Sappho by Sappho;

Author:Sappho;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press

She was the leader and chief personality in an institution which trained young girls, but owing to the customs of the time this institution had a special character. It was, as she herself calls it, a moisopolōn domos, a house of those who cultivated the Muses. But it was much more than a school or an occasional association of girls for religious purposes. It was primarily concerned with the cult of Aphrodite, and its members formed a thiasos, resembling that at Eresus, which excluded men from its number, or the company of women on Paros united in the cult of Aphrodite Oistro. Sappho’s thiasos was not the only one of its kind in Mitylene. Others were controlled by her rivals, Gorgo and Andromeda, and Sappho’s relations with them were not of the friendliest character. The members of the thiasos were bound to each other and to their leader by ties of great strength and intimacy, and Maximus of Tyre was not far wrong when he compared the relations between Sappho and her pupils with those between Socrates and his disciples. But while Socrates held his young men together by his personal influence and the glamour he gave to the quest for truth, Sappho was bound to her maidens by ties which were at least half religious. . . .

A thiasos of this kind cannot really be considered in its proper aspect if we judge it by the standards of the modern world. Its cult was not a self-conscious aestheticism but a genuine worship of a goddess in whom all believed. . . . The Muses were honored with Aphrodite. It was felt that her ceremonies demanded songs, and in song her devotees were trained by Sappho. . . .2

Professor Page rejects both the thiasos and the moisopolōn domos. He says:

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