Stung With Love by Sappho

Author:Sappho [Sappho]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101489895
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2009-07-04T04:00:00+00:00

Since I have cast my lot, please, golden-crowned

Aphrodite, let me win this round!

This song breaks down into the tripartite structure of a kletic hymn (see Introduction, p. xxvi). Whereas the singer conventionally commemorates a mythic event, Sappho here cites one of a series of past personal visits from Aphrodite.

In the opening stanza Sappho addresses the goddess and asks for relief in formulaic terms. Aphrodite flies down from Olympus in a chariot drawn by sparrows, which were associated with lasciviousness and fecundity, and their flesh and eggs eaten as aphrodisiacs. Though there are several references to sparrows as a means of conveyance in subsequent Greek literature, swans become the traditional yoke animals of Aphrodite (Venus) in the Roman poets.

The formal tone then gives way to the familiar. Aphrodite’s smile is particularly striking. Homer characterizes Aphrodite with the epithet philommeidēs (smile-loving), a softened form of the title philommedēs (genital-loving). The focus on her smile here may also be meant to evoke the ‘Archaic Smile’ found on statuary during the Archaic period. In Greek literature gods not infrequently interact with their favourite mortals but Aphrodite exhibits an exceptional familiarity with Sappho – the closest parallel is Athena’s banter with Odysseus in Odyssey 13.

Most scholars assume that Aphrodite promises to compel the girl to reciprocate Sappho’s ardour. Anne Carson points out that Aphrodite says only that the girl will ‘pursue, give gifts and love’ – Sappho is not specified as the object. Aphrodite may promise only that ‘in the course of time the beloved will naturally and inevitably become a lover, and will almost inevitably suffer rejection at least once’ (‘The Justice of Aphrodite in Sappho Fr. 1’, in Greene 1996, pp. 227–8.)

In the final stanza Sappho rounds out her allusions to Homeric epic by asking Aphrodite to be her summachos (‘ally in battle’). She thus substitutes her trials in love for those of a hero in battle and elevates matters of the heart to the same level as war.

Subtly bedizened Aphrodite,

Deathless daughter of Zeus, Wile-weaver,

I beg you, Empress, do not smite me

With anguish and fever

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