Ode to Aphrodite

File:P.Oxy.v0021.n2288.jpg 2288]]

The Ode to Aphrodite survived from antiquity.{{cite web|url=http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/sappho.new.html|last=Harris|first=William|title=Sappho: New Poem No. 58 from the Köln papyrus|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180113172332/http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/sappho.new.html|archive-date=13 January 2018|url-status=dead}} It was preserved in Dionysius of Halicarnassus' On Composition, quoted in its entirety as an example of "smooth" or "polished" writing,{{cite journal|last=Castle|first=Warren|title=Observations on Sappho's To Aphrodite|journal=Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association|volume=89|pages=66–76|year=1958|doi=10.2307/283665|jstor=283665}} a style which Dionysius also identifies in the work of Hesiod, Anacreon, and Euripides.{{cite book|last=Campbell|first=David A.|title=Greek Lyric Poetry: A Selection of Early Greek Lyric, Elegiac, and Iambic Poetry|year=1967|publisher=Bloomsbury|location=Basingstoke|page=264}} It is also partially preserved on Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 2288, a second-century papyrus discovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt.{{cite book|chapter=Loving, but not Loved: The New Kypris Song in the Context of Sappho's Poetry|last=Schlesier|first=Renate|title=The Newest Sappho: P. Sapph. Obbink and P. GC inv. 105, frs.1–4|editor1-last=Bierl|editor2-last=Lardinois|editor1-first=Anton|editor2-first=André|publisher=Brill|location=Leiden|year=2016|isbn=978-90-04-31483-2|page=376}}{{cite book|last1=Rayor|last2=Lardinois|first1=Diane|first2=André|title=Sappho: A New Translation of the Complete Works|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge|year=2014|isbn=978-1-107-02359-8|page=97}}

Though the poem is conventionally considered to be completely preserved, there are two places where the reading is uncertain. The first is the initial word of the poem: some manuscripts of Dionysios render the word as "{{lang|grc|Ποικιλόφρον’}}"; others, along with the Oxyrhynchus papyrus of the poem, have "{{lang|grc|Ποικιλόθρον’}}".{{cite journal|last=Yatromanolakis|first=Dimitrios|title=Review: Fragments, Brackets, Poetics: On Anne Carson's "If Not, Winter"|journal=International Journal of the Classical Tradition|volume=11|issue=1|year=2004|page=271|doi=10.1007/BF02720036|s2cid=159932497}} Both words are compounds of the adjective {{lang|grc|ποικιλος}} (literally 'many-coloured'; metaphorically 'diverse', 'complex', 'subtle'{{LSJ|poiki/los|ποικίλος|longref}}); –{{lang|grc|θρον}} means 'chair', and –{{lang|grc|φρον}} 'mind'. Accordingly, the competing readings are on the order of "[Aphrodite] of the many-coloured throne" or "[Aphrodite] of the subtle/complex mind."

{{lang|grc|Ποικιλόθρον’}} is the standard reading, and both the Lobel–Page and Voigt editions of Sappho print it. Hutchinson argues that it is more likely that "–{{lang|grc|θρον}}" was corrupted to "–{{lang|grc|φρον}}" than vice versa.{{cite book|last=Hutchinson|first=G. O.|title=Greek Lyric Poetry: A Commentary on Selected Larger Pieces|url=https://archive.org/details/greeklyricpoetry00hutc|url-access=limited|year=2001|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|isbn=978-0-19-924017-3|page=[https://archive.org/details/greeklyricpoetry00hutc/page/n170 151]}} However, Anne Carson's edition of Sappho argues for {{lang|grc|Ποικιλόφρον’}},{{cite book|last=Carson|first=Anne|year=2003|title=If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho|url=https://archive.org/details/ifnotwinterfragm00sapp_014|url-access=limited|publisher=Vintage Books|location=New York|isbn=978-0-375-72451-0|page=[https://archive.org/details/ifnotwinterfragm00sapp_014/page/n372 357]}} and more recently Rayor and Lardinois, while following Voigt's text, note that "it is hard to decide between these two readings". Another possible understanding of the word {{lang|grc|ποικιλόθρον’}} takes the second component in the compound to be derived from {{lang|grc|θρόνον}}, a Homeric word used to refer to flowers embroidered on cloth.{{LSJ|qro/non|θρόνον|longref}} While apparently a less common understanding, it has been employed in translations dating back to the 19th century;{{cite book |author1=Arthur Woollgar Verrall |author-link1=Arthur Woollgar Verrall |title=Studies literary and historical in the Odes of Horace |date=1884 |publisher=Macmillan and Co. |location=London |page=177 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rGZHw_UcTtMC&pg=PA177 |access-date=1 July 2020 |quote='O dight with many a flower,' (or 'Throned in broidery') [...]}} more recently, for example, a translation by Gregory Nagy adopted this reading and rendered the vocative phrase as "you with pattern-woven flowers".{{cite web |last1=Nagy |first1=Gregory |author-link1=Gregory Nagy |title=Once again this time in Song 1 of Sappho |url=https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/once-again-this-time-in-song-1-of-sappho/ |website=Classical Inquiries: Studies on the Ancient World from the Center for Hellenic Studies |access-date=1 July 2020 |date=5 November 2015}}

The second problem in the poem's preservation is at line 19, where the manuscripts of the poem are "garbled",{{cite book|last=Winkler|first=John J.|title=The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece|year=1990|publisher=Routledge|location=New York|isbn=978-0415901239|page=168}} and the papyrus is broken at the beginning of the line.{{cite journal|last=Stanley|first=Keith|title=The Role of Aphrodite in Sappho Fr. 1|year=1976|journal=Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies|volume=17|issue=4|page=313}}

File:Cnidus Aphrodite Altemps Inv8619.jpg's Aphrodite of Knidos.]]

The poem is written in Aeolic Greek and set in Sapphic stanzas, a meter named after Sappho, in which three longer lines of the same length are followed by a fourth, shorter one.{{Cite web|title=Sappho's Hymn to Aphrodite|website=Diotima|first=Elizabeth|last=Vandiver|date=1997|author-link=Elizabeth Vandiver|url=https://diotima-doctafemina.org/translations/greek/sapphos-hymn-to-aphrodite/}} In Hellenistic editions of Sappho's works, it was the first poem of Book I of her poetry.{{efn|Hephaistion uses the Ode to Aphrodite to illustrate the Sapphic stanza in his Enchiridion de Metris; this is generally thought to be because it was the first poem in Book I of the Alexandrian edition of her poetry, which contained only poems in Sapphics.{{cite book|last=Winkler|first=John J.|title=The Constraints of Desire|year=1990|page=166|publisher=Routledge|location=New York|isbn=978-0-415-90122-2}}}} As the poem begins with the word "{{lang|grc|Ποικιλόθρον'}}", this is outside of the sequence followed through the rest of Book I, where the poems are ordered alphabetically by initial letter.{{cite book|chapter=Ten Poems of Sappho: Provenance, Authority, and Text of the New Sappho Papyri|last=Obbink|first=Dirk|title=The Newest Sappho: P. Sapph. Obbink and P. GC inv. 105, frs.1–4|editor1-last=Bierl|editor2-last=Lardinois|editor1-first=Anton|editor2-first=André|publisher=Brill|location=Leiden|year=2016|isbn=978-90-04-31483-2|page=42}} At seven stanzas long, the poem is the longest-surviving fragment from Book I of Sappho.{{cite book|chapter=Ten Poems of Sappho: Provenance, Authority, and Text of the New Sappho Papyri|last=Obbink|first=Dirk|title=The Newest Sappho: P. Sapph. Obbink and P. GC inv. 105, frs.1–4|editor1-last=Bierl|editor2-last=Lardinois|editor1-first=Anton|editor2-first=André|publisher=Brill|location=Leiden|year=2016|isbn=978-90-04-31483-2|page=34}}

The ode is written in the form of a prayer to Aphrodite, goddess of love, from a speaker who longs for the attentions of an unnamed woman.{{cite journal|last=Cameron|first=A.|title=Sappho's Prayer to Aphrodite|year=1939|journal=Harvard Theological Review|volume=32|issue=1|pages=1–17|doi=10.1017/S0017816000021568|jstor=1508069|s2cid=162811188 }} Its structure follows the three-part structure of ancient Greek hymns, beginning with an invocation, followed by a narrative section, and culminating in a request to the god.{{cite book|chapter=Sappho and Kypris: 'The Vertigo of Love' (P. Sapph. Obbink 21–29; P. Oxy. 1231, fr.16)|author1-last=Boehringer|author2-last=Calame|author1-first=Sandra|author2-first=Claude|title=The Newest Sappho: P. Sapph. Obbink and P. GC inv. 105, frs.1–4|editor1-last=Bierl|editor2-last=Lardinois|editor1-first=Anton|editor2-first=André|publisher=Brill|location=Leiden|year=2016|isbn=978-90-04-31483-2|page=357}} The speaker is identified in the poem as Sappho, in one of only four surviving works where Sappho names herself.{{cite book|last=Williamson|first=Margaret|title=Sappho's Immortal Daughters|year=1995|publisher=Harvard University Press|location=Cambridge, MA|page=56}} The sex of Sappho's beloved is established from only a single word, the feminine {{lang|grc|εθελοισα}} in line 24. This reading, now standard, was first proposed in 1835 by Theodor Bergk,{{cite book|last=Williamson|first=Margaret|title=Sappho's Immortal Daughters|year=1995|publisher=Harvard University Press|location=Cambridge, MA|page=51}} but not fully accepted until the 1960s.{{cite book|last=DeJean|first=Joan|title=Fictions of Sappho|url=https://archive.org/details/fictionsofsappho00deje|url-access=registration|year=1989|page=[https://archive.org/details/fictionsofsappho00deje/page/319 319]}} As late as 1955 Edgar Lobel and Denys Page's edition of Sappho noted that the authors accepted this reading "without the least confidence in it".{{cite book|last=DeJean|first=Joan|title=Fictions of Sappho|url=https://archive.org/details/fictionsofsappho00deje|url-access=registration|year=1989|page=[https://archive.org/details/fictionsofsappho00deje/page/320 320]}}

Sappho asks the goddess to ease the pains of her unrequited love for this woman;{{cite book|title=Oxford Concise Companion to Classical Literature|editor1-last=Howatson|editor2-last=Chilvers|editor1-first=M. C.|editor2-first=Ian|year=1993|page=[https://archive.org/details/conciseoxfordcom00mcho/page/479 479]|location=Oxford|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-282708-1|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/conciseoxfordcom00mcho/page/479}} after being thus invoked, Aphrodite appears to Sappho, telling her that the woman who has rejected her advances will in time pursue her in turn.{{cite journal|last=Giacomelli|first=Anne|title=The Justice of Aphrodite in Sappho Fr. 1|journal=Transactions of the American Philological Association |volume=110|pages=135–142|year=1980|doi=10.2307/284214|jstor=284214}} The poem concludes with another call for the goddess to assist the speaker in all her amorous struggles. With its reference to a female beloved, the "Ode to Aphrodite" is (along with Sappho 31) one of the few extant works of Sappho that provides evidence that she loved other women.{{efn|The only fragment of Sappho to explicitly refer to female homosexual activity is Sappho 94.{{cite journal|last=McEvilly|first=Thomas|title=Sappho, Fragment 94|journal=Phoenix|volume=25|issue=1|year=1971|pages=2–3}}}}{{cite journal|last=Ball|first=Robert J.|title=Erica Jong's Sappho and the Classical Tradition|journal=International Journal of the Classical Tradition|volume=11|issue=4|pages=590–601|year=2005|doi=10.1007/s12138-005-0020-5|jstor=30222014|s2cid=162203744}} The poem contains few clues to the performance context, though Stefano Caciagli suggests that it may have been written for an audience of Sappho's female friends.{{cite book|chapter=Sappho Fragment 17: Wishing Charaxos a Safe Trip?|last=Caciagli|first=Stefano|title=The Newest Sappho: P. Sapph. Obbink and P. GC inv. 105, frs.1–4|editor1-last=Bierl|editor2-last=Lardinois|editor1-first=Anton|editor2-first=André|publisher=Brill|location=Leiden|year=2016|isbn=978-90-04-31483-2|page=34}}

The Ode to Aphrodite is strongly influenced by Homeric epic.{{cite journal|last=Stanley|first=Keith|title=The Role of Aphrodite in Sappho Fr. 1|year=1976|journal=Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies|volume=17|issue=4|page=308}} Ruby Blondell argues that the whole poem is a parody and reworking of the scene in book five of the Iliad between Aphrodite, Athena, and Diomedes.{{cite journal|last=Blondell|first=Ruby|title=Refractions of Homer's Helen in Archaic Lyric|journal=American Journal of Philology|volume=131|issue=3|year=2010|page=375|doi=10.1353/ajp.2010.0005 }} Sappho's Homeric influence is especially clear in the third stanza of the poem, where Aphrodite's descent to the mortal world is marked by what Keith Stanley describes as "a virtual invasion of Homeric words and phrases".{{cite journal|last=Stanley|first=Keith|title=The Role of Aphrodite in Sappho Fr. 1|year=1976|journal=Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies|volume=17|issue=4|page=317}}

Classicists disagree about whether the poem was intended as a serious piece.{{cite journal|last=Stanley|first=Keith|title=The Role of Aphrodite in Sappho Fr. 1|year=1976|journal=Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies|volume=17|issue=4|page=305}} Arguing for a serious interpretation of the poem, for instance, C. M. Bowra suggests that it discusses a genuine religious experience. On the other hand, A. P. Burnett sees the piece as "not a prayer at all", but a lighthearted one aiming to amuse.{{cite book|last=Burnett|first=A. P.|title=Three Archaic Poets: Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho|year=1983|location=London|publisher=Bloomsbury|isbn=978-1-4725-4044-7|page=246}} Some elements of the poem which are otherwise difficult to account for can be explained as humorous. For instance, at the beginning of the third stanza of the poem, Sappho calls upon Aphrodite in a chariot "yoked with lovely sparrows",{{cite book|last1=Rayor|last2=Lardinois|first1=Diane|first2=André|title=Sappho: A New Translation of the Complete Works|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge|year=2014|isbn=978-1-107-02359-8|page=25}} a phrase which Harold Zellner argues is most easily explicable as a form of humorous wordplay.{{cite journal|last=Zellner|first=Harold|title=Sappho's Sparrows|journal=The Classical World|year=2008|volume=101|issue=4|page=441}} Aphrodite's speech in the fourth and fifth stanzas of the poem has also been interpreted as lighthearted. Keith Stanley argues that these lines portray Aphrodite "humorous[ly] chiding" Sappho,{{cite journal|last=Stanley|first=Keith|title=The Role of Aphrodite in Sappho Fr. 1|year=1976|journal=Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies|volume=17|issue=4|page=315}} with the threefold repetition of {{lang|grc|δηυτε}} followed by the hyperbolic and lightly mocking {{lang|grc|τίς σ', ὦ Ψάπφ', ἀδικήει;}} {{efn|Stanley translates Aphrodite's speech as "What ails you this time? ... Why have you summoned me this time? [...] Whom must I reconcile with you this time? ... Who, O Sappho, is doing you this dreadful injustice?" [emphasis original]}}

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• {{wikisource-inline|Hymn to Venus (Sappho)|Ode to Aphrodite}}
• [http://digitalsappho.org/fragments/fr1/ The original Greek text of the poem], with commentary
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20190806194500/https://diotimawcc.wordpress.com/sappho-hymn-to-aphrodite/ English translation] of the poem by Elizabeth Vandiver

{{Sappho}}

Category:LGBTQ poetry

Category:Works by Sappho