Introduction
As classics students, we have to write a lot of essays and develop our technique; and so, we thought we'd give you a bit of insight as to how our progress is going. These are two essays, one written by each. Enjoy!
Zoe's essay
As a highly successful female poet and musician of 7th century BC Lesbos, Sappho’s work is an extremely beneficial insight for scholars studying women of the ancient world, especially to discover more about the topics of love and marriage, friendships, fashion, and life in general. However, many factors such as her Aristocratic family and wealthy upbringing, or her ‘unusual’ sexuality, disconnect her from the ‘average woman’ of this time, perhaps making her writings not as accurate to understand the “silent female voice” as people may have thought.
Despite Sappho’s differences in numerous ways to the ‘ordinary’ woman of ancient Lesbos, her works are some of the only female poetry that has remained from the time, thus immediately giving scholars more of an understanding into ancient life as a woman than would have been attainable without her work. Within her writing she discusses feelings of love, lust, pain and various other universal ideas and emotions, making it easier to gather the role that women played in society, calling into question whether there has been much change made today. This allows scholars to judge and grasp the silence of the female voice, unattached from Sappho’s specific lifestyle, due to the relatable essence of these topics. ‘Delicate fire’ demonstrates her feelings of desire and the pain that comes with pleasure or love, which can be used to see the similarity of basic senses and emotions of females thousands of years late, ultimately helping scholars depict the change of the silent female voice.
Additionally, Sappho writes a lot about religion and her thiasos group with many female friends. The mass of different perspectives and description of the members of the thiasos is crucial for scholars to find out more about women. For example, Sappho discusses the lives and her feelings towards Atthis of Miletus, Gongyla of Colophon, and Eunica of Salamina, allowing a much wider range of judgement for scholars from this time in understanding female life, and perhaps the reasons behind their silence. Sappho’s empowerment of women, combined with her fearless mentions of countless women (including the goddesses) suggests that she isn’t concerned about public opinion as to her homosexuality, or her gender having to influence her success. ‘I used to love you, Atthis’ and ‘your charming laughter’ both reveal this care free attitude that Sappho had, perhaps alluding to the fact that Lesbos was much more liberal for women and there was not as much ‘silence’ as was in Athens, where scholars attain most evidence from, simply because there is more of it.
However, Sappho’s work is fragmented and has been lost over time, making it more difficult for scholars to understand the true meanings behind her works. Within her poem to Gongyla, words are missing which takes away from the true meaning of what she intended to say. This can also been seen when she discusses her ‘beautiful daughter’ since the final parts of the poem may have changed the meaning, yet scholars have to just interpret their opinions and assumptions into it, giving her work less of an insight that what would’ve been. Similarly, another ancient female poet often called ‘Anyte the lyric poet’ gives scholars a good comparisons to Sappho when studying women’s lack of voice throughout history, despite the different times between them. A big similarity is the fact that no reliable or outstanding information survives today about her life, forcing scholars to question whether this is due to these poets being female, perhaps unveiling the fact that they were less spoken about than men not allowing their lives to be as well remembered as they should’ve been. Her work has only been saved from the Palentine Anthology, written by a man, which may have influenced bias into her original work or meaning.
In contrast to this, her constant references to death and suicidal thoughts, give women a powerful imagine of being allowed to take ownership of their lives, even though it’s in death, it still undermines the voicelessness of women since they do have overall control of their lives. ‘Honestly I want to die’ and ‘when you die’ both typify the bleak nature of some aspects of her poetry, contrasting the stereotypical “silent” woman. This helps scholars to observe the changes in society about women’s conformity to these stereotypes, or perhaps the more liberal city of Lesbos in comparison to other places in Greece where women were much more oppressed. This can be seen in the extreme limited legal women’s rights of Athens for example.
Ultimately, Sappho’s work is extremely useful, nay rather essential, in fully grasping the concept of the “silent female voice”. Despite her differences to what many people know to be the ‘ordinary’ woman, these factors don’t lessen the fact that she is still a woman in a patriarchal society, thus any work attainted from Sappho will greatly develop scholars’ understanding of this “silent female voice”.
Viola's essay
As evident from the most revered piece of Western literature, the Odyssey, ‘right where written evidence for Western culture starts, women’s voices are not being heard in the public sphere (Mary Beard), embodied when Telemachus tells Penelope, his mother, to shut up. Thus the ‘silent female voice’ evolved to be an integral part of society, both in the ancient world and modern-day, encompassing women’s exclusion from power and freedom of speech and as a consequence we have a lack of female perspective in the ancient world, ergo a ‘silent’ voice. However, it is important to distinguish between the two main civilizations enclosed in the vague term of ‘ancient world’- Greece and Rome and the different states in each (this is more important in Greece, which seems to have varying ideals). For this reason, although Sappho offers many insights into a woman’s view on society, marriage, love and general lifestyle some have limitations on how accurate and universal they can be considered, due to the different eras, societal guidelines, and the fact that she is one woman and does not speak for all women.
Firstly, Sappho’s works can be used to interpret women’s attitudes to the role of a bride and marriage and celebrations in general. Sappho’s poetry encapsulates the seemingly different stages of a marriage ceremony; from joyous and proper, where the maidens ‘sing all night long’ to drunk and crude, where we see the guests exclaim ‘Raise the roof, Hymenaeus!’. While the description of singing maidens may seem more light-hearted and show a happy attitude by the women, there are subtle references to a more ominous and fearful bride. The phrase ‘trodden by the feet of shepherds’ reveals the sadness Sappho feels towards a woman’s loss of her virginity and the disregard they were shown when no longer virgins. The word ‘trodden’ alludes to harsh, careless treatment of the women and Sappho’s insight allows scholars, and the modern world to begin to understand both the emotional and physical trauma a woman may suffer. This dismissal of women, unless it was for sexual needs also confesses the marginalisation of women in ancient Greece and that their perceived purpose was only for sex or to look after the house, with the two main attributes for women having been ‘fidelity and fertility’, modeled after Homer’s Penelope. This is further emphasised by the phrase ‘like Ares’, bringing in the theme of militia amoris, through the comparison to a war god and thus revealing the pain and destruction caused on a weddings night a woman’s fear towards these things, as war is generally met with fear and not willingly. Thus scholars can learn about ‘the silent female voice’ within marriages on Lesbos or in ancient Greek.
Similar to Greece, weddings in Roman times would be arranged for beneficial reasons such as money or family unions, immediately creating an environment where reciprocated love is not a criterion for a marriage to take place. However, where a Greek woman would be expected neither to be seen nor heard (as mentioned by Pericles in his funeral speech), a Roman wife was expected to be a hostess when guests were present and a Roman mother exercised genuine influence in making family decisions, a famous example being Agrippina. And in Rome, the importance of virginity was even further evident in society, with the fame and prestige surrounding the Vestal virgins. The college of the Vestals and it’s well-being were regarded as fundamental to the continuance and security of Rome. The chastity of the Vestals was considered to have a direct bearing on the health of the Roman state. When they entered the collegium, they left behind the authority of their fathers and became daughters of the state. Any sexual relationship with a citizen was therefore considered to be incestum and an act of treason. In fact, the two most known examples of the importance of this preservation are Lucretia and Virginia. Lucretia, who took her life after having being raped as she felt that she could live neither successfully, nor supported, in a society that classified pudicitia (preservation of sexual virtue). Verginia was stabbed to death by her father solely with the purpose of avoiding the shame of violation by one of the decemviri. And so, while Sappho reveals the fear and discard of women post-coitus through a women’s perspective, Rome did the same thing from the man’s perspective of prioritising virginity but yet stifled women’s perspective to the point where they could not survive in a society with those guidelines.
Scholars can also use Sappho’s works to interpret women’s opinions on love and its power, or rather the greek eros. Eros is more accurately translated as desire, which was the opposite of the esteemed virtue of self-control, a debilitating disease or a sickness which creates damage and destruction, Sappho’s poetry coincides with this- love being expressed more physically by phrases such as ‘release me from this darkness’, ‘burning with desire’ and ‘even if she does not want to’. In Greek tragedy, every woman who expresses lust causes the downfall of the household, eg. Medea and Clytemnestra and so does Sappho (or the speaker of the poem), claiming to be on the ‘point of death’ because of love. While Sappho’s presentation of love as lustful and overwhelming would’ve been normal and relatable, Sappho’s pleasure and enjoyment of this emotion, shown by phrases such as ‘I am thankful for that’ and ‘I am greener than grass’, with the metaphoric mention of the colour green and grass suggest an image of purity and that love is a natural thing to feel. This is strange as an outlook on love in general but is synonymous with the male belief that women enjoyed sex more than men and that they could seduce and manipulate men with their sexuality. Sappho allows the scholars to see a more vulnerable and raw side of love, that we can all relate to, whether we approve or not which may not have been presented so beautifully and emotionally in men’s poetry as it would go against their ideals.
By analysing Catullus’ interpretation of Sappho’s poem 31, we can see the contrast in definition of love in Rome and ancient Greece. Firstly, where love was less discriminative in ancient Greece (evident by both the prominence of pederasty and Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s symposium on everyone having one soulmate, regardless of gender), Catullus changed the poem to a heterosexual one, symbolising Rome’s lesser acceptance of fluidity. Similarly, in Sappho’s poem, the last stanzas is the climactic point and includes a vivid, quasi-orgasmic description, with the symptoms including ‘sweat pours over me’, ‘a tremor seizes me all over’. Catullus changes this to a warning of the dangers that idleness brings ‘in idleness you revel and delight too much’, reflecting the Roman ideals and the lack of appreciation for the animalistic and untaught aspect of love. This is where the scholars are left with a lack of knowledge, especially in regards to the female perspective as, a women’s voice was not heard in the public sphere. Women can defend their own sectional interests; such as domestic life but they could not speak for the community as a whole. In fact, popular poets such as Ovid advocated the lovers fight against love and towards rationality, but it seemed to be mostly women who led these ‘honourable’ men astray. Thus although Sappho reveals a more raw interpretation of love and its role, the female voice in Rome remains silent.
In such a strong patriarchal society, we know it was difficult for women to have freedom, in fact, they were seen to only have three roles; hetaerae, slaves or wives (Demosthenes), and Sappho contradicts this through her love for her blissful nature of the thiasos, (a religious cult who would sing poems to each other and the gods and dance and in Sapphos case, most likely to Aphrodite) and the harsh contradiction with the understanding that if a member were to leave their close-knit group for marriage, she is being trapped in society’s expectations of women and stripped of the liberty she had, albeit little. Sappho’s hesitance towards the marriage, contrasted with the euphoric thiasos reveals that the little happiness women could have was stripped from them when they were married, highlighted in the phrase’ weeping, she was leaving me’. The melancholy tone of the phrase and the negative connotations to the word ‘weeping’ suggest the mutual sadness from both the women or all of the thiasos, and that marriage was not perhaps as desirable for women and men have made it seem. Where the thiasos was loving and the ‘companions’ cared for one another; ‘for you know we looked after you’, marriage was more one-sided, as Sappho confirms when referring to a marriage that had ‘worked out well for you’, ‘you’ being a man and nothing being mentioned on whether this peace or happiness is reciprocated.
There were similar aspects in ancient Rome, a misogynistic society which oppressed women and encouraged their role to be a wife and mother who would remain forever indoors, managing to even manipulate the beauty standards (like in ancient Greece) to a pale woman, as proof of her lack of time outside and ergo luxurious and effortless life. Nevertheless, there are records of women who altered the course of history, some famous even to this day such as; Livia, Boudicca, Agrippina and Saint Helena and most importantly the Vestal Virgins, the security of Rome itself. Although there were undoubtedly more women who had an influence, yet their voice was not allowed to be heard because of their inferior status. However, there seem to be no similar groups of such joyous nature as the thiasos, nor any writings which show women to be so free and happy, even the Vestal Virgins had many restrictions, including their chastity, and their cult was not one surrounded by happiness or amusement. As we have more evidence and writings about women’s role in ancient Rome, Sappho’s works prove very important to illuminate the freedom, or rather lack thereof, women had in their little time before getting married in such a strictly-imposed society.
In conclusion, Sappho’s works help to understand the main aspects of a woman’s life, on Lesbos, and her role in life and society, therefore revealing a bit more knowledge on the ‘silent female voice’. However this accumulated knowledge must be applied cautiously because of both the differing societal expectations in Greece and Rome and the long era of which the ‘ancient world’ encompasses.
Until next time,
Zoe and Viola