Sappho’s poetry has reached modern scholarship in a fragmentary form, although the critical authors of antiquity reported that Sappho had written volumes of works. It is true that “her texts, as we receive them, insist on the impossibility of recapturing the lost bod y.”1 As a matter of fact, this applies to most of the surviving parts of ancient lyric poetry, with the possible exception of Pindar’s more complete work. However, this fragmentary character presents Sappho’s poetry with an additional difficulty to the already attested complexity and ambiguity of her poetic art.
Over the centuries Sappho’s life and poetic work have been veiled with a range of ambiguous stories about her teaching and emotional involvement with a circle of women, her motherhood of a beautiful daughter Kleis, her ambivalent sexuality and the strength of her passion inspired by the legendary figure of Phaon, the ferryman on the island of Lesbos. What we know for certain is that Sappho belonged to a long-dominant aristocracy of Mytilene in the eastern Aegean world, struggling with internecine disputes within their class. Her family faced both the threat from the emerging lower classes and from “tyrants” disputing the aristocracy’s hegemony in the 7th century BC. This social framework seems to have spurred Sappho to create her own milieu of confident women challenging the dominant values of a culture mainly controlled by male attitudes.2
Despite the personal entourage that Sappho assembled in the society of Lesbos, she was not immune to the serious effects of political struggle and was finally forced into exile in Sicily for some time between 604–594.3 At that time Stesichorus, a contemporary of Sappho’s living in Himaera, was famous for mythological narrative poetry in lyric meters. Although Sappho may have been aware of his poetry and reflected his influence, she did not achieve fame in antiquity on the grounds of using mythological narratives in her poetry. Nevertheless, ancient sources mention her dealing with a substantial amount of mythical subject matter. Of this, only a little of her poetry dealing with a number of myths has survived and it is either fragmentary or only mentioned in passing in the remnants from ancient scholiasts.
Meanwhile, a very impressive story came to light with the discovery of a fragment with a mythological subject which seemed to refer to the myth of Eos and Tithonus. In 1922 a very badly damaged poem was found in an Oxyrhynchus papyrus of the 3rd century BC. This fragment had only line-endings, where the left-hand margin was missing. In 2004 a new text was recovered from Egyptian mummy cartonnage in the University of Köln, which included parts of three Sapphic poems. The second fragment was an almost complete form of the poem 58 already known from the Oxyrhynchus papyrus of the 3rd century BC.4 The two texts have been combined with the effect of obtaining an almost complete poem of Sappho concluding with a myth about the love affair between the goddess Eos (Dawn) and the mortal Tithonus.
The new find from the Archives of the University of Köln seems to offer a new perspective for viewing a compilation of three putative poems in the old poem 58. At the same time the new poem 58 adds new elements to existing knowledge about Sappho’s use of myth in her poetry. The new poem of Eos and Tithonus, when combined with the references by the scholiast to the lost poems of Selene and Endymion (fr.199) provide proof that Sappho was concerned with elaborating myths involving a number of deities and their relationships with legendary figures such as Eos and Tithonus, as well as Selene and Endymion, Aphrodite and Adonis or Aphrodite and Phaon (fr. 211a–c V).5 However, the predominance of female mythical figures like Eos, Aphrodite and Selene in extant and lost Sapphic poems, evokes a poetic intention set on conjuring up a constellation of bright deities conveying allegorical meanings about the complex system of emotions and perceptions of life defining Sappho’s notion of poetry.6
The following analysis pursues the aim of elaborating the idea that a number of Sapphic fragments convey the image of a poetry imbued with a depiction of light and brightness sparkling from luminous mythical figures such as Dawn, Selene, Aphrodite, and also Helen, Helios, and Hesperus. My purpose is to stress the point that in Sappho’s poetry the use of myth is not only economical (as Page probably suggested7) or “at a remove from the immediate” (as Kirkwood openly remarked8), but also strongly alludes to the cosmic phenomena constituting an entire allegory for Sappho’s ideal of life.
Aphrodite’s role is crucial in Sappho’s poetry: Her intervention seems to invest Sappho’s poetic ideal with connotations of various myths engendering a cosmic view of the deity. Aphrodite is present in poems 1 and 2 as the goddess surrounded with luxury and bright colors. In poem 1 Sappho calls for Aphrodite’s assistance9 and she implores the goddess to descend to earth and intervene to bring back to her the girl who fled away. It has been said that this poem primarily reflects the relationship between Sappho and Aphrodite, the goddess closest to her passion for love. Beyond that, in this poem we may notice an abundance of epithets like the elaborate-throned and guile-weaving Aphrodite, the fair and swift sparrows, the frenzied soul of Sappho and also the vivid contrast between the “golden house” of Zeus and the “black earth” into which Aphrodite descends to meet Sappho.10 The power of Sappho’s description is focused on the contrast of opposite effects like “black” and “golden,” and it seems that her concern is to emphasize an imagery of shining objects and brilliant places connected with Aphrodite’s presence, as it is also shown in poem 2. There, Aphrodite is once again summoned to come to a holy place described by Sappho as an earthly paradise shadowed by roses and blossoming with spring flowers, where Aphrodite herself is depicted pouring nectar into “golden cups.”11 As Kirkwood says, “here the fragrance, bloom, and brilliance of the grove expand and symbolize the spirit of the goddess and of the relationship between her and her worshipper,” in a way that reminds us of poems 1 and 16.12
In fr.16 Helen is chosen by Sappho as a mythical example to illustrate the power of love13 and she is praised by Sappho for her willingness to follow Paris. Helen resembles the Homeric heroine in the Iliad who followed Paris under the influence of Aphrodite,14 but in Sappho’s eyes she is also the “actant” in her own life, the pursuer of the thing she loves most.15 Fragment 16 serves as an allusion to Sappho’s passion for Anactoria with the story of Helen who deserted her husband and sailed to Troy. Helen’s radiant beauty is compared to that of Sappho’s beloved Anactoria. Moreover, it seems to accord with Sappho’s choice of divine exemplars of femininity with the active role they take in relation to mortal men.16
Then, with the statement “I would rather see Anactoria’s lovely walk and the bright sparkle of her face than the Lydians’ chariots and armed infantry,” the text of the poem makes a transition from the world of legend to Sappho’s contemporary world. Sappho’s desire for love is reflected in the lovely walk and the bright face of the companion she has lost. By comparing her choice with Helen’s choice for love, she admits that the radiance of Anactoria’s face would be a more beautiful thing to see than the brilliance of a Lydian army.
The radiant figure of Helen and the brilliance of Anactoria stands in contrast with the “dark earth” (γᾶν μέλαιναν) as the basis which hosts warriors, infantry and warships.17
In poem 96 a young woman who has departed to Lydia is said to look like Selene.18 The beginning and end of the poem are dominated by the figure of the absent girl who was devoted to Atthis before she left for Sardis. In the middle of the poem Sappho praises the absent girl’s beauty, comparing her with the radiance of the moon. A number of interpretations have been proposed to explain the meaning of the simile. The simile of the moon and moonlit nature standing for a woman’s beauty implies “the universality of that beauty of which Atthis’ beloved is a particular, contemporary and momentary fulfillment.”19 It has also been said that the nocturnal imagery with the full moon surrounding the woman carries connotations of death20 in which night is allegedly an allegory for death.21 A more recent view notices that “the moon per se has also been, historically, an archetypal symbol for women because of its monthly course” and as the simile culminates in a picture of dew shed on the flowers and plants, it might also allude to “a mythological connection of Moon and Dew as goddesses of fertility who combine to produce an intensely feminine image.”22 But the prominence of the simile of the moon seems also to stress the idea that Atthis’ absent girl “is envisioned as a goddess, casting a sudden, magical radiance” by possessing “the same kind of power to enchant as Aphrodite in fr. 2.”23
The moon is described as rosy-fingered, the Homeric epithet used to describe the rosy-fingered dawn. As Page explains “ ‘ ροδοδάκτυλος ‘ ηώς is an easily intelligible expression: the rising sun shoots rosy rays, or “fingers,” far across the sky; the moon does nothing of the kind.” It seems that Sappho attempts to depict an image of the moon spreading a red color at sunset, thus producing a shade of light which “is transferred from the clear and brilliant to the dim and confused.”24
In the new poem 58 Sappho addresses her young companions as “children” (παῖδες) while she is treating them to a vivid description of the symptoms of old age that she is experiencing. Despite her jealous determination to stay young, she confesses that there is nothing she can do to stay the ravages of time. This universal truth is illustrated with a mythical example that Sappho brings to the end of her poem. The story of Tithonus and Dawn is one that portrays the inevitability of old age and the sorrows that it brings to the lives of mortals. Briefly, the myth runs as follows: Dawn falls in love with the mortal hero Tithonus. She asks her father Zeus to grant him immortality but forgets to ask also for eternal youth. So Tithonus grows ever older and feebler but he will never die. At the end of the poem the emphasis rests on the Dawngoddess, who remains young and immortal, while gray age seizes Tithonus“husband of immortal wife” (l. 12 trans. by West or “though his consort cannot die” trans. by Janko).25
In this poem Sappho resembles the ageing Tithonus, but the situation here is more complex. Sappho reverses the genders in the myth, comparing herself to Tithonus. As far as the mythological figure of Dawn is concerned the comparison can be transferred to the group of young addressees who remain unspecified as to their gender as they are called παῖδες. Sappho, indeed, could aim at a wider public of contemporaries who were familiar with the myth and pleased to receive a song that was “as good to a female as to a male audience.”26
However, the fragment 58 of the 1922 Oxyrhynchus papyrus probably concluded with two last lines of an obscure meaning.27 In a more recent account of these lines the terms ἔρως ἀελίω are brought together in the context of the mythological example of Tithonus’ fate.28 There the meaning continues as follows: Sappho feels lucky to be granted something λαμπρόν and καλόν in her life, and this seems to be the ἔρως ἀελίω, that is “love of the sun.” Λα- μπρόν is a word used by Sappho in fr. 16 in the verse κἀμάρυχμα λάμπρóν ἴδην προσώπω, and as it is combined with the word ἀμάρυχμα the impression is strong enough to suggest a swift and bright eye.29 Ιn this case, it seems that the meaning of λαμπρόν is expanded to Sappho’s idea about life and art.
Matters seem to come together as we think of Sappho’s choices of love: In mythical terms the expression ἔρως ἀελίω might allude to the love of Dawn for Tithonus. Dawn longed for an eternal love that she found in the face of Tithonus. However, Tithonus turns out to be the incarnation of inexorabe old age which becomes an unbearable suffering for Dawn. On the other hand, in the context of Sappho’s poetry ἔρως ἀελίω cannot be a longing for eternal youth or eternal life. Sappho knows very well that “one cannot become young again” (v. 18, in the 1922 papyrus, v. 8 in the new poem 58). She pursues this thought, making the transition to the legend and the contrast that is provided by the example of Tithonus: “Tithonus himself could not avoid old age, though he married an immortal.”30 Sappho herself experiences old age in contrast to her companions who remain young as long as the circle is renewed with new pupils. It seems that Sappho’s love of the sun must be regarded as an allegory for the strong desire she feels for life and presumably the lovable youth of her companions. In this sense, the light of the sun in the example of Dawn’s love for Tithonus conveys an allusion to the brightness and beauty in Sappho’s ideal of life.
However, in the two last lines of poem 58 of the Oxyrynchus papyrus Sappho appears to distinguish her position from that of the other people by saying that she prefers ἀβροσύνη, instead of contemplating the beauty of youth. This is a word that Sappho likes to use in different contexts, e.g., in fr. 2 we saw that Aphrodite, addressed as Cypris, is summoned by the poetess to come and gracefully (ἄβρως) pour nectar into the golden cups of a festive celebration. In a fragment of dialogue (fr. 140a) the delicate Adonis (ἄβρος Ἄδωνις) is dead and a group of women ask Aphrodite Κυθέρηα how to start the lament.31 Therefore, the meaning of the word ἀβροσύνη is combined with a sense of grace, delicacy and gentleness, as qualities that contribute to the image of Aphrodite (and Adonis) in festive opportunities. These words could also be suggestive of Sappho’s esthetic concept of life, imbued with a light coming from her love of the sun, her love of ἀβροσύνη and her accordance with Aphrodite’s luminous intervention.32
It is possible that in verses preceding the coda in poem 58 the words of Sappho perhaps alluded to Phaon as an old man, compared with Tithonus.33 It appears that Phaon was an old ferryman (πορθμεὺς) who was transformed into a beautiful youth by Aphrodite herself. The goddess fell in love with this handsome Phaon and hid him in a head of lettuce. Adonis, too, was hidden in a head of lettuce by Aphrodite (fr. 211) as, similarly, Phaethon was also hidden by Aphrodite.34 In their human shape, the three mythical figures are mortals and die, despite the effort of the goddess to preserve them, but in their symbolic image they could be allegories of a cosmic view,35 especially Phaethon and Phaon, whose very names allude to someone who shines and who are invested with a solar symbolism according to which their position follows the movement of the cosmic stars. So Phaethon, Phaon and Adonis shared the love of Aphrodite and the symbolism of a luminous existence seems to approximate them to solar stars. Similarly, Aphrodite is said to plunge into the sea of Leukas out of love for Phaon, like the planet Venus follows the movement of the Evening Star, Hesperus, who sets after the sunset. This cosmic image recalls Sappho’s Hesperus in fr. 104, the nuptial star that gathers in the sunset what the Dawn scattered thoughout the day.
Like Aphrodite, Sappho too is said to have put an end to her life by throwing herself into the sea of Leucas (cf. Campbell, test. 3 Suda Σ108).36 Sappho’s allegorical meaning of her alleged leap from the White Rock for the sake of a passion, though it stands at the periphery of the legend, provides an explanation for her poetic ideal as it is presented in fr. 1: Sappho is a huntress of love. She is also a lover of the sun. In the sunset she pursues the sun, the morning after she will be pursued by the sun. In this respect, her choice of life is one that resembles the circle of the cosmic Aphrodite. Aphrodite plunges from the White Rock out of love for Phaon, and, presumably, Sappho does the same out of love for Phaon too.37
Tithonus and Phaon are all allegories of human desires for love and life that radiates light from their contact with luminous goddesses like Dawn and Aphrodite. A similar radiance is emitted by the memory of Sappho’s beloved companions who resemble the brightness of physical phenomena and semi-divine figures like Helen. Sappho’s life appears to spell out the same spirit of luminosity which is reflected in the “solar” dimension of her poetry. In her reception of the poetic tradition, Sappho’s artistry seems to be projected into a mythological ideal of life that produces poetical stories with goddesses of light and brilliant mortals who inspire her with “strong emotions enlarged by myth or simile or description.”38 By a very selective process, Sappho reconstructs the most subtle elements of the traditional myths so as to invest the “concourse of emotions”39 that invade her with mythical allegories aimed at producing an aesthetic poetical result straddling different worlds: epic tradition and individualized poetry, male-female ideals of life, challenge to the aristocratic classes and political upheavals, rivalry among different artistic environments such as Alcaeus, Alcman, Stesichorus or other male and female poets.
To conclude: In fr. 56 referred to by Chrysippus, Sappho declares a personal thought that combines the light of the sun (φάος ἀλίω) with σοφία: “I do not imagine that any girl who has looked on the light of the sun will have such skill at any time in the future.”40 After all, Sappho remains an enigmatic poetess who still challenges the reader through the open textured nature of her poetry and invites further attempts to enlighten her obscure meanings.
1. See Du Bois, Sappho is Burning, (1995), 29. Also pp. 31–38 for the “aesthetics of the fragment.”
2. However, this should not be the main reason for judging her poetic inspiration. Sappho developed a subtle artistry which was not only “an outpouring of feelings” but mainly “a high degree of emotional intensity” bound “in a formal pattern.” See Kirkwood, Early Greek Monody: The History of a Poetic Type, (1974), 131. Cf. also the meaning of the “pothos’ in Du Bois, Sappho Is Burning, (1995), 29.
3. Cicero records the presence of a statue of Sappho in the marketplace of Syracuse in Sicily (Cicero, Verres, 2.4.125–127, cf. also Du Bois, Sappho Is Burning, (1995), 15.
4. See West, ‘The New Sappho,’ ZPE, 151, (2005): 1–9.
5. Legendary figures from the mythical tradition appear in fragments for which there is no clear knowledge of how Sappho used the myths referred to, though, as it is acknowledged by Kirkwood, Early Greek Monody: The History of a Poetic Type,(1974), 146–7, “this kind of composition was not Sappho’s best.” Page (Sappho and Alcaeus, (1975), 130) remarks that “there is no evidence whether Sappho composed these songs with the mythological narrative for presentation at cult or ceremony or as a literary exercise to illustrate in brief her own allusions and her companions’ emotions and adventures.”
6. The kind of relationships between a strong female goddess and a weaker mortal have been interpreted as a special feature in Sappho’s artistic awareness of women because when they were singing about these relationships or listened to these songs, they were “encouraged to identify themselves with the goddesses.” See Lardinois, Making Silence Speak, (2001), 78 and n.18.
7. See Page, Sappho and Alcaeus, (1979), 129–130.
8. Kirkwood, Early Greek Monody: The History of a Poetic Type, (1974), 149.
9. Aphrodite is called by different names: by the actual name Ἀφροδίτα (in fr. 1, 33, 40, 22, 134), by the name Κύπρις (in fr. 5, 15b, 35, 65, 2), by the name Κυ- προγένηα (22, 134) and by the name Κυθέρηα (in the fragment of dialogue 140a). Indeed, Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus, a deity closer to the one that features in Homer’s Iliad, with the capacity to combine guile with sweet smiles. But also she is a playful goddess who inspires Sappho’s life with a constant hunt for love (cf. poems 1, 2).
10. Kirkwood, Early Greek Monody: The History of a Poetic Type, (1974), 111 and 261, n. 49: “In Sappho’s use of epithets for nature, there is little to suggest a strong, direct interest in the qualities of nature, such as in some of Alcaeus’ poetry.” Kirkwood continues that “Sappho is content to call the earth black, as a rule, and when she becomes more venturesome as in rosy-armed dawn [βροδόπαχυς Αὔως 58], goldensandaled dawn [χρυσοπέδιλλος Αὔως 103//123, and rosy-fingered moon [βροδοδάκτυ- λος σελάννα 96], the force of the epithets is more in their Homeric echoes than in their descriptive power.” Du Bois, Sappho is Burning, (1995), 27 points out that Sappho’s poems in their fragmentary status “confront the reader with an almost hallucinatory luminosity … because they are signs of the breaking apart of the Homeric poetic world.”
11. Johnson, Sappho, (2007), 51: This pictorial description reaches “a climax of the luxuriance and color of the sanctuary’ by means of ‘a series of images that play on the senses.”
12. Kirkwood, Early Greek Monody: The History of a Poetic Type, (1974), 115–6.
13. In mythical terms Helen herself, as a semi-divine figure, is associated with a cult practiced by a group of priestesses in Sparta called Leukippides (i.e., bright horses, Pausanias 3.16.1). She also functions as a dawn-goddess, almost identical with the dawn-goddess Aotis in Alcman, PMG 1.87. See Nagy, ‘Phaethon, Sappho’s Phaon, and the White Rock of Leukas,’ (1992), 256 and n. 125 for a common cult topic of Helen Leukippides and Dawn with radiant horses as a sacred symbol. 14. See Johnson, Sappho, (2007), 71 and n.
14 for Helen in Book 3 of the Iliad.
15. Du Bois, ‘Sappho and Helen,’ in Greene, Reading Sappho, (1996a), 86–87.
16. Cf. Williamson, Sappho’s Immortal Daughters, (1995), 169.
17. Cp. the meaning of the words κάλλιστον and κάλλος. See Du Bois, ‘Sappho and Helen’ in Greene, Reading Sappho, (1996a) 80–81. Similar descriptions of young,marriageable women occur in Hesiod’s Catalogue of Women, cf. Lardinois, Making Silence Speak, (2001), 83 and n. 35
18. Lardinois, Making Silence Speak, (2001), 79. In a more simple personal poetry Sappho writes a poem for her daughter Cleis who looks like “golden flowers” (fr. 132).
19. Kirkwood, Early Greek Monody: The History of a Poetic Type, (1974), 119 and 138, where he says that “the long intervening simile functions as the ‘myth’ of this poem, a ‘myth’ element that expands … beyond the purely immediate.”
20. Lardinois, Making Silence Speak, (2001), 87, where he contends that the Lydian woman in 96 is an example for the chorus that consists of Atthis’ companions, in a similar way as Helen of Troy in fr. 16 exists as a paradigm for the speaker.
21. The image of the moon and the night is taken to symbolize the passing of time, though this interpretation is not based on textual evidence. Cf. Johnson, Sappho, (2007), 88–89.
22. See Johnson, Sappho, (2007), 89 who compares this fragment with Alcman’s fr. 57 where the goddess of dew Herse is the offspring of the Moon and Zeus.
23. Williamson, Sappho’s Immortal Daughters, (1995), 152.
24. Cf. Page, Sappho and Alcaeus, (1979), 90, n. 8 for the substitution of σελάννα for μήνα. Two other fragments present a night scene: It is the fr. 34 (//30) with the moon’s light as an allegory for a girl who outshone her companions in beauty and could be seen as an analogy for human beauty, just as the splendid garden in poem 2 is a symbol of Aphrodite’s holy radiance. The second one is fr. 94 Diehl, where Sappho uses a night scene to suggest loneliness and disappointment, possibly at the loss of a beloved person. But there are grounds for thinking that fr. 94 is closer in form to poem 96, where the simile of the moon symbolizes the beauty of an absent girl. Cf. Kirkwood, Early Greek Monody: The History of a Poetic Type, (1974), 133–135. Sappho works into other fragments the power of the moon, like, among several fragments suggesting worship at night, e.g., fr. 154 with the rising of the moon and a gathering of possibly female celebrants. See Williamson, Sappho’s Immortal Daughters, (1995), 151.
25. Before Sappho, the tale of Tithonus and Dawn appears in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 5.218–238 whereby the goddess tries to convince her lover Anchises that he cannot achieve immortality. There the myth concludes with Aphrodite enclosing Tithonus in a chamber with shining doors (θύρας δ’ἐπέθηκε φαεινὰς 236) where he chatters and crawls endlessly without relief from the burdens of an immortal old age.
26. Janko, ‘Sappho Revisited’ TLS, (2005), argues that “an ambiguously gendered poem could have had a wider appeal to performers and audiences of either or both sexes.”
27. The last two lines are transmitted by Athenaeus 15. 687a–b who cites that Clearchus includes two verses by Sappho in his book Περὶ βὶων. 28. Marzullo, Philologus 138.2 (1994): 189–193.
29. See Page, Sappho and Alcaeus, (1979), 54, n. 18 for the word ἀμάρυχμα that means more than the brightness of the eye, possibly used also of a rapid movement. 30. See Page, Sappho and Alcaeus, (1979), 130, n. 1 for line 18, and 21 in the 58 papyrus poem.
31. See Lardinois, Making Silence Speak, (2001), 77 and n. 7, for a song about Adonis which seems to be part of a public celebration of Adonia, a typical women’s festival. Apart from 140a, in fr. 168 remains a mournful address for Adonis: “o that Adonis.”
32. Liberman, ‘A propos du fragment 58 Lobel-Page, Voigt de Sappho,’ (1995) 46, and n. 8 who says that in the poem 58 the word probably defines the esthetic and moral concept of an aristocratic nature whose life is torn under particular social and political restrictions in the Lesbos of Pittacus’ time. See also Nagy, ‘Phaethon, Sappho’s Phaon, and the White Rock of Leukas,’ (1992), 261 who says that “the last two verses, proclaiming Sappho’s ‘lust of the sun,’ amount to a personal and artistic manifesto.”
33. So Willamowitz quoted by Nagy, ‘Phaethon, Sappho’s Phaon, and the White Rock of Leukas,’ (1992), 228, who infers that there must have existed a similar theme, which has not survived, in the poetry of Sappho. Within the framework of this theme, the female speaker must have pictured herself as driven by love for a certain Phaon, or at least so it was understood by the time New Comedy flourished.
34. Phaethon’s story has survived in a wealth of testimony, like the Hesiodic Theogony 987ff, in Iliad XI 735 as the one who shines like Hyperion, both ornamental epithets of Helios, and also in the tragedy Phaethon by Euripides. In mythical terms Phaon is confused with Phaethon as well as with Adonis. In Apollodorus (3.14.3) we are told of a myth according to which Phaethon is son of Tithonus and Ηώς. Just as Phaethon was son of ’Hώς, perhaps Phaon was son of the Lesbian cognate Αὔως, mentioned in the same poem 58.19. Johnson (2007), 144–5 says that in the mythical narratives Adonis too is confused with Phaon both appearing in a cult ritual in Mytilene, “with Phaon most likely being part of a festival involving Aphrodite that was unique in Lesbos.” Cf. n. 31 above. Sappho is known to have sung of both Adonis and Phaon, which may be a reason to explain the legend of her love for Phaon the ferryman and her subsequent suicidal leap from the Leukas rock. Thus Sappho seems to construct a mythological type of songs that explore the idea of the human contact with the divine, which, besides their cultic relevance, are a testimony to the contrast between divine and human. And these themes coalesce in poem 58, in which a human contact with the divine might symbolize for Sappho not a glimpse of erotic euphoria, but also immortality.
35. Nagy, ‘Phaethon, Sappho’s Phaon, and the White Rock of Leukas,’ (1992), 255. The three coincident myths allude to the themes of concealment and preservation as allegories of what is called by G. Nagy “a solar behavior.”
36. In fr. 258 K by Menander Sappho spoke of herself as diving from the White Rock in Leukas Cape crazed with love for Phaon, but there is no extant fragment by Sappho referring to the myth of Phaon. Strabo (Campbell test. Str. 23, 10. 2.9.) disclaims Menander’s version about Sappho’s being the first to take the plunge at Leukas. See Nagy, ‘Phaethon, Sappho’s Phaon, and the White Rock of Leukas,’ (1992), 230.
37. Nagy, ‘Phaethon, Sappho’s Phaon, and the White Rock of Leukas,’ (1992), 259. “By diving from the White Rock, Sappho does what Aphrodite does in the form of Evening Star, diving after the sunken Sun in order to retrieve him, another morning, in the form of Morning Star. If we imagine her pursuing the Sun the night before, she will be pursued in turn the morning after.”
38. Kirkwood, Early Greek Monody: The History of a Poetic Type, (1974), 148.
39. [Longinus], On Sublimity 10.1–3.
40. Campbell test. 56, with σοφίαν probably meaning poetic skill.
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