Contents (Sections):
Ancient Greek Lyric Poetry
Partheneion
Alcman
Alcman: Fragment 1
Alcman: Fragment 3
The Sixteen Women
Sappho
Sappho 1
Sappho 94 & 96
Sappho 31
Ancient Greek Lyric Poetry
Ancient Greek lyric poetry is conventionally divided into two categories: choral and monodic or solo.
Choral lyric was performed by a choir which sang and danced in a ritual and/or competitive context.
The major types of choral poetry were:
dithyramb (addressed to the god Dionysus),
prosodion (processional song),
partheneion (maiden song),
thrênos (dirge),
hymenaion (wedding-song),
enkomion (song of praise), and
epinikion (victory-ode).
In this course, we read examples of the partheneion (Alcman), hymenaion (Sappho), and epinikion (Pindar).
Monodic or solo lyric was sung to the lyre on a wide variety of topics, including love, war, politics and invective.
In this course we read lyric poetry by Sappho and Alcaeus.
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Partheneion
The partheneion ("maiden-song") was a choral song sung by maidens (parthenoi) in honor of other young maidens.
The number of the female chorus as represented on the numerous vase-paintings on which it appears varies between two and seventeen (most commonly, three, four, six, and seven).
In the Alcman fragment there are ten, and on a red-figure vase of the late archaic period, there are eleven total (including the musician) Link here to see a transcript of one side of the vase.
On some vases, like the one just cited, a chorus-leader or choregus appears; sometimes she is identical with the musician, but other times both a musician and a choregus are shown.
Link here to an example of how the music and singing of Alcman might have sounded. Manuscripts with musical notation (although not of this fragent) survive from antiquity, and musicologists have used these and other sources to reconstruct the sound of ancient Greek music. This is Alcman fragment 26 as reconstructed by Petros Tabouris, with the Greek transliterated on one side and a translation alongside.
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Alcman
Alkman's songs were written in Sparta about 600 bce for choirs of young women who performed at festivals.
Alkman was originally from Sardis, the capital of the kingdom of Lydia; he may be describing himself at the start of one of his 'Maiden-songs' (fr. 16):
No countryman was he, not
clumsy, not one of the uncultured,
no man from Thessaly [a rustic area of Greece],
no Erysichean, not a shepherd,
But one from lofty Sardis.
Sardis was capital of the Lydian kingdom in Asia Minor; Alkman's poetry reflects a society of high culture open to eastern influences and fascinated by the exotic; he was interested in cosmogony and in stories from the distant Black Sea, and delights in foreign names and objects. Despite their role in public performance, his poems are intimate and full of personal references -- to his own skill, his relations with the dancers and theirs with each other; his touch is lighter and more playful even than Sappho's. His dancers have aristocratic names, Agido ('leader'), Astumeloisa ('favorite of the city'), Hagesichora ('leader of the dance'); some of them are known to have been related to royal houses. Their attributes are those of an aristocracy; they move like racehorses, they are compared with precious metals, their hair is long and flowing.
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Alcman: Fragment 1
The rite mentioned in the poem is probably concerned with the passage from girlhood to woman's status, and the occasion is the presentation of a new robe (or, possibly, a plough) to Artemis Orthia ("Upright").
The excavations at the shrine of Artemis Orthia have shown that eastern and other objects such as ivories, scarabs and amber beads were being imported from about 700 bce.
The myth at the beginning of the poem has to do with the early, mythological kings of Sparta:
- Oebalus became king of Lacedaemon and married Gorgophone. Their sons were: Tyndareus (father of Helen), Icarius (father of Penelope), and Hippocoon. These sons disputed for the kingdom, and Hippocoon expelled Tyndareus and Icarius and became king of the Lacedaemonians.
- At this time, Heracles was campaigning in the Peloponnese. Among his other exploits, he attacked Pylos and killed its ruler Neleus and his sons except for Nestor. He then marched against Lacedaemon, because (1) the Lacedaemonians had supported the Pylians, and (2) because the sons of Hippocoon had previously killed Oeonus, a cousin of Heracles, after Oeonus killed their dog when it attacked him, and (3) because Hippocoon had refused to purify him for the murder of Iphitus, who was also a guest-friend of Odysseus.
- Heracles killed Hippocoon and his sons and restored the kingdom of Sparta to Tyndareus. This legendary battle (between Heracles and Hippocoon and his sons) is the myth referenced in the first lines of Alcman's poem. The names mentioned there are those of the sons of Hippocoon, whose names in Apollodorus are: Dorycleus, Scaeus, Enarophorus, Eutiches, Bucolus, Lycaethus, Tebrus, Hippothous, Eurytus, Hippocorystes, Alcinus, and Alcon. (The underlined names are those that appear in the fragmentary opening lines of Alcman's poem.)
- Restored to the throne, Tyndareus married Leda and had children by her: the Diocouri (Castor and Pollux), Clytaemnestra, Helen, Timandra, Phylonoe, and Phoebe. During his rule, Helen was abducted by Theseus, and later (when Helen had been brought back) many kings and princes of Hellas came to Sparta as suitors of Helen. On this occasion, The Oath of Tyndareus was exacted from the suitors. Tyndareus gave Penelope to Odysseus, and Helen to Menelaus. Clytaemnestra married first Tantalus, and after him King Agamemnon of Mycenae, brother of Menelaus. When Tyndareus died, he bequeathed the kingdom of Sparta to his son-in-law Menelaus.
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Alcman: Fragment 3
Kinyras - a legendary king of Cyprus, an island famous for the incense and perfume it produced.
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The Sixteen Women
We can get some idea of the kinds of events for which Alcman's poems were written from Pausanias' account, in his geography of Elis, of the Heraea held at Olympia. Olympia was the site of the Olympic Games held every four year in honor of Zeus Olympias, in the region of Elis, on the Alpheios River.
The temple to Hera at the site was one of its most famous monuments, and it is the site today where the Olympic flame is lit for the modern games.
Pausanias (5.16) describes the rite:
"[2] Every fourth year there is woven for Hera a robe by the Sixteen women, and the same also hold games called Heraea. The games consist of foot-races for maidens. These are not all of the same age. The first to run are the youngest; after them come the next in age, and the last to run are the oldest of the maidens. They run in the following way: [3] their hair hangs down, a tunic reaches to a little above the knee, and they bare the right shoulder as far as the breast. These too have the Olympic stadium reserved for their games, but the course of the stadium is shortened for them by about one-sixth of its length. To the winning maidens they give crowns of olive and a portion of the cow sacrificed to Hera. They may also dedicate statues with their names inscribed upon them. Those who administer to the Sixteen are, like the presidents of the games, married women."
And he adds, in another place (6.24.10), "There is also in the market-place a building for the women called the Sixteen, where they weave the robe for Hera."
By this statment Pausanias means that, in the public space of the polis, the "agora," which is sometimes regarded as exclusive to the men of the polis, there was a building where the chosen women of the polis carried out their duties. Among other sights and structures that Pausanias mentions in the agora of Elis there were places for training horses, altars to various gods, statues of gods and heroes, tombs of heroes, and the Hellanodikaion, a building where the judges (Hellanodikai) of the Olympic games lived for the ten months preceding the festival.
Pausanias gives two aitiologies for the Heraea:
"[4] The games of the maidens too are traced back to ancient times; they say that, out of gratitude to Hera for her marriage with Pelops, Hippodameia assembled the Sixteen Women, and with them inaugurated the Heraea. They relate too that a victory was won by Chloris, the only surviving daughter of the house of Amphion, though with her they say survived one of her brothers."
"[5] Besides the account already given they tell another story about the Sixteen Women as follows. Damophon, it is said, when tyrant of Pisa did much grievous harm to the Eleans. But when he died, since the people of Pisa refused to participate as a people in their tyrant's sins, and the Eleans too became quite ready to lay aside their grievances, they chose a woman from each of the sixteen cities of Elis still inhabited at that time to settle their differences, this woman to be the oldest, the most noble, and the most esteemed of all the women. [6] The cities from which they chose the women were Elis,...The women from these cities made peace between Pisa and Elis. Later on they were entrusted with the management of the Heraean games, and with the weaving of the robe for Hera. The Sixteen Women also arrange two choral dances, one called that of Physcoa and the other that of Hippodameia. This Physcoa they say came from Elis in the Hollow, and the name of the parish where she lived was Orthia. [7] She mated they say with Dionysus, and bore him a son called Narcaeus. When he grew up he made war against the neighboring folk, and rose to great power, setting up moreover a sanctuary of Athena surnamed Narcaea. They say too that Narcaeus and Physcoa were the first to pay worship to Dionysus. So various honors are paid to Physcoa, especially that of the choral dance, named after her and managed by the Sixteen Women. The Eleans still adhere to the other ancient customs, even though some of the cities have been destroyed. For they are now divided into eight tribes, and they choose two women from each. [8] Whatever ritual it is the duty of either the Sixteen Women or the Elean judges (Hellanodikai) to perform, they do not perform before they have purified themselves with a pig meet for purification and with water. Their purification takes place at the spring Piera. You reach this spring as you go along the flat road from Olympia to Elis."
What do you think of these two explanations? What are the principal differences between them? What do they tell you about the role and status of women in Sparta?
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Sappho
Sappho lived and sang in the polis of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos from around 620-550 bce.
Sappho is an anomaly and an enigma. As the sole female author to be represented by a substantial body of surviving works, she has attracted much scholarly attention. There is little agreement, however, regarding the occasion or significance of those works. The first thing to note is the very problem of their existence. In a society where women were accorded so meager a public role, a female poet deserves remark. This is even more true when we consider that poetry in ancient Greece survived and was disseminated largely in oral form, through repeated performance, and not through writing: poems became known by being heard at public, or semi-public, occasions. In Athenian society the only such occasions open to women were the relatively few religious festivals (such as the Thesmophoria) that were reserved solely for women. How poems composed for such gatherings might come to be disseminated, written down, and cited by later male authors is uncertain. Moreover, not all of Sappho's fragments have a ritual cast to them, although they clearly represent a world dominated by women. While some of her fragments have a conventional subject matter (e.g., one fragment concerning her brother), many of them are addressed by the poet in the first person to other women, often in a highly personal, erotically charged tone (e.g., frg. 2). The assumption was made in antiquity that these poems indicated a society where women openly displayed their desire for other women -- that the women of Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos, were "Lesbians" in the modern sense. The 19th century, which venerated Sappho's poetry, found this notion abhorrent and developed the view that Sappho was the head-mistress of the Greek equivalent of a girls' boarding school (a number of the fragments present the poet's farewells to women who are departing). Various theories hold the field today, but the most convincing is that Sappho's poems were composed for performance at aristocratic banquets of the type associated, among men, with symposia.
With all poets, however, it is important to keep in mind that the first-person poetic voice (the "I") might represent the assumption of a persona rather than, as used to be assumed especially of Sappho, the spontaneous outpouring of personal emotion.
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Sappho 1
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a literary critic of the first century B.C., quotes this poem in his treatise "On Literary Composition" (173-79) as an example of what he calls the "polished and exuberant" style. It is the only one of Sappho's poems to have survived in its entirety; it may have stood as the first poem in the first book of the Alexandrian edition. In formal terms it is a prayer (of the kletic type, i.e., one that "calls" or "summons" a deity to come to the speaker's assistance), and most of the standard elements of the prayer are present: (a) an invocation (1-2), including such conventional elements as genealogy and honorific epithets; (b) an initial statement of the request (3 5); (c) a lengthy "reminder" of previous assistance rendered by the goddess (5-24); and (d) a second and fuller statement of the request (25-28).
Link here to a reconstruction by Ioannidis Nikolaos of the sound of the first few lines of the hymn.
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Sappho 94 & 96
The temporal scheme in fragment 94 is a complex one, involving three distinct stages linked (implicitly or explicitly) by memory: (1) the present moment in which Sappho "wishes she were dead" as she remembers (2) the earlier time when the young woman was going away and she tried to comfort her by recalling (3) the still earlier times of happiness that they shared. It should be noted, however, that some scholars attribute the first line not to Sappho herself but to the young woman whose past departure Sappho is describing (ancient Greek texts used no quotation marks).
Fragment 96 is addressed to a young woman named Atthis, whom Sappho wishes to console by assuring her that she has not been forgotten by an absent friend, a young woman who is now living in Lydia. Atthis is mentioned in fragments 49 and 131 as well.
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Sappho 31
Quoted in Ch. 10 of On the Sublime, a work of literary criticism that probably dates from the first century A.D. The author of this work (traditionally known as Longinus) remarks that Sappho "wants to display not a single emotion, but a whole complex of emotions. Such things are what happens to all lovers, but it is in selecting the most important of them and then arranging them into a single whole that she demonstrates her excellence." The implied situation in the poem, the identity of "that man" and his relation to the young woman addressed as "you," and the exact nature of the speaker's "complex of emotions" have all been matters of extensive scholarly debate. Although its text and meaning are uncertain, the inclusion of the last line in Longinus' quotation seems to indicate that the poem was not complete in four stanzas (as otherwise might be surmised on formal grounds).
Listen to a rendition of Sappho fragment 31 by Paula Saffire at Butler University, who makes no attempt to reproduce the sounds of ancient Greek music, but instead sings in Sapphic meter to her own compositions in a "performance lecture" context.
Link here to Sappho 31 or to Saffire's song page.
Sappho and Catullus
The Roman poet Catullus wrote love poems and addressed many of them to his mistress Lesbia. In one, he imitated Sappho fragment 31, using the same meter as Sappho, but adapting her language and situation to his own poetic needs. Here are Catullus' poem and a translation by Rudy Negenborn. How does it compare, in your view, with Sappho's poem? How does it affect or influence your reading of Sappho's fragment?
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Ille mi par esse deo videtur, ille, si fas est, superare divos, qui sedens adversus identidem te spectat et audit dulce ridentem, misero quod omnis eripit sensus mihi: nam simul te, Lesbia, aspexi, nihil est super mi vocis in ore, lingua sed torpet, tenuis sub artus flamma demanat, sonitu suopte tintinant aures, gemina et teguntur lumina nocte. Otium, Catulle, tibi molestum est: otio exsultas nimiumque gestis: otium et reges prius et beatas perdidit urbes. |
That man seems to me to be equal to a god, That man, if it is right to say, seems to surpass the gods, who sitting opposite to you repeatedly looks at you and hears your sweet laughter, something which robs miserable me of all feelings: for as soon as I look at you, Lesbia, no voice remains in my mouth. But the tongue is paralyzed, a fine fire spreads down through my limbs, the ears ring with their very own sound, both my eyes are veiled in darkness. Idleness, Catullus, is your trouble; idleness is what delights you and moves you to passion; idleness has proved ere now the ruin of kings and prosperous cities. |
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