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Summary Sappho Notes for Classical Civilisation A-Level Love and Relationships OCR
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A* Notes on Sappho including context, quotes from scholars, quotes from the set texts and analysis of them and discussion of themes. Themes include: - Love - Marriage - Epithalamia - Skill and Music - The Gods and Religion - Epics - Class and Luxury - Time and Memory - Beauty

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Document information

  • May 29, 2024
  • 7
  • 2022/2023
  • Summary

Subjects

  • sappho
  • ocr
  • classical civilisation
  • love and relationships
  • lesbos

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  • A/AS Level
  • OCR
  • Classics: Classical Civilisation
  • Love and Relationships
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Sappho (b. c.615-600 BC – d. c. 530 BC)
Life
- Early Life
o Lived on Lesbos during the age of tyrants (autocrats).
 Women from Lesbos were infamous across the ancient world for both their beauty and
sexual behaviour. In Athenian comedy, the Greek verb ‘lesbiazein’ refers to a woman
giving oral sex to a man.
 This period fostered a rich aristocratic leisure class to which Sappho and her family on Lesbos
seem to have belonged.
 Her family ran a shipping business that we know she took responsibility of once.
 She had a father, two brothers, and a mother and a daughter called Cleis.
o A source which suggests she was married to Cercylas (close to Greek slang for penis)
from Andros is very unlikely to be correct. (Similarly, Ovid recounts a story of
Sappho throwing herself from a cliff over her love for a ferryman.)
 Sappho appears to have been prominent in the society activities which the tyrannies of the
Archaic Age fostered. (Lavish festivals for gods, symposia, big public events/weddings)
 Lesbos = near Turkey (and so Lesbos feels as much part of Asia as it does Europe)
 Sappho mentions Lesbos a lot in her work – lures Aphrodite to Lesbos with the promise of its
natural beauty.
 In her work she does not explicitly talk about the political situation on the island, although we
know that there were plenty of changes in her lifetime.
 Sappho, along with her family, was probably exiled to Sicily at the start of the 6 th Century
BC after a change of government on Lesbos.
o Loeb 98b – Sappho appears to regret not being able to provide a fancy headband for
her daughter (this may be due to exile or because of laws passed on Lesbos limiting
luxury).
- Poetry
o Sappho likely composed over 10,000 lines of poetry performed at religious ritual functions (like
weddings or possibly funerals) and symposium.
 Symposium culture of Lyric Age of Greece
 Symposium essential to whole social organisation, the social hierarchy, and the way that
people make relationships – not just with lovers, but with different people in their own
class, and between different families
o “crucial for creating networks across households” – Edith Hall
o Symposiums were an import from Lydia.
o These poems tell us how “young women are trained for adulthood in society through
having parties with other women” – Edith Hall
 Edith Hall sees Sappho’s poems being performed at female-only symposia where
young unmarried women were trained in flirtation, socialisation, public
behaviour and sexual experience.
 Sappho therefore is “as much about manners as about sex” – Edith Hall
o There is a great variety in her work, “united by her personal voice” – Edith Hall
 From love to complaining about the shipping business.
o She may have performed her poems as a monody (solo performance) or as part of a chorus.
 Scholars have described the girls in her work variously as her students, fellow poets, members of
a religious cult, lovers and friends.
 Ideas have developed of Sappho as a mentor for a group of young girls or as head of a
thiasos (religious group which would perform at rituals).
o Key recognisable qualities:
 She is credited with the invention of the plectrum and must therefore have had a unique playing
style, crafted to fit the metre, stress and tone of her poetry.
 Meter – indigenous to the island of Lesbos
 Sapphic Stanza – used in the two complete poems we have – Hymn to Aphrodite and Brother’s
Poem
 Dialect – Aeolic
 Long “ah” sound (open-mouth) suitable for singing, also features many barbarian words
from Lydia and Phrygia.
 Striking images – very good at simile
 “A uniquely subjective, personal voice, which is like no other ancient poet” – Edith Hall

,  Repeatedly tells us her name
 Honest voice talking about age – she feels older, tireder, wiser than some around her.
 Personal voice onto old myths, often considering the women’s perspective
o Topos (= a recurrent feature in literature)
 Loeb 1 begins with the topos of a hymn to a goddess but then creates a dramatic image of her
approach.
 Sappho also uses the literary topos of a shift of narrator during the poems.
- Legacy
o Largely inaccurate as men were uncomfortable with a female poet and ancient men presented her as a
prostitute or manic depressive when left by a man.
o However, even in antiquity she was respected – Plato described her as the “10th Muse”
o Issue of fragmentary material
 Some of Sappho’s poems survived because they were quoted in other ancient sources while
others were found among papyri in a rubbish dumb near the ancient Egyptian town of
Oxyrhynchus.

Love
- Pain of love
o “Do not overpower my heart with anguish” – Loeb 1
o Loeb 16 shows how love can hurt others because Helen abandons her husband, “the most excellent of
all men”, “her daughter”, and “her dear parents”.
o Loeb 31
 “your charming laughter […] strikes terror into the heart in my breast” – Loeb 31
 Sappho shows desire to be as scary as an enemy warrior.
 She uses “kardia” for heart – medical not emotional – emphasises Sappho’s physical
reaction.
 Uncomfortable physical symptoms – first time in surviving Greek literature that catalogues
physical effects of love.
 “I can no longer speak” – paradoxical; Sappho is writing at great length about her.
 “My tongue breaks”
o Sappho uses a hiatus between the words for “tongue” and “breaks” (they would
normally contract) which creates a ragged sound – reflecting Sappho’s inability to
talk.
 “And I think that I am on the point of death.”
o “Honestly, I want to die” – Loeb 94
o “I take no pleasure from living!” – Loeb 95
o “I cannot weave my web, I am smitten by a boy because of slender Aphrodite” – Loeb 102
 Love is all-consuming; the poet recognises her social obligation as a woman (weaving) but
cannot fulfil it.
 Love overwhelms these societal obligations.
o About love: “Bitter-sweet invincible creature that he is.” (Word coined by Sappho – sweet then sour).
o The feelings Sappho describes are uncomfortable and, occasionally, so painful that she yearns for
death.
 The topos of comparing love with death is familiar in lyric poetry.
o “the fragments evoking the Eros [...] refer to a real love that was physically consummated” – Calame
- Power of love/Aphrodite
o “a minority of Sappho’s songs are erotic” – Poochigan
o “the perfect example of writing about desire” – Longlinus
o Aphrodite: “she will love you soon even if she does not want to.” – Loeb 1
o Loeb 16 describes how Helen “abandoned her husband […] and sailed to Troy” for love.
o In Loeb 22 Sappho believes Abanthis singing about desire can placate Aphrodite.
o Love is strong and shakes “like a wind buffeting oak trees on a mountain.”
o Love is a part of life from a young age – even when Sappho was young and living with her mother
(“Sweet mother!”) she was “smitten”.
o “Love which loosens the limbs once again shakes me!”
o “one of the purposes of Sappho’s work is to sexually educate women” – Hallett
- Pleasure of (requited) love
o “Sappho also focuses on the double-sided nature of love” – Ann Carson

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