The first Lesbian sings. When Sappho wrote, the Muses had not yet separated poetry from music. Therefore translations of Sappho are missing not only the delicate sounds of her ancient Greek, but also the notes of the lyre that carried the words along. That’s why hers is called lyric poetry. Like most ancient literature, her work survives only in battered manuscripts which are copies of copies, or in brief quotes by later Greek and Roman authors.
Of her life we know little. She seems to have been mentor to a group of girls, perhaps training them for adulthood and marriage; several of her poems are wedding-songs. She lived around 600 BCE on the self-governing island of Lesbos, in the “archaic” period after Homer when Athens and Sparta were only two city-states among many. Almost six centuries later, the Roman poet Catullus was imitating her poems in style, meter, and even word-for-word, and calling his girlfriend “Lesbia” to suggest his poetry was as fine as Sappho’s.
Most but not all those she names are female. Inscriptions and later sources show she was married and probably had a daughter. Her poems do not mention sex explicitly, so there is a long history of scholars who have downplayed or denied the eroticism in her writing, or dismissed it as mere poetic convention. Yet male homosexuality, or rather bisexuality, is well-attested in other writers and in Greek art. Anacreon, writing a generation after Sappho, joked that the girl he loved was from “well-built Lesbos, and gapes after some other girl”. That tells us something about the island’s reputation, and perhaps Sappho’s legacy.
Note: Biographical info and my translations are based on the Greek in D. Campbell’s Greek Lyric Poetry (1994).
About the translator: Ellen Brundige is a graduate student in the Classics Department currently teaching first-year Latin at UCI and working towards her PhD. She helped design the Perseus website, an archive of classical art, culture, and literature from 1993-1996 at Tufts University. She clawed her way through an undergraduate degree in the cloisters of Bryn Mawr, an all-women liberal arts college where Sappho would have felt very much at home.
Sappho 1
Deathless Aphrodite of the finely-painted throne,
wile-weaving daughter of Zeus, I pray you,
don’t overpower my heart with anguish and
burdens, Lady,
but come hither, if ever at another time
you heard my voice from afar
and heeded, leaving your father's
golden house-- you came
on yoked chariot, and the lovely swift
sparrows led you over the black earth
beating whirling wings down from heaven
through the middle air,
and suddenly they alighted. And you, blessed one,
with a smile on your immortal face
asked what I had suffered this time and why
again I called,
and what I most desired to happen to me in the
frenzy of my heart: "Who this time am I persuading
to lead you back into her affections? Who, O
Sappho, wrongs you?
But if now she flees you, soon she'll follow you;
if she won't accept gifts, then she will give them;
if she doesn't love you now, soon she will,
even against her will."
Come to me even now, and loose hardship
from my anxious mind, and bring to pass as many
things as my heart desires to happen. You yourself
be my ally in this battle.
Sappho 31
That man seems to me to be equal
to the gods, who sits facing you
and listens close by to the sweetness
of your voice
and the loveliness of your laugh, which--ay me!
flutters my heart in my breast.
For when I look upon you for a brief moment,
it's not possible for me to speak
a single word,
but my unwilling tongue breaks, and suddenly
a thin flame has run under my skin,
and I see nothing with my eyes, and hear
a thrumming noise,
and cold sweat takes hold of me, and a tremor
seizes all of me, and I am greener than grass,
and I seem to myself to be just short
of dying.
Sappho 16
Some say a troop of horses, some a host of foot-soldiers,
some a fleet of ships is the fairest thing on the dark earth,
but I say it is that one, whomever
someone loves.
And it is altogether easy to make this clear
to everyone, for Helen, greatly surpassing
humankind with her beauty, went
sailing off to Troy,
abandoning the best of all men;
and for her child or dear parents had no
thought at all, but [love] led her astray...
...
...lightly...
she has reminded me now of Anactoria
who is not here.
I would rather see her lovely walk
and the bright sparkle of her face
than the chariots of Lydia and full-armored
foot soldiers.
Sappho 81b
And you, Dike, wrap your mane with lovely garlands
plaiting shoots of anise with your tender hands.
For the blessed Graces look rather upon that which is well-
flowered, but turn away from the ungarlanded.
Sappho 111 *
Now raise on high the roof-beam --
Hymen!
Lift it up, carpenter-men!
Hymen!
The groom marches in like Ares,
Much greater than a great man.
* Hymen was the god of marriage.
Sappho 94
“Honestly, I wish I were dead.”
Sobbing many tears, she left me,
and said this to me:
“O, how terribly we have suffered!
Sappho, I leave you behind unwillingly.”
But I replied to her,
“Be glad and go, remembering me,
for you know how I used to pursue you.
But if not, I wish to remind you,
...
... and we used to enjoy lovely things.
For with many wreaths of violets
and roses and [crocuses?] you
... used to sit beside me,
and you draped around your
soft neck many woven garlands
of flowers which we had made,
and you were bathed in
much costly myrrh
fit for a queen...
and upon soft beds...
...tender...
you satisfied your desire
and there was no one... no
holy place no [time]
when we were apart
no grove...dance...
... sound ...
Sappho 976
The moon has set,
and the Pleides, it's
midnight, the hours
march on: I lie alone.