Stung With Love Read online

  Homer, himself described as the Nightingale of Chios, alludes to the tale of Philomela (Odyssey 19.512–24), and the Greek tragedian Sophocles calls the nightingale the ‘messenger of Zeus’ because it signals the coming of spring (Electra 149). Algernon Charles Swinburne portrays a nightingale as Philomela in a chorus from his tragedy Atalanta in Calydon (1865):

  And the brown bright nightingale amorous

  Is half assuaged for Itylus,

  For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,

  The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.

  Hesperus, you are

  The most fetching star.

  What Dawn flings afield

  You bring back together –

  Sheep to the fold, goats to the pen,

  And the child to his mother again.

  Nightingale,

  All you sing

  Is desire;

  You are the crier

  Of coming spring.

  Here a speaker representing a group en route to a wedding asks an older woman to impart her wisdom. An anticipatory excitement suffuses those epithalamia set before the ceremony itself. One gets the feeling that we should ‘pack the maids off quickly’ only so that there will be more weddings in the near future, and the speaker talks of weddings as if they were an end in themselves. Indeed, for a Greek female, all of her life leads either towards this one event or away from it. Burnett cites this fragment as evidence for the importance of female role-models in Sappho’s group and argues that songs such as this taught the girls of the community ‘just what to do’ (1983, p. 218). The shift in focus to deities at the end of the translated text is curious. All that we can make out from the subsequent text is the elliptical phrase: ‘[no?] road to great Olympus for mortals’. Choral performance is standard for epithalamia and the speaker exhorting the woman to ‘Talk to us for a spell’ is almost certainly a chorus.

  Because once on a time you were

  Young, sing of what is taking place,

  Talk to us for a spell, confer

  Your special grace.

  For we march to a wedding – yes,

  You know it well. So pack the maids off

  Quickly, and may the gods possess…

  A chorus probably sang ‘Groomsmen, kings with bastions’ during the procession from the father of the bride’s house to the groom’s house. The groomsmen are compared to kings with hilltop fortresses and exhorted to keep the bride impregnable until she arrives safely at her new home.

  ‘It would take seven fathoms to span’ is the first in a series of bawdy wedding songs which turn on phallic double entendre. On what happened when the bride and groom retired to the wedding chamber, see Introduction, pp. xxix–xxx.

  Groomsmen, kings with bastions

  In strong positions,

  Keep this bride

  Well fortified.

  It would take seven fathoms to span

  The feet of the doorkeeper (the best man);

  His sandals are five cows’ worth of leather

  And ten shoemakers stitched them together.

  In ‘What do you resemble, dear husband-to-be?’ the answer (a sapling) suggests both the youth of the groom and the ‘family tree’ that will grow from him. Genital joking is not far beneath the surface of this fragment as well.

  Sappho presents us with a paradox at the end of ‘Carpenters, raise the rafter-beam’ – the groom is bigger than a big man. The audience is left to riddle out the hyberbole, and the answer is inevitably that he has an erection which extends so far above his head that the roof must be raised. Compare the anonymous phallic song: ‘Get up and give the god some room to grow, for the god – upright, in full throb – longs to pass through our midst’ (Denys Page, Poetae Melici Graeci (1962), 851a). Refrains such as ‘For Hymen’s wedding hymn’ are common in epithalamia and appear in a number of the wedding poems of Theocritus and Catullus (see ‘May you bed down’ and ‘Hesperus, you are’).

  ‘What do you resemble, dear husband-to-be?’

  ‘You resemble a supple seedling, a green tree.’

  Carpenters, raise the rafter-beam

  (For Hymen’s wedding hymn)

  A little higher to make room

  (For Hymen’s wedding hymn)

  Because here comes the groom –

  An Ares more imposing than

  A giant, a terribly big man.

  For ‘Blest bridegroom, this day of matrimony’ I have done my best to preserve the ceremonial effects of rhythm, repetition and alliteration. After the ellipsis the rapid accumulation of the bride’s attractions in the Greek equivalent of a run-on sentence achieves an effect similar to the list of symptoms in ‘That fellow strikes me as god’s double’. Eros, however, ceases to be destructive in a matrimonial context but is ‘enlisted in the service of the social institutions that make for continuity and stability’ (Segal 1996, p. 71). Here we find an intimate and even eroticizing description of the bride in a public wedding performance. The ending of this fragment may be a makarismos. In the last line we learn that Aphrodite has graced the bride with immortal beauty, just as goddesses enhance the appearance of certain heroes in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

  ‘The ambrosial mixture’ presents an immortal wedding scene, perhaps the marriage of Peleus and Thetis (the parents of the hero Achilles). This fragment is exceptional in that no females are mentioned and we are left with an impression of male solidarity. The customary cup-bearers for the gods are Hebe (the daughter of Zeus and Hera) and Ganymede (a Trojan prince carried off to Olympus by Zeus). Here, as in a song by Sappho’s contemporary Alcaeus, Hermes is serving as cup-bearer. There is a certain irony in the drink offerings which the wedding guests pour on to the ground – since at least some of them are gods, they are pouring offerings to themselves.

  Blest bridegroom, this day of matrimony,

  Just as you wished it, has come true:

  The bride is whom you wished for…

  ‘You

  Move gracefully; your eyes are honey;

  Charm was showered on your radiant face –

  Yes, Aphrodite granted you outstanding praise.’

  The ambrosial mixture

  Ready in the mixing bowl,

  Hermes went round with a pitcher

  And served the gods. When all

  Had tipped their goblets and poured offerings,

  They prayed that the groom suffer only the good things.

  In ‘Because there is no other bride than she’ the speaker acts as salesperson for a bride who is still a pais (child). The proper age for marriage is a recurring theme in Greek literature. The poet Hesiod (c. 700 BCE) gives this advice in Works and Days: ‘Make sure your bride has been grown up for four years, and marry her in the fifth. And be sure to marry a virgin, so that you can school her in useful habits’ (698–9).

  Imagery of the moon surrounded by star clusters has a long history in Western literature, and this note will only cover the beginning of it. Homer compares the Trojan watchfires around Hector to stars around a moon: ‘The stars around the shining moon are pre-eminently bright’ (Iliad 8.555). Eustathius of Thessalonica (1110–98 CE) in his commentary on the Iliad notes that ‘in the expression “around the shining moon” one should not understand the light of the full moon; for then the stars are dim because they are outshone’. The image of a full moon eclipsing surrounding stars is not attested before Sappho. Bacchylides (c. 507 – c. 450 BCE) adapts it for an ode in honour of a victor in the pentathlon (consisting of discus, javelin, long jump, foot race and wrestling events): ‘He shined among his fellow pentathletes / as the beautiful moon on a mid-month night / outshines the light of stars’ (9.27–8). If this fragment of Sappho were, in fact, part of an epithalamium, a solo singer or chorus of maidens would here be praising the bride in much the same way.

  ‘And may the maidens all night long’ was probably sung outside the wedding chamber. A chorus of bridesmaids is exhorting one of the groomsmen to invite his friends to the groom’s house to
keep watch with them before the door. The bride has a violet bosom like the Muses in ‘Girls, chase the violet-bosomed Muses’ bright’. ‘The bird that intones / Piercing moans’ is the nightingale (see ‘Nightingale’) but also evokes the bride on the wedding night.

  Because there is no other girl than she,

  Bridegroom – a child still, of such quality.

  Star clusters near the fair moon dim

  Their shapely shimmering whenever

  She rises, lucent to the brim

  And flowing over.

  And may the maidens all night long

  Celebrate your shared love in song

  And the bride’s bosom,

  A violet-blossom.

  Get up, now! Rouse that gang of fellows –

  Your boys – and we shall sleep as well as

  The bird that intones

  Piercing moans.

  THE WISDOM OF SAPPHO

  Aristotle defines a gnomē as ‘a statement not about particular things, such as what sort of man Iphicrates is, but about generalities, and not about all things, such as that straight is the opposite of crooked, but about kinds of actions and whether they should be taken or avoided’ (Rhetoric 1394a21–6). In short, it offers general advice much like a proverb. Two of the most famous gnomai were written in the entry to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: ‘Nothing in excess’ and ‘Know thyself.’ Whereas each phrase or line on its own might sound banal, what is important in gnomic poetry is the combination. The poet displays his or her art in the joining of them.

  In addition to implying that beauty is more than skin deep, ‘The gorgeous man presents a gorgeous view’ suggests a sublimation of mere visual appeal, inasmuch as goodness has its beauty as well. This fragment is to be compared with ‘whatever a person / Most lusts after’ in ‘Some call ships, infantry or horsemen’. An anonymous ancient commentator preserves ‘Wealth without real worthiness’ in his explication of a gnomē in Pindar’s Second Olympian Ode: ‘Wealth decorated with virtues brings all kinds of opportunities’ (96–7).

  In Figures of Speech the Greek grammarian Tryphon (late first century BCE) cites ‘Neither the honey nor the bee’ as an example of a proverb, and the anthologist Diogenian (early second century CE) explains in his work on Proverbs that it ‘is used of those who are unwilling to take the good along with the bad’. The original is mēte moi meli mēte melissa. I was unable to preserve its striking alliteration.

  The gorgeous man presents a gorgeous view;

  The good man will in time be gorgeous, too.

  Wealth without real worthiness

  Is no good for the neighbourhood;

  But their proper mixture is

  The summit of beatitude.

  Neither the honey nor the bee

  For me…

  These three fragments consist of dilemmas and alternatives. ‘I want to tell you something but good taste’ was composed in the Alcaic stanza, named after Sappho’s contemporary who frequently employed it. Aristotle informs us that it is poetic ‘correspondence’, the first line and a half composed by Alcaeus and the rest by Sappho. Sappho uses the Alcaic stanza because it is the preferred metre of her correspondent and the one in which the original comment was written. Thus, Alcaeus’ poem prompted a response much as Christopher Marlowe’s ‘The Passionate Shepherd to His Love’ did Sir Walter Raleigh’s ‘The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd’. The Greek aidōs, which I have translated as ‘good taste’, ‘bears a certain surface resemblance to what we call “respect”, but is distinguished from it by the fact that its implications are essentially negative, so that it normally restrains action rather than requiring it’ (Douglas Olson, Blood and Iron: Stories and Storytelling in Homer’s Odyssey (1995), p. 17). Aristotle cites this fragment in support of his claim that ‘men are ashamed to speak of, do and intend shameful things’ (Rhetoric 1367a).

  The Greek grammarian Apollonius Dyscolus (fl. second century CE) cites ‘Either I have slipped out of your head’ in a treatise on Pronouns because it contains a dialectical variant of the first-person singular. The fragment captures the fatalistic mindset of the lover. Certain that she has been scorned, the lover only wonders why.

  The Stoic philosopher Chrysippus of Soli (c. 280–207 BCE) preserves ‘I don’t know what the right course is’ in a treatise On Negatives.

  ‘I want to tell you something but good taste

  Restrains me.’

  ‘If you wanted to express

  Some noble or gorgeous thought – that is, unless

  Your tongue were keen to utter in hot haste

  Some shameful slur, “good taste” would not have dressed

  Your face in red, no, you would have professed

  Whatever you would say upfront and straightaway.’

  Either I have slipped out of your head

  Or you adore some fellow more, instead.

  I don’t know what the right course is;

  Twofold are my purposes.

  ‘I declare’ appears near the end of a Discourse wrongly ascribed to the Greek orator, writer and historian Dio Chrysostum (c. 40 – c. 120 CE). Upset that a statue of him has been taken down, the speaker (who has yet to be identified with any certainty) learnedly lectures the Corinthians on immortality through art. In Sappho’s case at least, the claim has turned out to be true.

  I declare

  That later on,

  Even in an age unlike our own,

  Someone will remember who we are.

  Index of First Lines

  LP Edgar Lobel and Denys Page (eds.), Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta (1955).

  V Eva-Maria Voigt (ed.), Sappho et Alcaeus: Fragmenta (1971).

  W Martin West, ‘A New Sappho Poem’, Times Literary Supplement, no. 5334 (24 June 2005), p. 8.

  Source Page

  A full moon shone

  154V 11

  A handkerchief

  119V 53

  A hillside hyacinth shepherds treaded flat

  105bV 67

  A ripe red apple grows, the highest of them all

  105aV 67

  Abanthis, please pick up your lyre

  22V 43

  And may the maidens all night long

  30V 79

  And this next charming ditty I

  160V 41

  Artemis made the pledge no god can break

  44AaV 65

  As for you girls, the gorgeous ones

  41V 35

  As you are dear to me, go claim a younger

  121V 43

  Atthis, you looked at what I was

  131LP 39

  Because

  26V 41

  Because once on a time you were

  27V 71

  Because there is no other girl than she

  113V 79

  Blest bridegroom, this day of matrimony

  112LP 77

  But a strange longing to pass on

  95LP 21

  But I am hardly some backbiter bent

  120V 27

  But I love extravagance

  58V 33

  But when you lie dead

  55V 17

  By giving me creations of their own

  32V 41

  Carpenters, raise the rafter-beam

  111V 75

  Cold grew

  42V 27

  Come close, you precious

  128V 15

  Either I have slipped out of your head

  129a and bV 85

  Girls, chase the violet-breasted Muses’ bright

  W 45

  God-crafted product of the tortoise shell

  118V 17

  Groomsmen, kings with bastions

  161V 73

  He is unrivalled, like a Lesbian

  106V 17

  Here is the reason: it is wrong

  150V 15

  Hesperus, you are

  104a and bV 69

  I declare

  147V 87

  I do not have an

  98bV 49

  I d
on’t know what the right course is

  51V 85

  I have a daughter who reminds me of

  132V 49

  I loved you once, years ago, Atthis

  49V 39

  I truly do believe no maiden that will live

  56V 33

  I want to tell you something but good taste

  137V 85

  Idaos, then, the panting emissary

  44V 57

  ‘In all honesty, I want to die’

  94LP 25

  It would take seven fathoms to span

  110V 73

  Kypris, may Dorchia discover

  15V 47

  Kytherea, precious

  140V 11

  Leave Crete and sweep to this blest temple

  2LP 5

  Like a gale smiting an oak

  47V 21

  Maidenhead, maidenhead, where have you gone?

  114V 67

  May gales and anguish sweep elsewhere

  37V 27

  May you bed down

  126V 35

  Mnasis sent you from Phocaia