In the ancient Greek Iliad, men seek glory in brutal, gender-structured violence against men. Much different from Iliadic heroes are the eminent Lesbian poet Sappho’s brothers Charaxos and Larichos. Sappho criticized them and praised them with gender-defying love for them as human beings in female-dominated culture. She valued her brothers and men generally as sexually distinctive persons who love passionately and dance worthily just as she and her women friends did.
O divine sea-daughters of Nereus, let
my brother return here unharmed
and let whatever his heart desires
be fulfilled.And may he undo all past mistakes
and so become a joy to friends,
a sorrow to enemies — may
none ever trouble us.{ Κύπρι καὶ] Νηρήιδες ἀβλάβη[ν μοι
τὸν κασί]γνητον δ[ό]τε τυίδ’ ἴκεσθα[ι
κὤσσα ϝ]οι θύμῳ κε θέλῃ γένεσθαι
πάντα τε]λέσθην,ὄσσα δὲ πρ]όσθ’ ἄμβροτε πάντα λῦσα[ι
καὶ φίλοισ]ι ϝοῖσι χάραν γένεσθαι
κὠνίαν ἔ]χθροισι, γένοιτο δ’ ἄμμι
πῆμ’ ἔτι μ]ηδ’ εἴς· }[1]
Sappho’s brother Charaxos loved a woman named Rhodopis. Raised with Sappho in a prosperous, aristocratic family on Lesbos, Charaxos became a wealthy merchant, probably a wine trader. He traveled for trade to Naucratis in ancient Egypt. Rhodopis was a slave there. Enamored with her, he spent “a huge amount of money {χρημάτων μεγάλων}” to purchase freedom for her.[2] She used her freedom and her sexual allure to establish herself as a famous and wealthy courtesan at Naucratis. That surely wasn’t Charaxos’s hope for her. Because he understood that freedom is an essential aspect of love as a complete gift of self, he didn’t purchase her as his slave.
Charaxos, however, apparently never received complete and necessarily exclusive love from Rhodopis. He returned without her to Mytilene, the capital of Lesbos. “There he was roundly mocked by Sappho in one of her poems {ἐν μέλεϊ Σαπφὼ πολλὰ κατεκερτόμησέ μιν}.” Sappho apparently regarded her brother as a foolish believer in Cinderella stories and wholly innocent, pure women.[3] In her love for Charaxos, Sappho sought to free him from gyno-idolatry and enable him to fulfill truly his heart’s desire.
Sappho’s brother Larichos poured wine for the rulers of Lesbos in its largest city, Mytilene. Larichos thus held an eminent position for a young man:
The lovely Sappho repeatedly praises her brother Larichos for pouring wine in the governing hall for the Mytileneans.
{ Σαπφώ τε ἡ καλὴ πολλαχοῦ Λάριχον τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἐπαινεῖ ὡς οἰνοχοοῦντα ἐν τῷ πρυτανείῳ τοῖς Μυτιληναίοις. }[4]
Sappho described Hermes as pouring wine for the gods. However, the most prominent wine-pourer for rulers is Ganymede. Zeus abducted Ganymede and made him forever a cup-bearer, wine-pourer, and sexual toy. Sappho wouldn’t have wanted her brother Larichos to become an immortal, ageless wine-pourer for the Mytileneans, nor even one for the gods like Ganymede. Sappho was devoted to Aphrodite. Just as Aphrodite loved the mortal, aging man Anchises, Sappho loved her brother Larichos as a mortal man who surely would age beyond being a wine-pourer.[5]
Crossing gender, Sappho explicitly associated herself with the aged Tithonus. Just as Zeus abducted Ganymede, the dawn goddess Eos abducted the mortal man Tithonus to serve her sexually. Eos had Zeus make Tithonus immortal, but neglected to request that Tithonus be ageless. Aphrodite offered the example of Tithonus in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. Sappho similarly invoked the aged Tithonus, whom she associated with herself. Sappho advised young persons:
You, young persons, pursue the violet-laden Muses’ lovely gifts,
and the clear-toned lyre so dear to song,but for me — old age has now seized my once tender body,
and my hair has become white instead of black.
My breath has grown labored, and my knees offer no support,
knees once fleet for the dance like little fawns.How often I lament these things. But what to do?
As a human, one cannot escape old age.
Yes, people used to say that rose-armed Dawn, overtaken by love,
took Tithonus, handsome and young then, and carried him off
to the world’s end. Yet in time grey age
still seized him, though he having an immortal wife.{ ὔμμες πεδὰ Μοίσαν ἰ]ο̣κ[ό]λ̣πων κάλα δῶρα, παῖδες,
σπουδάσδετε καὶ τὰ]ν̣ φιλάοιδον λιγύραν χελύνναν·ἔμοι δ’ ἄπαλον πρίν] π̣οτ̣’ [ἔ]ο̣ντα χρόα γῆρας ἤδη
ἐπέλλαβε, λεῦκαι δ’ ἐγ]ένοντο τρίχες ἐκ μελαίναν·
βάρυς δέ μ’ ὀ [θ]ῦμο̣ς̣ πεπόηται, γόνα δ’ [ο]ὐ φέροισι,
τὰ δή ποτα λαίψηρ’ ἔον ὄρχησθ’ ἴσα νεβρίοισι.τὰ <μὲν> στεναχίσδω θαμέως· ἀλλὰ τί κεν ποείην;
ἀγήραον ἄνθρωπον ἔοντ’ οὐ δύνατον γένεσθαι.
καὶ γάρ π̣[ο]τ̣α̣ Τίθωνον ἔφαντο βροδόπαχυν Αὔων
ἔρῳ φ̣. . α̣θ̣ε̣ισαν βάμεν’ εἰς ἔσχατα γᾶς φέροισα[ν,
ἔοντα̣ [κ]ά̣λ̣ο̣ν καὶ νέον, ἀλλ’ αὖτον ὔμως ἔμαρψε
χρόνῳ π̣ό̣λ̣ι̣ο̣ν̣ γῆρας, ἔχ̣[ο]ν̣τ̣’ ἀθανάταν ἄκοιτιν. }[6]
The metaphorical parallel to the immortal but aged Tithonus is Sappho’s knees “once fleet for the dance like little fawns.” Her knees function as a metonym for her legs and her physical capabilities generally. The aged Sappho regretted her loss of bodily capabilities. She urged young persons, both women and men, to sing and dance. Her advice applies to her young brother Larichos.[7]
Sappho appreciated men’s supple limbs apart from prowess in fighting. The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite used the incapacity of Tithonus’s limbs to characterize his disability as a lover for the goddess Eos:
When hateful old age was pressing fully hard on Tithonus
and he couldn’t move his limbs, much less lift them up,
in her heart Eos decided the best way indeed to be this:
she put him in a room and closed the shining doors upon him.
From there his voice endlessly pours out, but he has no vigor at all,
none like he formerly had in his supple limbs.{ ἀλλ᾿ ὅτε δὴ πάμπαν στυγερὸν κατὰ γῆρας ἔπειγεν,
οὐδέ τι κινῆσαι μελέων δύνατ᾿ οὐδ᾿ ἀναεῖραι,
ἥδε δέ οἱ κατὰ θυμὸν ἀρίστη φαίνετο βουλή·
ἐν θαλάμωι κατέθηκε, θύρας δ᾿ ἐπέθηκε φαεινάς.
τοῦ δ᾿ ἤτοι φωνὴ ῥέει ἄσπετος, οὐδέ τι κῖκυς
ἔσθ᾿ οἵη πάρος ἔσκεν ἐνὶ γναμπτοῖσι μέλεσσιν. }[8]
The aged Tithonus is brother to the aged Sappho in having an immortal voice and physical disability associated with limbs.[9] The penis is commonly regarded as one of a man’s members / limbs. Impotent limbs encompass sexual disability distinctive to men. Sappho, however, also understood limbs apart from sexual distinctiveness. The young Tithonus was brother to the young Sappho in having supple limbs. Both women and men need supple limbs for dancing.
For men, dancing contrasts with the heroic ethic of the Iliad. After Achilles killed Hector, King Priam of Troy lamented the disgraceful character of his remaining sons:
Woe is me, oh my evil destiny. I have had the most noble
of sons in Troy, but I say not one of them is left to me —
not godlike Mestor, not Troilos the warrior charioteer,
nor Hector, who was a god among men, for he did not seem like
the son of a mortal man, but of a god. All these
Ares has slain, and all that are left to me are disgraces —
liars and dancers, most noble in pounding the floor in choral dance,
robbers of lambs and young goats in their own land.{ ὤ μοι ἐγὼ πανάποτμος, ἐπεὶ τέκον υἷας ἀρίστους
Τροίῃ ἐν εὐρείῃ, τῶν δ᾽ οὔ τινά φημι λελεῖφθαι,
Μήστορά τ᾽ ἀντίθεον καὶ Τρωΐλον ἱππιοχάρμην
Ἕκτορά θ᾽, ὃς θεὸς ἔσκε μετ᾽ ἀνδράσιν, οὐδὲ ἐῴκει
ἀνδρός γε θνητοῦ πάϊς ἔμμεναι ἀλλὰ θεοῖο.
τοὺς μὲν ἀπώλεσ᾽ Ἄρης, τὰ δ᾽ ἐλέγχεα πάντα λέλειπται
ψεῦσταί τ᾽ ὀρχησταί τε χοροιτυπίῃσιν ἄριστοι
ἀρνῶν ἠδ᾽ ἐρίφων ἐπιδήμιοι ἁρπακτῆρες. }[10]
Sappho herself sang for choral dances and apparently taught women dancers. Devoted to Aphrodite, Sappho appreciated dance as did the goddess of love Aphrodite. Aphrodite summoned Helen to have sex with her husband Paris even after her former husband Menelaus shamed him on the battlefield of Troy:
Helen, come this way. Paris calls you to come home.
He’s there in the marital bedroom, on the bed with inlaid rings.
He’s gleaming with his beauty and robes. You wouldn’t say
he came from fighting a foe, but rather he was going to a dance,
or from a dance having recently returned, he was resting.{ δεῦρ᾽ ἴθ᾽: Ἀλέξανδρός σε καλεῖ οἶκον δὲ νέεσθαι.
κεῖνος ὅ γ᾽ ἐν θαλάμῳ καὶ δινωτοῖσι λέχεσσι
κάλλεΐ τε στίλβων καὶ εἵμασιν: οὐδέ κε φαίης
ἀνδρὶ μαχεσσάμενον τόν γ᾽ ἐλθεῖν, ἀλλὰ χορὸν δὲ
ἔρχεσθ᾽, ἠὲ χοροῖο νέον λήγοντα καθίζειν. }
Like Aphrodite, Sappho would have appreciated her brothers more as dancers than as warriors.[11]
In the ancient Mediterranean world, men’s status in women’s eyes typically centered on men’s material wealth and skill in violence against men. Sappho, in contrast, cared most about beauty:
Some say an army of horsemen, others
say foot soldiers, still others a fleet of ships
is the most beautiful thing on the black earth.
I say it is whatever one loves.Everyone can understand this — consider
that Helen, far surpassing the beauty
of mortals, left behind
the best man of allto sail away to Troy. She remembered
neither daughter nor dear parents,
as Aphrodite led her away…
This reminds me now
of absent Anaktoria —I would rather see her lovely step
and the radiant sparkle of her face
than all the war chariots in Lydia
and soldiers battling in arms.{ ο]ἰ μὲν ἰππήων στρότον οἰ δὲ πέσδων
οἰ δὲ νάων φαῖσ’ἐπ[ὶ] γᾶν μέλαι[ν]αν
ἔ]μμεναι κάλλιστον, ἔγω δὲ κῆν’ ὄτ-
τω τις ἔραται·πά]γχυ δ’ εὔμαρες σύνετον πόησαι
π]άντι τ[ο]ῦ̣τ’, ἀ γὰρ πόλυ περσκέ̣θ̣ο̣ι̣σ̣α
κ̣άλ̣λο̣ς̣ [ἀνθ]ρώπων Ἐλένα [τὸ]ν ἄνδρα
τ̣ὸν̣ [πανάρ]ι̣στονκ̣αλλ[ίποι]σ̣’ ἔβα ’ς Τροΐαν πλέοι̣[σα
κωὐδ[ὲ πα]ῖδος οὐδὲ φίλων το[κ]ήων
πάμ[παν] ἐμνάσθη, ἀλλὰ παράγ̣α̣γ̣’ α̣ὔταν…
. .]μ̣ε̣ νῦν Ἀνακτορί[ας ὀ]ν̣έ̣μναι-
σ’ οὐ ] παρεοίσας·τᾶ]ς κε βολλοίμαν ἔρατόν τε βᾶμα
κἀμάρυχμα λάμπρον ἴδην προσώπω
ἢ τὰ Λύδων ἄρματα κἀν ὄπλοισι
πεσδομ]άχεντας. }[12]
Helen left behind the great warrior and Greek king Menelaus to elope with the Trojan prince Paris, known for his beauty and dancing. Anaktoria’s “lovely step {ἐρατὸν βᾶμα}” suggests her dancing. Paris, not the warrior-hero Hector, was a manly ideal in Sappho’s eyes.
In her “Brothers Poem,” Sappho challenged her mother not to think about her sons Charaxos and Larichos according to men’s traditional gender burdens. Men traditionally have been burdened with providing material goods to their families. In a poem plausibly addressed to her mother, Sappho urged concern not for the goods her brother Charaxos was to bring, but for his personal safety:
You keep on saying that Charaxos must come
with his ship full of goods. Zeus knows this,
I believe, as do all the gods.
Don’t think about it.Instead send me, yes command me
to keep praying to Queen Hera
that Charaxos return here
guiding his ship safelyand find us steadfast. Everything else
we should turn over to the gods,
since harsh gales to fair winds
soon give way.{ ἀλλ’ ἄϊ θρύλησθα Χάραξον ἔλθην
νᾶϊ σὺν πλήαι. τὰ μὲν̣ οἴο̣μα̣ι Ζεῦς
οἶδε σύμπαντές τε θέοι · σὲ δ’ οὐ χρῆ
ταῦτα νόησθαι,ἀλλὰ καὶ πέμπην ἔμε καὶ κέλεσθαι
πόλλα λί̣σσεσθαι̣ βασί̣λ̣η̣αν Ἤ̣ραν
ἐξίκεσθαι τυίδε σάαν ἄγοντα
νᾶα Χάραξονκἄμμ’ ἐπεύρην ἀρτ̣έ̣μεας. τὰ δ’ ἄλλα
πάντα δαιμόνεσσ̣ιν ἐπι̣τ̣ρόπωμεν·
εὔδιαι γ̣ὰρ̣ ἐκ μεγάλαν ἀήτα̣ν̣
αἶψα πέ̣λ̣ο̣νται. }[13]
At an annual festival to Hera on Lesbo, Sappho apparently led the dancing associated with the very expensive sacrifice of 100 cattle, a “hecatomb {ἑκατόμβη}.” Moreover, in ancient Greek myth, two brothers Kleobis and Biton, working in the place of oxen, pulled their mother atop her wagon to a festival of Hera. Kleobis and Biton then happily died in Hera’s temple.[14] Their mother honored her two sons as praiseworthy instruments, yet they perished as human beings. Sappho praying to Hera for Charaxos’s safe return doesn’t require an expensive sacrifice. Moreover, Sappho explicitly orients her prayer away from instrumental valuation of Charaxos and towards his safety. Sappho’s conventional invocation of the gods plays between Zeus and Hera while undermining the instrumentalizing of men as a gender.[15]
Sappho’s gender-defying love for her brother Larichos subverts Iliadic characterization of the warrior man-hero. Sappho associated Larichos with her and their mother. She thus gave him domestic importance that many men lack:
And us? If Larichos lifts his head high
and some day becomes a man,
our hearts might be swiftly freed
from such heavy aches.{ κἄμμες, αἴ κε τὰν κεφάλα̣ν ἀέρρ̣η
Λάρι̣χος καὶ δή ποτ’ ἄνη̣ρ γένηται,
καὶ μάλ’ ἐκ πόλλαν βαρ̣υθυ̣μίαν̣ κεν
αἶψα λύθειμεν. }[16]
In the Iliad, a man lifting his head high and acting like a man means being steadfast in massive violence against men. Sappho’s manly ideal, however, was Paris, not Hector. An insightful scholar observed of the last two verses of the “Brothers Poem”:
with their sisterly exhortation to Larichos to go and play a Telemachos-like role and show himself “a man”, while the heavy and rare word βαρυθυμία – “weightiness of spirit”, “depression”, raising the stylistic level, correlates with the devastating erotic love we find elsewhere in Sappho. Here she is the devoted sister, worrying about her younger brother, as in other poems she does about girls, one of whom (after all), if he lifts his head, Larichos will grow up to marry.[17]
In ancient Greek, the root of Larichos, “laros {λαρός},” meaning “sweet,” is used to characterize wine. Sappho is concerned about Larichos not as a warrior, but as a lover and potential husband. In this context, lifting his head alludes to Larichos’s sexual arousal. Being a man means acting as a sexually mature man. To lift heavy heart-aches, a marriage celebration is best of all. In ancient Greek, the root of Charaxos, “chara {χαρά},” means “exuberant joy.” Sappho in ending the “Brothers Poem” imagines Charaxos having returned home, Larichos getting married, and all joyfully dancing.[18]
Although she wrote exquisite poetry in love for women, Sappho also loved men. She apparently married and had at least one child. She sang and played music for men’s symposia. A tradition going back to no later than the ancient comic Greek poet Menander describes her as having fallen madly in love with Phaon, a boatman of Lesbos. He was reputed to be once regarded as an ugly man, at least superficially. The first-century scholar Pliny the Elder reported that Sappho appreciated men’s typically covered genitals:
Marvelous is the characteristic reported of the erynge, that its root grows into the likeness of the organs of one sex or the other. Although rarely found in the male form, if that form comes into the possession of men, they become lovable in the eyes of women. It is said that this is how Phaon of Lesbos himself won the love of Sappho.
{ portentosum est, quod de ea traditur, radicem eius alterutrius sexus similitudinem referre, raro inuento, sed si uiris contigerit mas, amabiles fieri; ob hoc et Phaonem Lesbium dilectum a Sappho }[19]
Like Dido for Aeneas, Sappho reportedly committed suicide through her extravagant passion for Phaon. Ovid’s fictional letter of Sappho to Phaon, a letter now rightly regarded as “uniquely Sapphic,” depicts Sappho’s orgasm in dreaming of Phaon:
You, Phaon, are my care. My dreams bring you back to me —
dreams brighter than beautiful day.
There I find you, even though you’re absent from this region.
But joys that sleep brings aren’t sufficiently long.
Often I seem to burden your arms with my neck,
often I seem to have placed mine beneath yours.
I know the kisses that you would have united with your tongue,
that you devised as suitable to receive, suitable to give.
Sometimes I entice you and speak words similar
to the truth, and my lips keep watch with my senses.
I’m ashamed to tell further, but all happens,
and it delights, and it’s not possible for me to stay dry.{ Tu mihi cura, Phaon; te somnia nostra reducunt —
somnia formoso candidiora die.
illic te invenio, quamvis regionibus absis;
sed non longa satis gaudia somnus habet
saepe tuos nostra cervice onerare lacertos,
saepe tuae videor supposuisse meos;
oscula cognosco, quae tu committere lingua
aptaque consueras accipere, apta dare.
blandior interdum verisque simillima verba
eloquor, et vigilant sensibus ora meis.
ulteriora pudet narrare, sed omnia fiunt,
et iuvat, et siccae non licet esse mihi. }[20]
Phaon wasn’t anyone like an Iliadic heroic. He was simply a beautiful man, a man with beauty sexually distinctive to men. Sappho wouldn’t have loved her brothers Charaxos and Larichos as instruments of commerce or violence against men. She would have loved them as beautiful human beings.
Many modern scholars have failed to appreciate Sappho’s love for her brothers. In the “Brothers Poem,” Sappho’s distinctive concern for Charaxos’s safety, rather than his ship’s cargo, has scarcely been noticed. That’s consistent with modern complacency about men’s gender burdens and the large gender protrusion in human mortality.
Scholars have projected contempt for men upon Sappho’s view of Larichos. One learned classical philologist translated the final stanza of the “Brothers Poem” to have Sappho hoping that Larichos “finally mans up.”[21] That diction constitutes a classic call for men to gender-conform. Another scholar imagined Sappho depicting Larichos as a “feckless brother” in contrast to an Iliadic hero. This scholar imagined Sappho insulting and ridiculing her brother: “That he is not an ἀνήρ (‘man’) in the Iliadic sense is her crowning insult.”[22] This scholar’s interpretation bizarrely makes Sappho’s feminine values contrast starkly with Sappho’s valuing of her brothers. Sappho was not a gender-bigoted feminist.
Modern disparagement of men has heavily colored translations of Sappho’s “Brothers Poem.” One translation absurdly imagines Sappho wanting Larichos to “whistle Dixie”:
As for us — if lazyboy Larichos ever lifts his head
and turns into a man who can whistle Dixie
goodbye family gloom! We’ll run our fingers
through his beard and laugh.[23]
Dixie was the traditional anthem of the secessionist U.S. states seeking to keep blacks enslaved. To “whistle Dixie” means to engage in idle talk of unrealistically optimistic fantasies. Sappho surely didn’t want Larichos to help his family revel in fantasies of white supremacy. Nonetheless, Oxford students in a student literary periodical called this translation “the most alluring from a sea of seven sassy Sapphos.”[24] Their imagined “sassy Sappho” is a singer of a morally obtuse, childish cartoon.
Another translation provides additional cultural insight. Unlike Sappho, many intellectuals today inhabit a reeking sewer:
…. As for Larichos,
that lay-a-bed lives for the pillow. If for once
he’d get off his ass, he might make something of himself.
Then from that reeking sewer of my life
I might haul up a bucket of spring water.[25]
Even just the surviving fragments of her poetry and the surviving testimonies about her life indicate that Sappho led a vibrant life — a life filled with social interaction, intellectual and artistic activities, and passionate love. The “reeking sewer of my life” is the here-and-now experience of this learned translator. He perceptively described those serving Hera, Zeus, and other traditional Greek gods as “those idiots in the Iliad.” Most of the idiots killed in the foolish Trojan War over Helen were men. Sappho surely wanted her brother Larichos to make of himself something other than being “gloriously” killed in battle. She would have preferred for him to lay in bed as Paris did for awhile during the Trojan War with the help of Aphrodite.
Like mothers’ love for their sons, sisters’ love for their brothers is vitally important to promoting social justice and gender equality. Sappho loved her brothers Charaxos and Larichos with gender-defying love, with humane and forgiving love, and with love affirming her brothers’ essential goodness as men. The name Sappho apparently arose as an affectionate term for sister — a term like “best-friend-forever sister.”[26] If all sisters loved their brothers as Sappho did, men would not aspire merely to acquiring wealth or dying in glory as warriors. Men would finally be liberated to flourish like Sappho as fully human beings.
* * * * *
Read more:
- Anchises loving Aphrodite: progress for men in love with goddesses
- Hector and Helen goaded Paris to fight Menelaus
- Lysistrata leads men’s strike: “Not while I’m bleeding!”
Notes:
[1] Sappho, Fragment 5, vv. 1-8, ancient Greek text from Campbell (1982) via Digital Sappho, English translation from Rayor & Lardinois (2023). For a close translation of the first eleven verses of fragment 5, Nagy (2018).
Sappho wrote about 600 BGC on the island of Lesbos near the eastern coast of the Aegean Sea. Even in antiquity she was widely regarded as an eminent poet:
Some say the Muses are nine, but how carelessly!
Look at the tenth, Sappho from Lesbos.{ ννέα τὰς Μούσας φασίν τινες· ὡς ὀλιγώρως·
ἠνίδε καὶ Σαπφὼ Λεσβόθεν ἡ δεκάτη. }
The Greek Anthology {Anthologia Palatina} 9.506, verses attributed to Plato, from Thorsen & Berge (2019). Scholars in Hellenistic Alexandria compiled at least eight books of Sappho’s poetry, but most of her poems have been lost. Digital Sappho provides Greek texts and commentary for all the surviving fragments of Sappho’s poetry. English translations of these fragments are available from Barnstone (2005), Carson (2002), Nagy (2018), Rayor & Lardinois (2023), the Sappho page of Poetry in Translation, and the Divine Sappho. Today as an artist Sappho is even more famous than the pioneering Greek painter Kora of Sicyon.
[2] Herodotus recounted:
Rhodopis arrived in Egypt, brought by Xanthes of Samos. On arrival she was freed for a huge amount of money in order to work. A man from Mytilene, Charaxos son of Scamandronymus, and brother of Sappho the poet, did this. Thus Rhodopis was freed and lived in Egypt. Since she was extremely lovely, she gained much wealth for such a Rhodopis.
{ Ῥοδῶπις δὲ ἐς Αἴγυπτον ἀπίκετο Ξάνθεω τοῦ Σαμίου κομίσαντός μιν· ἀπικομένη δὲ κατʼ ἐργασίην ἐλύθη χρημάτων μεγάλων ὑπὸ ἀνδρὸς Μυτιληναίου Χαράξου τοῦ Σκαμανδρωνύμου παιδός, ἀδελφεοῦ δὲ Σαπφοῦς τῆς μουσοποιοῦ. οὕτω δὴ ἡ Ῥοδῶπις ἐλευθερώθη καὶ κατέμεινέ τε ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ καὶ κάρτα ἐπαφρόδιτος γενομένη μεγάλα ἐκτήσατο χρήματα ὡς δἠ εἶναι Ῥοδώπιος }
Herodotus, Histories 2.135, ancient Greek text from Wilson (2015) via Thorsen & Berge (2019), English translation (modified slightly) from id. The English translation of Godley (1920) brings out more explicitly Herodotus’s wry allusion to Rhodopis’s profession as a hetaera (high-class prostitute). Rhodopis {Ῥοδῶπις} means literally “rosy cheeks.” Other sources call her Doricha {Δωρίχα}. That may have been her real name. In her fragment 15, Sappho apparently refers to Doricha and Charaxos’s love for her.
Later sources recount similarly about Rhodopis / Doricha. Writing sometime between 7 BGC and 24 GC, Strabo described a large, expensive pyramid thought to be her tomb:
It is called “Tomb of the Courtesan,” having been built by her lovers. This courtesan was the one whom Sappho the poetess of melic songs calls Doricha, the beloved of Sapphoʼs brother Charaxos. He was engaged in transporting Lesbian wine to Naucratis for sale. Others give her the name Rhodopis.
{ λέγεται δὲ τῆς ἑταίρας τάφος—γεγονὼς ὑπὸ τῶν ἐραστῶν—, ἣν Σαπφὼ μέν ἡ τῶν μελῶν ποιήτρια καλεῖ Δωρίχαν, ἐρωμένην τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτῆς Χαράξου γεγονυῖαν οἶνον κατάγοντος εἰς Ναύκρατιν Λέσβιον κατ᾿ ἐμπορίαν, ἄλλοι δ᾿ ὀνομάζουσι Ῥοδῶπιν. }
Strabo, Geographica {Γεωγραφικά} 17.1.33, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Thorsen & Berge (2019). Writing early in the third century GC, Athenaeus commented:
Naucratis also produced famous and exceptionally beautiful courtesans, including Doricha. She was a lover of Sapphoʼs brother Charaxos, who sailed to Naucratis on a trading journey. In her poems the lovely Sappho abuses Doricha for extracting a substantial amount of money from Charaxos.
{ ἐνδόξους δὲ ἑταίρας καὶ ἐπὶ κάλλει διαφερούσας ἤνεγκεν καὶ ἡ Ναύκρατις· Δωρίχαν τε, ἣν ἡ καλὴ Σαπφὼ ἐρωμένην γενομένην Χαράξου τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτῆς κατʼ ἐμπορίαν εἰς τὴν Ναύκρατιν ἀπαίροντος διὰ τῆς ποιήσεως διαβάλλει ὡς πολλὰ τοῦ Χαράξου νοσφισαμένην. }
Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae {Δειπνοσοφισταί} 13.69 = 13.596bd, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified slightly) from Thorsen & Berge (2019). Charaxos is also transliterated less literally as Charaxus, but I’ve consistently chosen the former since Charaxus isn’t a well-known name.
Whether Charaxos, Rhodopis / Doricha, and Larichos are historical persons or literary personas created in Sappho’s poems has little significance to the presentation here. For simplicity, I assume that they are historical persons. With the same justification, I equate Sappho and the first-person voice of Sappho’s poems.
[3] For Sappho mocking Charaxos, Herodotus, Histories 2.135, ancient Greek text from Wilson (2015) via Thorsen & Berge (2019), English translation (modified slightly) from id. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 13.596bc has Sappho disparaging Doricha / Rhodopis rather than Charaxos.
Sappho perhaps chided her brother Charaxos for believing on meager evidence that he had discovered a highly desirable, goddess-like woman who would love him truly and faithfully. Made in this context, truthful, frank criticism indicates love, not contempt. Ovid perceptively depicted Sappho’s loyal love for her brother Charaxos:
Because I often warned him well and very faithfully, he hates me.
This my free-speaking, this my loyal tongue, has bestowed on me.{ me quoque, quod monui bene multa fideliter, odit;
hoc mihi libertas, hoc pia lingua dedit. }
Ovid, Heroides 15 (Sappho to Phaon {Sappho Phaoni}) vv. 67-8, Latin text of Ehwald (1907) Teubner via Perseus, my English translation, benefiting from that of James Hunter. Just before Sappho laments Charaxos hating her for her loyal tongue, she suggests that Charaxos now roams the seas as a pirate. That sensational claim seems to be a literary device intending to highlight Sappho’s continuing love for her brother. On Ovid’s depiction of Charaxos in Heroides 15 in relation to Sappho’s poetry, Thorsen (2014) pp. 58-63 and Thorsen (2019).
In fragment 57, Sappho derides an addressee for loving an ignorant countrywoman. Athenaeus specified Sappho’s addressee in fragment 57 as her woman associate Andromeda. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 1.46 = 1.21b. In fragments 68(a), 131, and 133, Sappho refers explicitly to Andromeda. The addressee of fragment 57 could grammatically be a woman or man. Fragment 57 thus might have been addressed to Charaxos.
Variants of Cinderella stories have been widely known for millennia. After telling about the tomb of the hetaera Rhodopis / Doricha and that Sappho’s brother Charaxos loved her, Strabo continued with the earliest recorded variant of the Cinderella story:
They tell the fabulous story that, when Doricha was bathing, an eagle snatched one of her sandals from her maid and carried it to Memphis. While the king was administering justice in the open air, the eagle, when it arrived above his head, flung the sandal into his lap. The king, stirred both by the beautiful shape of the sandal and by the strangeness of the occurrence, sent men in all directions into the country in quest of the woman who wore the sandal. When she was found in the city of Naucratis, she was brought up to Memphis. She became the wife of the king. When she died was honored with the above-mentioned tomb.
{ μυθεύουσι δ᾿, ὅτι, λουομένης αὐτῆς, ἓν τῶν ὑποδημάτων αὐτῆς ἁρπάσας ἀετὸς παρὰ τῆς θεραπαίνης κομίσειεν εἰς Μέμφιν καί, τοῦ βασιλέως δικαιοδοτοῦντος ὑπαιθρίου,4 γενόμενος κατὰ κορυφὴν αὐτοῦ ῥίψειε τὸ ὑπόδημα εἰς τὸν κόλπον· ὁ δὲ καὶ τῷ ῥυθμῷ τοῦ ὑποδήματος καὶ τῷ παραδόξῳ κινηθεὶς περιπέμψειεν εἰς τὴν χώραν κατὰ ζήτησιν τῆς φορούσης ἀνθρώπου τοῦτο· εὑρεθεῖσα δ᾿ ἐν τῇ πόλει τῶν Ναυκρατιτῶν ἀναχθείη καὶ γένοιτο γυνὴ τοῦ βασιλέως, τελευτήσασα δὲ τοῦ λεχθέντος τύχοι τάφου. }
Strabo, Geographica {Γεωγραφικά} 17.1.33, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified insubstantially) from Jones (1932). The third-century GC author Aelian (Claudius Aelianus {Κλαύδιος Αἰλιανός}) recorded nearly the same story in his Various Histories {Varia Historia / Ποικίλη ἱστορία} 13.33.
[4] Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae {Δειπνοσοφισταί} 10.24 = 10.425a, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified slightly) from Thorsen & Berge (2019). On Sappho having Hermes pour wine for the gods, Deipnosophistae 5.19 = 5.192c, also available in Thorsen & Berge (2019).
[5] On Ganymede’s relevance to Larichos in Sappho’s “Brothers Poem”:
Larichos’ activity as a cupbearer in the aristocratic symposium more than adumbrates his deep involvement in love as well. Around 600 BC the Greek aristocracy began to install beautiful boys as wine-bearers more for leisure, prestige, and erotic amusement than for education as in former times. It became fashionable in Sappho’s time to have these boys as objects of an idealized and passionate love. Ganymede modeled this new male homoerotic practice of the élite. .. Thus Larichos’ behavior leads us to believe he also has fallen prey to Eros who somehow personifies these idealized boys in their duty as wine-pourers in the new symposium. While the bonds of heterosexual love bind Charaxos, Larichos is engaged in homosexual affairs. His bowed head signifies his lack of personal freedom. He has become a slave of desire, the object of lust for adult males.
Bierl (2016) pp. 321-2.
[6] Sappho, Fragment 58c, vv. 1-12 (The Cologne Papyrus, P.Köln inv. 21351), ancient Greek text from Digital Sappho, English translation (modified) from Greene (2009). Tithonos {Τιθωνός} is the standard transliteration, but Tithonos is commonly written as Tithonus. For v. 5, Greene has “my heart has grown heavy” for “βάρυς δέ μ’ ὀ [θ]ῦμο̣ς̣ πεπόηται.” That translation, and others similar to it, seem too abstract in the context of body, hair, and knees. My translation, “my breath has grown labored,” is within the semantic range of the ancient Greek.
Fragment 58c, known as Sappho’s “Old Age Poem” or “Tithonus Poem,” was recovered in a new manuscript in 2004 and first published in West (2005). The new manuscript complements an earlier source, the Oxford Papyrus, P.Oxy. 1787 fr. 1. For textual commentary, Annis (2005), Harris, and Obbink (2009). For alternate translations, West (2005) p. 5, Carson (2005), Gutman (ND), Obbink (2009), Janko (2017) p. 270, Harris (2018), Nagy (2018), and Rayor & Lardinois (2023).
The textual conclusion of this poem is a matter of considerable scholarly debate. Archaic Greek poetry wasn’t likely to conclude with an exemplum. Lowell (2009). But this poem might be especially subtle. Janko (2017). Moreover, it might have existed in antiquity in shorter and longer versions. Lardinois (2009), Nagy (2009).
Sappho’s “Old Age Poem” is resolutely gender-ambiguous. Translations have commonly assumed a gender not marked in the text:
Nowhere does the speaker signal her gender; this ode is unisex. Even though Greek is a highly inflected language, with a separate feminine gender in nouns and adjectives (but not in verbs, unlike Semitic languages), nowhere, in the text as it is plausibly reconstructed, does the speaker indicate her sexual identity, nowhere does she even indicate the sexual identity of the young people whom she is addressing, and nowhere does she signal whether the speaker’s and the addressees’ desires incline towards others belonging to the same sex, to the opposite sex, or to both. This poem could be performed by a man as easily as by a woman, and addressed to boys or both boys and girls just as easily as to girls. Not even the ‘fawns’ to which the speaker is compared in line 6 are gendered: the word is a neuter diminutive.
Janko (2017) p. 275.
[7] With regard to the “Old Age Poem,” Greene insightfully observed:
the speaker’s urgent entreaty of the paides {παῖδες / young persons} in the first line of the poem may be read not only as a powerful call to embrace song and dance while one can, but also as an invocation to future generations to keep her songs alive in the only way they can live, through performance.
Greene (2009). This call to embrace song and dance encompasses young men as well as young women.
Alcman, a Greek lyric poet who was probably active late in the seventh century BGC, pleaded to young women when he was too old to dance with them:
Honey-toned, divine-voiced young women, no longer
can my limbs carry me. If only, if only I were a cerylus,
who flies with the halcyons over the flower of the wave
with resolute heart, a strong, sea-blue bird.{ οὔ μ᾿ ἔτι, παρσενικαὶ μελιγάρυες ἱαρόφωνοι,
γυῖα φέρην δύναται· βάλε δὴ βάλε κηρύλος εἴην,
ὅς τ᾿ ἐπὶ κύματος ἄνθος ἅμ᾿ ἀλκυόνεσσι ποτήται
νηλεὲς ἦτορ ἔχων, ἁλιπόρφυρος ἱαρὸς ὄρνις. }
Alcman, Fragment 26 (preserved in Antigonus of Carystus, Marvels), ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Campbell (1988). For alternate translations and notes, see posts by Chris Childers and by Michael Gilleland. Alcman’s plea to young women suggests their concern for him and other older men.
[8] Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (Homeric Hymns 5, To Aphrodite {Εἲς Ἀφροδίτην}), vv. 1-6, ancient Greek text from West (2003), my English translation, benefiting from a variety of available translations.
[9] Desire for poetic immortality pervades Sappho’s poems. West (2005) pp. 2-3. Some ancient sources indicate that in old age Tithonus became a cicada. Janko associates the Tithonus exemplum with the cicada’s immortal singing and Sappho’s singing through her old age. Janko (2017) pp. 288-9. Some add to the Tithonus poem verses following it in the Oxford Papyrus (P.Oxy. 1787 fr. 1):
Yet I love the finer things. Know that love has obtained
for me the brightness and beauty of the sun.{ ἔγω δὲ φίλημμ’ ἀβροσύναν, ]τοῦτο καί μοι
τὸ λά[μπρον ἔρος τὠελίω καὶ τὸ κά]λον λέ[λ]ογχε. }
Sappho, Fragment 58c, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Campbell (1982). The sun is associated with the immortality of the god Helios {Ἠέλιος} in ancient Greek culture. An alternate translation of these these verses affirms earthly life:
Yet I love the finer things. Know that love of the
sun has obtained for me brightness and beauty.
English translation (modified slightly) from Rayor & Lardinois (2023). Athenaeus quotes these verses and interprets “love of the sun {ἔρος τὠελίω}” to mean love for life. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 15.687b. Sappho might have intended both these meanings:
I believe the ambiguity to be deliberate and that one should construct τὠελίω both with ἔρος and with τὸ λάμπρον καὶ τὸ κάλον: “love of the sun / life has obtained for me the brightness and beauty [of the sun / life]”. Constructing τὠελίω both with ἔρος and with τὸ λάμπρον καὶ τὸ κάλον would agree with the idea expressed in the opening priamel of Sappho fr. 16, namely that the most beautiful thing on earth is whatever one loves: the speaker’s love of life makes it for her an object of beauty.
Lardinois (2009), omitted footnote points to a similar grammatical ambiguity in Sappho, Fragment 96.15–17.
[10] Homer, Iliad 24.255-62, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Murray (1924). The subsequent quote above, “Helen, come this way…,” is similarly from Iliad 3.390-4.
[11] Stehle described Paris in the Iliad as a better Homeric parallel for Larichos than Telemachos in the Odyssey. Stehle (2016) pp. 289-90. However, her narrow-minded interpretation of Sappho’s “Brothers Poem” imagines Sappho disparaging Larichos for being like Paris. On sexual politics shaping readings of Sappho, Prins (1999).
[12] Sappho, Fragment 16.1-12, 15-20, ancient Greek text from Campbell (1982) via Digital Sappho, English translation (modified slightly) from Rayor & Lardinois (2023). Sappho, Fragment 16, has tended to be read to have Sappho assimilating love and war. Papadimitropoulos (2016). However, Sappho’s concluding comparison with the massive army of Lydians seems to me best understood as Sappho rejecting heroic glory associated with the Trojan War. The literary legacy of Gallus has inappropriately colored reading of Sappho’s Fragment 16.
[13] Sappho, Fragment 10 (“Brothers Poem”), vv. 1-12, ancient Greek text from Campbell (1982) via Digital Sappho, English translation (modified slightly) from Rayor & Lardinois (2023). In v. 1, Rayor translated the instance of the rather rare verb θρυλεῖν as “keep on saying.” That has a note of insistence, without necessarily the belittling connotations of chattering or babbling. Rayor’s choice here seems to me the best choice in light of the analysis of Stehle (2016) pp. 272-4. In v. 9, for ἀρτ̣έ̣μεας Rayor translated “secure.” I used “steadfast” following the analysis of Stehle (2016) pp. 274-7. In v. 2, I added the gloss that the ship is full “of goods.” The close translation of Nagy (2015a) includes this gloss.
For Sappho’s “Brothers Poem,” here are helpful vocabulary and notes. For other commentary and translations, Obbink (2014a) pp. 39-40, Christopher Pelling in Obbin (2014b), TLS (2014a), TLS (2014b), Gribble (2016), Logan (2016), and Obbink (2016a) pp. 39-40 (slightly revised translation).
The person to whom the poem is addressed is a matter of scholarly controversy. Sappho’s mother is the likeliest addressee. Obbink (2014a) pp. 41-2, West (2014) p. 8. The addressee being Larichos himself seems highly improbable. Cf. Stehle (2016). Larichos as addressee wasn’t even considered a possibility in Obbink (2014a) p. 41. A rigidly gendered reading of the “Brothers Poem” also seems to favor Sappho’s mother as the addressee. Kurke (2016). But in my view, Sappho rejected aspects of masculine gender in the “Brothers Poem.”
Charaxos coming with a full ship plausibly includes an allusion to his sexual affair with Rhodopis / Doricha. Wright (2015), Obbink (2016b) pp. 209-11. Specifics of such an allusion aren’t clear. It could include a physical reference to Charaxos’s sexual frustration. Sappho would thus be alluding to men’s seminal load as a human good contrasting with material goods.
[14] A seasonally recurring festival for Hera apparently took place at Messon (currently known as Mesa) in the middle of Lesbos and centered on the hecatomb, the sacrifice of one hundred cattle. The festival for Hera on Lesbos was probably similar to the one for Hera at Argos. Nagy (2016) §§35-38, 41-49, 64. On the festival for Hera at Argos, Nagy (2015b). For the story of the mother (named Cydippe in Plutarch) and her two sons Kleobis and Biton, Herodotus, Histories 1.31.1–5. For a different interpretation of the relevance of Kleobis and Biton to Sappho, Nagy (2016) §91.
Hera perhaps was associated in her sanctuary at Messon with Zeus and Dionysos. Those three deities constituted the Lesbian triad. On Hera’s sanctuary and the Lesbian triad, Boedeker (2016) pp. 196-200, Jiménez San Cristóbal (2017).
[15] Although Sappho’s poetry shows much more concern for Hera than Zeus, Hera doesn’t dominate Zeus in the “Brothers Poem”:
I find most striking the complementary differences in the roles Sappho assigns to the two gods; both are ‘sovereign’, but within very different parameters.
Boedeker (2016) p. 206, with detailed analysis of their relationship in id. pp. 203-7. Sappho similarly rejects gender hierarchy constraining the lives and devaluing the intrinsic goodness of Larichos and Charaxos.
[16] Sappho, Fragment 10 (“Brothers Poem”), vv. 17-20, ancient Greek text from Campbell (1982) via Digital Sappho, my English translation, benefitting from that of Rayor & Lardinois (2023). Following comments from Obbink (2014b) about the concluding verses, “hearts … heavy aches” seemed to me the best translation in vv. 19-20.
[17] Obbink (2014b). Obbink subsequently associated the “Brothers Poem” with the song type “prayer for safe return.” In the context of the “Brothers Poem”:
The prayer for safe return, introduced as a matter of concern, then expands to envisage what such a return would mean for the family — wealth, and an enhanced social position in the community. The emphasis shifts almost imperceptibly from the envisaged distress that sparks the prayer to the envisaged happiness that comes with the prayer’s fulfilment, as happens in the erotic sphere in Sappho fr. 1, except that here the desired good becomes more specific or personal in the end, and may in each of the cases include or imply marriage. … The point is not that Larichos should survive and grow up: he should become an ἄνηρ in all senses. Presumably this would include marriage and the production of legitimate offspring.
Obbink (2016b) pp. 212-3. Sappho’s fragments 6B, 27, 30, 103-117B are probably from wedding songs.
[18] On the roots “laros {λαρός}” and “chara {χαρά},” Bierl (2016) pp. 319, 321; Obbink (2016b) p. 213. Sappho inverting Iliadic language in the “Brothers Poem” is consistent with her practice in fragment 31:
As extensively documented by scholars, Sappho’s use of Homeric imagery, inverted from military or battlefield death scenes to an erotic context, has been at the forefront of analyses of fragment 31.
Johnson (2009). Singing and dancing was central to who Sappho was:
The poetics of Sappho, as I have been arguing since 1990, reveal her to be a choral personality, that is, someone who performs as a leader in a dancing as well as singing group known as a khoros ‘chorus’.
Nagy (2017) §21. Kurke, with her rigid gender scheme, seems unable to imagine Larichos dancing:
Thus in our song, if Larichos ‘raise his head and become a man’, mother and daughter both might return to the proper activities of choral dance and festival celebration.
Kurke (2016) p. 249, n. 32. Sappho surely regarded dancing as proper activity for men, including Larichos.
[19] Pliny the Elder, Natural History {Naturalis historia} 22.20, Latin text and English translation (modified) from Thorsen & Berge (2019). The erynge to which Pliny refers is thought to be the sea holly (Eryngium maritimum).
Pliny associating the erynge with Sappho probably derives from perceptions of Sappho’s ardent sexual love for men. The first-person speaker in Sappho’s poems is typically identified with Sappho. In Sappho’s fragments 121and 138, Sappho speaks about her sexual desire for men. Sappho apparently also sexually desired women.
According to the tenth-century Suda (Σ 107), Sappho “was married to a very wealthy man called Cercylas, who traded from Andros {ἐγαμήθη δὲ ἀνδρὶ Κερκύλᾳ πλουσιωτάτῳ, ὁρμωμένῳ ἀπὸ Ἄνδρου}.” Thorsen & Berge (2019). Cercylas / Kercylas of Andros literally means “Little Prick from the Isle of Man.” Rayor & Lardinois (2023) p. 4. Ancient Greek comic poets may have invented this punning name for jokes about Sappho’s vigorous sexuality. Cf. Campbell (1982) p. 5, note 4.
Sappho had a daughter named Kleïs / Cleis. Sappho refers to her beautiful daughter Kleïs in fragment 132. In fragment 98, Sappho refers to her mother and a woman named Kleïs. That’s probably Sappho’s daughter as well.
Scholars now generally consider Sappho’s love for Phaon to be a literary creation dating to well after Sappho’s death. Fourth-century BC authors refer to Sappho’s love for Phaon. Palaephatus, Incredible Tales {De incredibilibus} 48; Menander, via Strabo, Geography {Geographica} 10.2.9, source texts and English translations in Thorsen & Berge (2019). Ovid’s Heroides 15 is by far now the most well-known text concerning Sappho’s love for Phaon.
[20] Ovid, Heroides 15 (Sappho to Phaon {Sappho Phaoni}) vv. 123-36, Latin text of Ehwald (1907) Teubner via Perseus, my English translation, benefiting from that of James Hunter. In Heroides 15.135, “I’m ashamed to tell further, but all happens {ulteriora pudet narrare, sed omnia fiunt},” Ovid seems to be recasting Sappho, Fragment 137, vv. 1-2: “I want to tell you something, but shame prevents me {θέλω τί τ᾽ εἴπην, ἀλλά με κωλύει / αἴδως}.” Aristotle spuriously attributed these Sapphic verses to Alcaeus addressing Sappho. Alcaeus is thought to have loved Sappho. In short, Ovid apparently engaged with Sappho’s poems in a sophisticated and humorous way. On intertextuality with Sappho’s poems in relation to Ovid depicting Sappho’s orgasm, Hunter (2019) pp. 49-50.
Recognizing Ovid’s letter from Sappho to Phaon as “uniquely Sapphic,” Thorsen perceptively declared:
thanks to the newest Sappho we now know that Heroides 15 is among the most rare and most precious examples of Sappho’s Roman reception that we possess today.
Thorsen (2019) pp. 262-4. Ovid also refers to Sappho in The Art of Love {Ars amatoria} 3.329-32, The Remedies for Love {Remedia amoris} 757-62, and Tristia 2.361-6, 3.7.19-20.
[21] Nagy (2015a).
[22] Stehle (2016) p. 290. For Larichos as “feckless brother,” id. p. 291. In assuming that Sappho’s attitude toward her brother Larichos reflects Iliadic values, scholars make Sappho as anti-meninist as themselves:
I interpret the line ‘If he lifts his head and indeed ever becomes a man’ to be an insulting swipe. He is of age, but he will not take the responsibility to rescue Sappho and her interlocutor from whatever baruthumiai are oppressing them. Transpose the situation to epic terms, and we can imagine Eurykleia in the Odyssey privately telling Penelope what she thinks of the latter’s laggard twenty-something slacker son. Larichos, like Telemachos, has got to man-up. … As for the derogatory wish that Larichos ‘be a man’, we might compare the frequent injunction in the Iliad to ‘be men’ — as when Agamemnon roams about urging on his troops (Il.5.528; cf. 6.112, 8.174, 11.287, 15.487, 561)
Martin (2016) pp. 121, 122.
[23] Anne Carson’s translation of the final stanza of Sappho’s “Brothers Poem” in TLS (2014a). Obbink (2016a), p. 208, reprints Carson’s translation without any specific, substantive comment and even uses a phrase from it for the title of his scholarly article.
[24] Alpern et al. (2020).
[25] Logan (2016). Logan used the phrase “those idiots in the Iliad” in the penultimate stanza of his translation of Sappho’s “Brothers Poem.”
[26] Nagy (2016) §§166-72.
[images] (1) Sappho and Erinna in a garden at Mytilene. Painted by Simeon Solomon in 1864. Preserved as accession # T03063 at the Tate (London). Via Wikimedia Commons. (2) Geras {Γῆρας}, ancient Greek god of old age. Painting on an Attic red-figure pelike (container, probably for wine). Made c. 480-470 BGC. Preserved as accession # G 234 (Doria Collection, 1882) in the Louvre Museum (Paris). Source image thanks to Jastrow (2006) and Wikimedia Commons. (3) Kleobis and Biton dying in the temple of Hera after carrying their mother Cydippe there. Painted by Adam Müller in 1830. Via Wikimedia Commons. (4) Sappho gazing at Alcaeus. Each holds a barbitos {βάρβιτος}, an ancient musical instrument similar to the lyre. Painting on an Attic red-figure kalathos (basket-shaped vase). Made c. 470 BGC and found in Akragas (Sicily). Preserved as accession # Inv. 2416 in the Staatliche Antikensammlungen (Berlin). Source image thanks to Bibi Saint-Pol and Wikipedia Commons. Here are a fuller image of Sappho on this kalathos and a fuller image of the whole vase. More images of the vase. On Attic images of Sappho, Yatromanolakis (2007) Chapter 2. (5) Sappho reading. Painting on an Attic red-figure hydria (water jar). Made c. 450 BGC and found in Kimissalla, Rhodes. Preserved as accession # 1885,1213.18 in the British Museum, which supplied the source image. Here’s another ancient Greek image of Sappho reading.
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References:
Alpern, Leah et al. 2020. “Sappho’s Brothers Poem: A Scholarly Retreat.” The Oxonian Review. March 6, 2020. Online.
Annis, William S. 2005. “Sappho: Fragment 58.” Online at Aoidoi.org.
Barnstone, Willis. 2005. Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho. Boston: Shambhala, distributed by Random House.
Bierl, Anton. 2016. “‘All You Need is Love’: Some Thoughts on the Structure, Texture, and Meaning of the Brothers Song as well as on Its Relation to the Kypris Song (P. Sapph. Obbink).” Chapter 14 (pp. 302–336 ) in Bierl & Lardinois (2016).
Bierl, Anton, & André Lardinois, eds. 2016. The Newest Sappho: P. Sapph. Obbink and P. GC inv. 105, Frs. 1-4. Studies in Archaic and Classical Greek Song, vol. 2. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. Alternate source. Review by Alexander Dale.
Boedeker, Deborah. 2016. “Hera and the Return of Charaxos.” Chapter 8 (pp. 188-207) in Bierl & Lardinois (2016).
Campbell, David A., ed. and trans. 1982. Greek Lyric, Volume I: Sappho and Alcaeus. Loeb Classical Library 142. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Campbell, David A., ed and trans. 1988. Greek Lyric, Volume II: Anacreon, Anacreontea, Choral Lyric from Olympus to Alcman. Loeb Classical Library 143. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Carson, Anne. 2002. If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Carson, Anne. 2005. “The Beat Goes On.” The New York Review. October 20, 2005.
Castle, Terry. 1999. “Always the Bridesmaid.” London Review of Books. 21:19 (September 30, 1999).
Godley, A. D. 1920. Herodotus. London: William Heinemann.
Greene, Ellen. 2009. “Sappho 58: Philosophical Reflections on Death and Aging.” Chapter 11 in Greene & Skinner (2009). Alternate page.
Greene, Ellen, and Marilyn B. Skinner, eds. 2009. The New Sappho on Old Age: Textual and Philosophical Issues. Hellenic Studies Series 38. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies.
Gribble, David. 2016. “Getting Ready to Pray: Sappho’s New ‘Brothers’ Song.” Greece & Rome. 63(1): 29–68.
Gutman, Huck. ND. “Two Poems by Sappho.” Poetry Letters by Huck Gutman. Online.
Harris, J. Simon. 2018. “A Translation of Sappho’s ‘Old Age Poem.’” The Society of Classical Poets. Online.
Hunter, Richard. 2019. “Notes on the Ancient Reception of Sappho.” Chapter 2 (pp. 45-60) in Thorsen & Harrison (2019).
Janko, Richard, 2017. “Tithonus, Eos and the Cicada in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite and Sappho Fr. 58.” Pp. 266-292 in Christos Tsagalis and Andreas Markantonatos, eds. The Winnowing Oar – New Perspectives in Homeric Studies. De Gruyter.
Jiménez San Cristóbal, Ana Isabel. 2017. “The so-called Lesbian triad: Zeus, Hera and Dionysos.” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae. 57(2-3): 159-176.
Johnson, Marguerite. 2009. “A Reading of Sappho Poem 58, Fragment 31 and Mimnermus.” Chapter 12 in Greene & Skiller (2009).
Jones, Horace Leonard, ed. and trans. 1932. Strabo. Geography, Volume VIII: Book 17. General Index. Loeb Classical Library 267. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kurke, Leslie. 2016. “Gendered Spheres and Mythic Models in Sappho’s Brothers Poem.” Chapter 11 (pp. 238–265) in Bierl and Lardinois (2016).
Lardinois, André. 2009. “The New Sappho Poem (P.Köln 21351 and 21376): Key to the Old Fragments.” Chapter 4 in Greene & Skinner (2009).
Logan, William. 2016. “Charaxos and Larichos.” Translation of Sappho’s “Brothers Poem.” Poetry (Chicago, US: Poetry Foundation). July/August 2016.
Lowell, Edmunds. 2009. ‘Tithonus in the “New Sappho” and the Narrated Mythical Exemplum in Archaic Greek Poetry.’ Chapter 5 in Greene & Skinner (2009).
Martin, Richard A. “Sappho, Iambist: Abusing the Brother.” Chapter 4 (pp. 110-126) in Bierl & Lardinois (2016).
Murray, A. T., trans. Revised by William F. Wyatt. 1924. Homer. Iliad. Loeb Classical Library 170 and 171. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Alternate source for Murray’s translation.
Nagy, Gregory. 2009. ‘The “New Sappho” Reconsidered in the Light of the Athenian Reception of Sappho.’ Chapter 13 in Greene & Skinner (2009).
Nagy, Gregory. 2015a. ‘The “Newest Sappho”: a set of working translations, with minimal comments.’ Classical Inquires. The Center for Hellenic Studies.
Nagy, Gregory. 2015b. “On the festival of the goddess Hērā at the Hēraion overlooking the Plain of Argos.” Classical Inquires. Online, March 20, 2015.
Nagy, Gregory. 2016. “A Poetics of Sisterly Affect in the Brothers Song and in Other Songs of Sappho.” Chapter 21 (pp. 449-492) in Bierl & Lardinois (2016).
Nagy, Gregory. 2017. “Sappho in the role of leader.” Classical Inquiries. Online. Center for Hellenic Studies.
Nagy, Gregory, trans. 2018. “Selections from Sappho: Poetry of Sappho.” The Center for Hellenic Studies. Online.
Obbink, Dirk. 2009. “Sappho Fragment 58-59: Text, Apparatus Criticus, and Translation.” Chapter 2 in Greene & Skinner (2009).
Obbink, Dirk. 2014a. “Two New Poems by Sappho.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik. 189: 32-49.
Obbink, Dirk 2014b. “Family Love — New Poems by Sappho.” TLS: The Times Literary Supplement (London). February 7, 2014, p. 12.
Obbink, Dirk. 2016a. “The Newest Sappho: Text, Apparatus Criticus, and Translation.” Chapter 1 (pp. 13-33) in Bierl & Lardinois (2016).
Obbink, Dirk. 2016b. “Goodbye Family Gloom! The Coming of Charaxos in the Brothers Song.” Chapter 9 (pp. 208-224) in Bierl & Lardinois (2016).
Papadimitropoulos, Loukas. 2016. “Sappho Fr. 16: Love and War.” Classical Journal 112 (2): 129–38.
Prins, Yopie, 1999. Victorian Sappho. Princeton, NY: Princeton University Press. Reviews by Lisa George and Castle (1999).
Rayor, Diane J., trans., and André Lardinois, intro. and notes. 2023. Sappho: A New Translation of the Complete Works. Second edition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Reviews of first edition (2014) by P. J. Finglass and by Siobhan Hodge.
Stehle, Eva. 2016. “Larichos in the Brothers Poem: Sappho Speaks Truth to the Wine-Pourer.” Chapter 12 (pp. 266-292) in Bierl & Lardinois (2016).
Thorsen, Thea S. 2019. “The Newest Sappho (2016) and Ovid’s Heroides 15.” Chapter 13 (pp. 249-264) in Thorsen & Harrison (2019).
Thorsen, Thea S. and Robert Emil Berge. 2019. “Receiving Receptions Received: A New Collection of testimonia Sapphica c.600 BC – AD 1000.” Chapter 15 (pp. 289-402) in Thorsen & Harrison (2019).
Thorsen, Thea S. and Stephen Harrison, eds. 2019. Roman Receptions of Sappho. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Review by Antonio Ramírez de Verger.
TLS. 2014a. “The Brothers Poem by Sappho — Versions by Richard Janko, Anne Carson, Peter McDonald and A. E. Stallings.” TLS: The Times Literary Supplement (London), March 28, 2014, p. 22.
TLS. 2014b. “The Brothers Poem by Sappho — Three versions.” Translations by Alistair Elliot, Andrew McNeillie, Rachel Hadas. TLS: The Times Literary Supplement (London), May 2, 2014, p. 23. Here’s the translation by Rachel Hadas.
West, Martin L., ed. and trans. 2003. Homeric Hymns. Homeric Apocrypha. Lives of Homer. Loeb Classical Library 496. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Review by R. Garner.
West, Martin L. 2005. “The New Sappho.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik. 151: 1–9.
West, Martin L. 2014. “Nine Poems of Sappho.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik. 191: 1-12.
Wilson, Nigel Guy, ed. 2015. Herodoti Historiae. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Wright, David. 2015. “Rocking the Boat: The Iambic Sappho in the New Sappho Fragment.” Paper presented to the Society for Classical Studies, 146th Annual Meeting. New Orleans, LA, January 8-11, 2015.
Yatromanolakis, Dimitrios. 2007. Sappho in the Making: The Early Reception. Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies. Review by Gauthier Liberman.