heir loves rest, after all, rather on
tradition than on direct evidence; for
there remain to us only two verses
which Alcæus addressed to Sappho.
The one is a compliment, the other
an apology. The compliment is found
in one graceful line, which is perhaps
her best description --
"Violet-crowned, pure, sweetly smiling Sappho."
The freshness of those violets, the
charm of that smile, the assurance of
that purity, all rest upon this one line,
and rest securely. If every lover, having
thus said in three epithets the whole
story about his mistress, would be
content to retire into oblivion, and add
no more, what a comfort it would be!
Alcæus unhappily went one phrase
further, and therefore goes down to
future ages, not only as an ardent
lover, but as an unsuccessful one. For
Aristotle, in his "Rhetoric," [1] records
that this poet once addressed Sappho
as follows --
"I wish to speak, but shame restrains my tongue."
Now this apology may have had the
simplest possible occasion. Alcæus
may have undertaken to amend a verse
of Sappho's and have spoiled it; or
he may have breakfasted in the garden,
with her and her maidens, and may have
spilled some honey from Hymettus on
a crimson-bordered veil from Eresus.
But it is recorded by Aristotle that
the violet-crowned thus answered:
"If thy wishes were fair and noble,
and thy tongue designed not to utter
what is base, shame would not cloud
thine eyes, but thou wouldst freely
speak thy just desires." Never was
reproof more exquisitely uttered than
is this in the Greek; and if we take it
for serious, as we probably should, there
is all the dignity of womanhood in the
reply, so that Sappho comes well out
of the dialogue, however it may be
with her wooer. But if, as is also possible, the occasion
was but trivial, it is
rather refreshing to find these gifted
lovers, in the very morning of civilization, simply rehearsing just the dialogue that goes on between every village school-girl and her awkward
swain, when he falters and "fears to
speak," and says finally the wrong
thing, and she blushingly answers, "I
should think you would be ashamed."
But whether the admiration of Alcæus
was more or less ardent, it certainly was not
peculiar to him. There were hardly any limits to the enthusiasm
habitually expressed in ancient times for the poetry of Sappho. In
respect to the abundance of laurels,
she stands unapproached among women, even
to the present day. Ælian
preserves the tradition that the recitation of
one of her poems so affected
the great lawgiver Solon, that he expressed the wish that he might not die
till he had learned it by heart. Plato
called her the tenth Muse. Others described her as uniting in herself the
qualities of Muse and Aphrodite; and
others again as the joint foster-child
of Aphrodite, Cupid, and the Graces.
Grammarians lectured on her poems
and wrote essays on her metres; and
her image appeared on at least six different coins of her native land. And
it has generally been admitted by modern critics that "the loss of her poems
is the greatest over which we have to
mourn in the whole range of Greek
literature, at least of the imaginative
species."
Now why is it that, in case of a woman thus famous, some cloud of reproach has always mingled with the incense? In part, perhaps, because
she was a woman, and thus subject to
harsher criticism in coarse periods of
the world’s career. More, no doubt, because she stood in a transition period
of history, and, in a contest between
two social systems, represented an unsuccessful effort to combine the merits
of both. In the Homeric period the
position of the Greek woman was simple and free. In the Iliad and Odyssey
she is always treated with respect;
unlike the great poems of modern Europe, they do not contain an indelicate
line. But with the advancing culture
of the lonian colonies, represented by
Athens, there inevitably arose the question, what to do with the women.
Should they be admitted to share this
culture, or be excluded? Athens, under the influence of Asiatic models,
decided to exclude them. Sparta and
the Dorian colonies, on the other hand,
preferred to exclude the culture. It
was only the Æolian colonies, such as
Lesbos, that undertook to admit the
culture and the women also. Nowhere
else in Greece did women occupy what
we should call a modern position. The
attempt was premature, and the reputation of Lesbos was crushed in the
process.
------
1 Carm., I. 9.
