Analyzing Sappho
We are going to be doing something a bit different today. First, we’re going to be talking about poetry. I know, this might seem out of the blue, but the Classics, as I discussed in my first post, encompass a wide range of subjects. It’s essentially ancient anthropology, which includes studying the art and literature of the Greeks and the Romans. I haven’t done that, mostly because I’ve gone on a bit of a tangent about the fall of Rome, so I’ve decided to steer clear of history for a bit. That’s right, I’m going to be ignoring, just for a short time, the very thing we’re supposed to know so we don’t repeat. But I think if anything is worthy, it’s art.
And things are going to be different because we’re going to be discussing a woman of antiquity: Sappho. Specifically, I’m going to analyze one of her more famous poems. I realized that I haven’t talked about women at all, since ancient Rome and Greece were patriarchal societies to say the least. Now, when most people think of ancient women, they probably go to Cleopatra. But I didn’t want to write about Cleopatra, I wanted to write about someone that people might not have heard of.
Side note: This isn’t to say that I couldn’t write about Cleopatra. She was Greek, though she ruled Egypt, and was heavily involved with the Roman Empire. We can’t exactly talk about Caesar and Antony without mentioning Cleopatra. I’ll certainly do a post on Cleopatra in the future, probably an “Ancient Titans” post. If you want to see that, then leave a comment saying so.
Now, for the big reveal: what poem did I choose? I’ll admit, before this, I had only read a couple of lines from Sappho in a class in college, and that wasn’t from a book; it was from a presentation. Not knowing what poems were extant, or even if any of her poems survived in full, I turned to the Internet. After poking around and making sure that I was reading a poem from Sappho and not someone with the pen name of Sappho, I’m sure there were many Lucius Corenlius Priscus over the centuries, I decided on this poem, well, it’s a fragment. Still, it’s a part of a poem.
When you lie dead, no one will remember you
For you have no share in the Muses’ roses.
No, flitting aimlessly about,
You will wildly roam,
a shade amidst the shadowy dead.
I know, it’s not what you typically think of when Sappho is mentioned, but she wrote it nonetheless. And that’s precisely what drew me to it. There’s no mention of Aphrodite, desire, or love. It’s different, and I believe that because it’s divergent from what Sapho typically wrote about, it deserves to be examined.
I have to say, since I finished rereading Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations somewhat recently, that this fragment feels stoic, something that you wouldn’t typically associate with Sappho. We don’t know what the whole poem was, but this fragment is about death and deals with being an artist. Sappho essentially argues that no artist can match the muses (no share in the Muses’ rose), and that they will ultimately die (a shade amidst the shadowy dead).
The fragment is about Sappho believing that death is the end of creativity. The Muses are immortal, so they will be able to create forever. But the mortal poet has a limit, and that’s death. Sappho is coming to terms with her mortality and is realizing that when she dies, it will be the end of her poetry, considering that we all are exposed to afterlives that are less gloomy, such as heaven in the Abrahamic traditions.
However, beyond Elysium, which was thought to be reserved for heroes, the ancient Greek afterlife was depressing. We see this in Homer, where Odysseus goes to the underworld, and the souls of the dead are just roaming around aimlessly, which is probably what Sappho is alluding to by saying she will be a roaming shadow when she dies. For these souls to speak with Odysseus, they need to be offered blood, and only then do they take on personalities and become recognizably human.
With this in mind, understandably, Sappho doesn’t believe that she’ll be able to compose poetry from the afterlife because that’s not the type of afterlife that was believed in. There’s the notion that life in the ancient world was short, bloody, and violent, but Sappho reminds us that the afterlife wasn’t too pleasant either.
But, getting back to the beginning of the poem, we see Sappho say that no one will remember her. It’s ironic, because here I am, a man two thousand years into the future, thousands of miles from her native Lesbos, using a piece of technology that the people of her time could only dream about, writing something about her.
The movie Troy (which I still refuse to watch other than being shown clips) deals with the theme of immortality beyond death, if people remember your name, that Achilles is immortal, because even to this day, we still remember his name. The same is true about Alexander, Caesar, and pretty much everyone else that I have written a post about or will write a post about. They are immortal because we remember them.
Yet, Sappho didn’t know that she would be written about two thousand years after her death, and that’s the irony. She believed she would be forgotten, but she wasn’t. It shows a great deal of humility. Sappho might have thought herself a great poet, but then realized that she would be one of millions of poets and that there’s no reason for her to be remembered. Rather than an artist being full of herself, she’s realized that life will go on without her, and in the grand scheme of things, that perhaps she’s not that special.
If she did this, then by accepting this truth, Sappho proved to be special in the end. That she didn’t let whatever fame she gained as a poet go to her head, that she could see the bigger picture and embrace reality. Now, I don’t think we’ll ever know if Sappho was recognized in her time, but for the sake of continuing this train of thought, let’s say she was famous. How many celebrities today do you think would come to terms with their mortality like Sappho? I don’t think there would be many.
There’s one last thing I want to talk about before we wrap this up. Sappho says there will be no more “flitting aimlessly about.” We’ve talked about creativity, death, and accepting mortality, but we haven’t discussed life yet. For those of you who don’t know what flitting means (and I didn’t either until I looked it up), Merrian-Webster’s online dictionary defines it as “to pass quickly or abruptly from one place or condition to another.” So, it’s bouncing around from place to place, but it’s in contrast to “widely roam” in the following line. Again, we see that in life someone can be creative and artistic, but both of those things are stripped when the soul descends into Hades.
Life, to Sappho, then, is whimsical, traveling from place to place, feeling as you go, an emotional journey. Life is free-flowing, it’s emotional, it sparks inspiration, while death is mindless, numbing, wandering void of inspiration and art. For a poet who typically wrote about love, she offered a simple yet powerful reflection on life and death, highlighting the connection between creativity, fame, and life itself.
That’s all I have to say about Sappho, however, before you go, I have some things to ask. If you liked what you read and want more, consider subscribing. It’s free and sends these posts directly to your email. The next woman of antiquity I’m going to write about is probably Cleopatra (though that might be for a while because I have a biography on her that I want to read first so that I can write a longer post). So, if there’s another woman from the classical world that you want me to write about before Cleopatra, then please leave a comment.
Also, as at least one of you knows, I am writing an analysis of Homer’s Iliad, and while I plan to publish it as a book, I’m debating whether I should post some of it here. I can only guess at what you all like by looking at the view numbers for each post, so if this is something you might like, then please leave a comment saying so. While I want this Substack to be accessible to people who might only have a surface-level interest in ancient Rome and Greece, I also don’t want it to be an encyclopedia. However, I worry that my analysis of the Iliad might be a bit much, so please let me know if you're interested in it. That’s it. Please share by clicking the buttons below. Thanks for reading.
Oh, and if you want to read Sappho for yourself (in English), Harvard has a collection of her surviving work on their site.
https://chs.harvard.edu/primary-source/sappho-sb/