ankles?

  How, then, does the poem about the unnamed woman who has gone to Lydia and longs for Atthis fit into this picture? It may be that Sappho composed it before she and Atthis were lovers, or that all has been forgiven and Sappho truly sympathizes with Atthis and the woman she has lost. Perhaps the mysterious woman is Andromeda and Sappho sees this parting as an opportunity to win back Atthis with sympathetic words. But in truth, we don’t know when Sappho composed this poem, who the departed woman is, or what it tells us about her life. It’s much more interesting to look at the words and images we have in this song than to try to fit it into a speculative biography of Sappho.

  The most striking feature of this poem is the extended simile. The departed lover stands out among the women of Lydia like the rosy-fingered moon rising among the stars of the night. Sappho’s listeners would have immediately recognized the adjective “rosy-fingered” (Greek rhododaktulos) as an epithet that Homer used frequently and only with the dawn goddess (Eos). Sappho, as she does so often, turns Homer on his head and makes night into day. Earlier male scholars appreciated the beauty of the simile but saw it as tedious and rambling, full of pointless flowers and dew. Sappho, however, never wastes words.

  The Greek goddess of the moon was Selene (Selanna in Sappho’s Aeolian Greek), sister of the dawn goddess Eos and famed for spreading the nourishing dew across the fields. The goddess of the moon each night bathed in the ocean before mounting her chariot and spreading the life-giving dew across the world—an especially important source of moisture for the earth in the dry summer months. Selene has an ancient pedigree as a goddess sacred to women because of her ties to the female monthly reproductive cycle. One of Sappho’s religious poems makes this feminine connection clear:

  The moon in its fullness appeared,

  and when the women took their places around the altar . . .

  The choice of flowers watered by the moon is not random either, since roses are, as we saw earlier, a favorite image for the sensuality of the female body. The sexual imagery of dew-covered flowers would have reminded Sappho’s listeners once more of the scene in the Iliad in which the goddess Hera seduces Zeus in a dew-kissed field of flowers. But here our poet yet again plays her trick of inverting Homer, for a heterosexual tryst of Hera and Zeus becomes a powerful image of longing and love between women in one of Sappho’s most beautiful songs.

  6

  THE GODDESS

  In the beginning there was Chaos. Then came into being wide-

  breasted Gaia—the safe foundation of the deathless ones who

  hold the peaks of snowy Olympus—and dark Tartarus in the recesses

  of the wide-pathed earth. And Eros came forth as well,

  most beautiful of all the immortals, the limb-weakener, who

  conquers the mind and thoughts of gods and humans alike.

  – HESIOD, THEOGONY

  ANCIENT GREEK RELIGION was very different from most modern Western beliefs. There were hundreds of gods, none of whom were all-knowing or all-powerful. There was no organized “church” of any sort, nor was there a set of beliefs that anyone was required to affirm. The Greeks did not expect their gods to love them or be moral examples for their own lives. There were no creeds, no sacred scriptures, no single path to salvation.

  Yet the Greeks were very religious. There were always skeptics and atheists, but the evidence we have suggests that most men and women in ancient times took their worship of the gods quite seriously. It’s tempting to see this devotion as a purely business relationship—you give the gods sacrifices and they give you good fortune in return—but such a view can’t begin to capture the variety and complexity of Greek
religion. Some Greeks performed their sacrifices and went on their way without another thought for the gods, while others devoted their lives to seeking personal salvation and a mystic union with the divine. Just as today, no two people practiced religion in the same way.

  In spite of this individuality, religious practice was remarkably similar throughout Greece. The people of Thebes, Sparta, Athens, and Lesbos all worshipped the same gods. There were local variations of religious cults, but no Greek would completely ignore any of the major gods. And just as there was a unity of religion throughout the mainland and islands of Greece, so, too, was there continuity through time. The clay tablets written in the Greek Linear B script that survive from the Bronze Age name many of the same gods who were worshipped by their descendants a thousand years later. This doesn’t mean the Greeks weren’t open to outside religious influences, especially from the East. Adonis and Cybele from Asia Minor were just two of the many popular divinities imported to Greece. In the polytheistic religion of the ancient Greeks, there was always room for another god.

  The gods of Mount Olympus, such as Zeus, Hera, Apollo, and Aphrodite, were worshipped by communities and individuals alike primarily through animal sacrifice. In origin, such sacrifices consisted of a shared sacred meal of gods and humans, with the gods enjoying the sweet savor of the burning fat and entrails while humans feasted on the meat. The sacrifices were not thought of as an atonement for sin, but as a way to honor and gain favor from the gods. Many of these sacrifices were part of public festivals such as those that honored Dionysus or Athena at Athens. Greeks also worshipped different degrees of divine and semidivine beings, ranging from the Olympian gods to wood nymphs and mortal-born heroes. In addition to public opportunities for worship, there were cults restricted to specific groups, such as women, or those of both sexes who had undergone special initiation. The latter category includes the so-called mystery religions—cults so secret that even now we know little about them, except that those who were initiated into them were promised a better fate after death.

  As is the case with so many aspects of ancient Greek culture, we know less about the religious life of women than of men. Women were priestesses for the cults of most female divinities, though they could also serve some male gods, such as Dionysus. As we have seen, young girls in Athens were central figures in some community religious rites, and we can be confident this was true throughout Greece. Women were also oracles of the gods, such as the Pythia at Delphi, a woman who sat on a tripod in the temple of Apollo and spoke in verse inspired by the god.

  One of the few all-female religious rituals we have any details about is the Thesmophoria festival in which women honored the goddess Demeter. The celebration took place throughout Greece, but wherever it occurred, men were absolutely forbidden to attend. Such single-gender celebrations naturally aroused the discomfort of men accustomed to keeping women in their place. Whether their wives were worshipping Demeter or Dionysus, Greek men often imagined that, once out of firm male control, women would succumb to drunken revelry and unrestrained sexual frenzy. But by all reliable accounts, the religious worship by women was serious and motivated by deep devotion.

  Demeter was the goddess of the life-giving earth and the grain that sustained humans and animals alike. She was a child of the Titans Cronus and Rhea, and a sister of Zeus, by whom she had a daughter, Persephone. One day, the maiden Persephone was gathering flowers in a meadow far from home when a giant chasm opened in the ground and out flew Hades, god of the underworld, who seized her and took her against her will to the land of the dead to be his consort. There the young woman wept without ceasing for her mother and the happy life that had been stolen from her. Demeter searched everywhere for Persephone and at last found out that her brother Hades had kidnapped her child. She complained to Zeus but received no help, so she withdrew from Mount Olympus and went into mourning. She wandered the earth as an old mortal woman and became a nursemaid in the home of a local king, taking comfort in caring for the ruler’s infant son.

  While Demeter was in the king’s service, the earth withered from her neglect, and no seed would grow. Famine spread across the world, and people everywhere began to starve. The gods begged Demeter to return, but she refused them. Only when Hades agreed to free Persephone for part of each year did Demeter relent. Thus, the Greeks believed that winter came each year because Persephone returned to Hades and Demeter was once again in mourning. This tale was told by the Greeks to explain the seasons and to remind themselves that they neglected the worship of Demeter at their peril. Zeus might storm and thunder, Poseidon might rule the waves, but it was a goddess who brought life to the world.

  For the women of Greece, the Thesmophoria festival in honor of Demeter was an opportunity not only to worship the goddess but to escape the responsibilities of home and husbands for a few days. In Athens, the festival took place in autumn. The first day of the ritual was known as the anodos, or “going up,” when the women of the city moved in procession to the top of the hill named Pnyx, carrying all they needed for worship, including piglets for sacrifice. On the second day there was fasting and mourning, during which time the women slept on mats woven from plants that reportedly made them lose all interest in sex (as if hunger and sleeping on the ground weren’t enough). After this, the piglets were thrown into a deep chasm full of sculpted phalluses and snakes. At the same time, special women known as the Bailers descended into the cave and brought back the decayed remains of the previous year’s piglets to place on the altar of Demeter.

  As strange as this ritual might seem from the outside, it was a sacred and symbolic descent to the underworld to bring fertility and balance back to the world—and it could be accomplished only by women. A great banquet in honor of the goddess brought the Thesmophoria to an end, after which the weary women descended the hill and returned to their lives as wives and mothers.

  SAPPHO’S POEMS GIVE us haunting, tantalizing, extraordinary images of the religious life of women. There is nothing in them like the grand Thesmophoria—though such a festival was probably practiced on Lesbos—but instead something more deeply personal and profoundly moving.

  Consider again the first poem in Sappho’s collection, in which she calls on the goddess Aphrodite for help to win the heart of another woman:

  Deathless Aphrodite on your dazzling throne,

  child of Zeus, weaver of snares, I pray to you,

  do not, with anguish and pain, O Lady,

  break my heart.

  But come here now, if ever in the past,

  listening, you heard my cries from afar

  and leaving your father’s golden house,

  you came to me,

  yoking your chariot. Beautiful swift sparrows

  drew you over the black earth

  with their whirling wings, down from the sky

  through the middle of the air,

  and quickly they arrived. And you, O Blessed Goddess,

  with a smile on your immortal face,

  asked what was the matter now and why

  had I called you again

  and what I wanted most of all to happen,

  me, with my crazy heart: “Who should I persuade this time

  to lead you back to her love? Who is it, Sappho,

  who has done you wrong?

  For even if she runs away, soon she will pursue.

  If she refuses gifts, she’ll be giving instead.

  And if she won’t love, she will soon enough,

  even against her will.”

  So come to me now, free me from unbearable

  pain. All my heart yearns to happen—

  make it happen. You yourself,

  be my ally.

  The song begins as a formal and reverent prayer of petition to Aphrodite, but it quickly becomes an intimate conversation between Sappho and the goddess. Aphrodite hears the cry of a woman in pain and leaves the heights of Olympus to come to her. With a smile on her face, Aphrodite speaks to Sappho as an old frien
d: “Who should I persuade this time to lead you back to her love?” This is not the normal tone used by Greek gods when addressing mortals. Homer’s heroes rightly quake with fear when Zeus or Poseidon speak to them. Only Odysseus in his dealings with the goddess Athena comes anywhere close to this level of intimacy. Sappho’s Aphrodite is, as the last line of the poem says, her summachos (“ally”)—a word of war frequently used in Homer by equals who stand together in battle.

  Sappho also employs images of closeness between herself and Aphrodite elsewhere in her poems:

  I talked with you in a dream, Cyprus-born

  And Aphrodite addresses Sappho in another fragment:

  . . . you and my servant Love

  This degree of intimacy between mortal and divine in ancient Greek literature isn’t unique to Sappho, but it is unusual and begs the question of whether these poems reflect an aspect of the religious life of women not attested to in the descriptions by men. Are we witnessing here a spiritual relationship between women and goddesses that was largely alien to a male world, or are these invocations and imagined conversations with the divine simply poetic devices that have no bearing on the religious lives of real women? It’s impossible to know for certain, but other poems by Sappho suggest there was an unappreciated depth in the spiritual lives of Greek women.

  ONE OF THE oldest preserved poems of Sappho comes from an ostrakon, or potsherd, a broken piece of pottery used in ancient times for informal writing such as tax receipts, military orders, and school exercises. This particular piece contains four stanzas of a poem by Sappho recorded in Egypt in the third century BC and now preserved in the Laurentian Library in Florence, Italy. The writing is not always clear, and several words are missing, but what survives is once again a remarkable prayer of invocation addressed to the goddess Aphrodite:

  Come to me here from Crete to this holy

  temple, to your delightful grove of apple

  trees, where altars smoke

  with frankincense.

  Here cold water babbles through apple

  branches, roses shadow all,