A theme-by-theme secondary sources tool that provides scholars' views on Sappho and her works. Created for the OCR Classical Civilisation 'Love and Relations' module for A level. 4 pages of organised quotes and ideas that can be used directly in exams to achieve top grades.
‘The rhythms of her songs can be reconstructed from the long and short syllables of Greek
words. These give us the time patterns for the most familiar four-line 'Sapphic stanza': three
of the same pattern, followed by a shorter fourth.’ - Armand D'Angour
The melody was transmitted orally and not written down, so it is lost. But ancient accounts
and documents give us clues about how it sounded. A feature of ancient Greek is that it was
a melodically inflected language: the pitch of the voice went up and down on different
syllables. - Armand D'Angour
Secondary/Scholarly quotations: CONTEXT
‘A couple of complete poems and about two hundred fragments are all that remain of the
nine substantial books, in diverse genres and metres, that she produced on her home island
of Lesbos in the northeastern Aegean around 600 BC.’ - Edith Hall
She is the first female poet and “learned woman” known to antiquity and to the “Western”
literary tradition. Said to have been entitled “the tenth Muse” by Plato, she was the only
woman whom ancient scholars included in the canon of significant lyric poets.’ - Edith Hall
Although Sappho is unusual as a female poet, her homoerotic stance, in the ancient setting,
was unremarkable. [...] Her poetry was likely performed at women only Symposia’ - Edith
Hall
‘Only Homer can claim an instrumental role in literary history equivalent to Sappho’s.’ -
Edith Hall
‘Sappho, who still haunts and surprises us, already haunted the imagination of antiquity. The
islanders of Lesbos imprinted her face on their coins. An exquisite statue of her stood in the
town hall of Syracuse, Sicily.’ - Edith Hall
‘We know Sappho more intimately than any other ancient poet. [...] She has permitted us to
overhear her longing and intelligence, her humour and anger, and perception of beauty [...]
In contrast, Homer is but a shadow in his own poetry’ - Willis Barnstone
‘The most one can say is that she was probably known as a teacher of young women. As for
using her position of teacher at any level (and surely "cult" is a stretch) as a means of
explaining away her homoerotic poems, this is unpleasant nonsense and traditional bigotry,
and has no basis in the ancient biographical tradition and no support in the existing remains
of her poems.’ - Willis Barnstone
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