1. The Ancient Evidence About Sappho's Work

It is commonly acknowledged that at least some of Sappho's poetry was choral. One of Sappho's books, probably the ninth, in the Alexandrian edition of her poems consisted wholly of epithalamia or wedding songs,^[3] at least some of which were meant to be performed by age-mates of the bride.^[4]

[2] Frankel, Early Greek Poetry 186 nn. 45, 172; Calame, Les chœurs 1:127, 368-69; Hallett, "Sappho and Her Social Context," 141.

[3] A better term is hymenaioi. Epithalamia is the name Hellenistic scholars gave to these poems and is not attested before that period. Originally it referred to songs sung in the evening outside the marriage chamber, but Sappho's songs cover a number of occasions on the wedding day, including the wedding procession and the banquet: see Schadewaldt, Sappho 32-58; Muth, "Hymenaios" 38-40; Page, Sappho and Alcaeus 119-23; Bowra, Greek Lyric Poetry 214-23; and Contiades-Tsitsoni, Hymenaios 68-109. Hymenaios , on the other hand, is an archaic Greek term that was used for all types of song: as Aeschylus suggests, from bridal bath to bridal bed (PV 555-56). See Muth on this passage and the two terms in general, and more recently Contiades-Tsitsoni, esp. 30-32.

[4] Page, Sappho and Alcaeus 112 ff.; Campbell "Sappho" 162. Hymenaioi appear to have been primarily choral songs, performed by a chorus of young men and/or young women (Muth, "Hymenaios" 36) and there are clear indications of choral performance in Sappho's wedding songs, for example the dialogue-form of fr. 114 (Page 119 n. 1, 122,) and the refrain in fr. 111. Still, Homer (Od . 4.17-19) pictures a song performed at a wedding feast that is sung by a soloist and danced to by two tumblers, and Hague has compared Sappho fr. 115 to the eikasia games played at symposia, "in which one person ridiculed another by making a ludicrous comparison" ("Ancient Greek Wedding Songs" 134; my italics). It is possible that particularly during the banquet there were solo performances of songs related to the bride and groom, with or without the accompaniment of a dancing chorus. Fr. 44, if indeed a wedding song, is a possible candidate for such a performance (Contiades-Tsitsoni, Hymenaios 107).

Another type of song that is ascribed to her is religous hymns (test. 21, 47). These need not all have been choral, but some of them appear to have been genuine choral songs, such as fragment 140a, which is composed as a dialogue between a person (or group) impersonating the goddess Aphrodite and a group of young girls.^[5]

Page maintained that, apart from these poems, "[t]here is no evidence or indication that any of Sappho's poetry ... was designed for presentation by herself or others (whether individuals or choirs) on a formal or ceremonial occasion, public or private," and that "[t]here is nothing to contradict the natural supposition that, with this one small exception, all or almost all of her poems were recited by herself informally to her companions."^[6] One must be wary of relying on "natural suppositions," especially in the case of Sappho, and Page's supposition is actually far from "natural," since generally when scholars find that one or more poems of an archaic Greek poet are choral, they assume that the same holds true for the other poems.^[7] Snyder, more carefully, distinguishes between three types of songs: those that are purely public (the wedding songs); those with the conventional form of public poetry (e.g., frs. 1, 2, 16); and those that are purely private (e.g., frs. 31, 94, 96).^[8] It is not clear, however, whether she believes that the second group was actually performed in public and/or by others than Sappho herself: "Even though we may not want to go so far as to say that these songs were meant to be performed at some specific occasion, they nevertheless seem in some way connected with familiar rituals of a public character." The question is why we should not go so far as to say that these songs were performed at public occasions, if they indeed follow "the conventional forms of public poetry."^[9]

According to the Suds (test. 2), Sappho wrote nine books of "lyric songs" () and also "epigrams, elegiacs, iambics, and solo songs ()." We know that the epigrams were late Hellenistic forgeries,^[10] and of her iambics and elegiacs nothing has survived, but the separate mention of solo songs has caused some surprise: "how did these last differ from

[6] Page, Sappho and Alcaeus 119. He has been followed by most interpreters, most recently Parker, "Sappho Schoolmistress" 331.

[7] See Davies, "Monody." Like Davies, I do not favor this approach and therefore will refrain from making such an argument.

[8] Snyder, "Public Occasion and Private Passion."

[9] Ibid., 3, 10.

[10] Campbell, Greek Lyric 1:xiii; for their text, 205.

her lyric poetry?" asks Campbell in a footnote to his edition of Sappho's fragments and testimonia.^[11] I hope to show that this is more than just a rhetorical question.

As regards the actual performance of Sappho's songs, we have very little information. In later antiquity we hear of performances of her songs both by individuals (a boy; test. 10) and by groups of girls and boys (test. 53), but we do not know how this relates to the original performance context.^[12] Some of Sappho's poems seem to have been intended to be recited by herself, like fragment 1, in which she mentions her own name, but such clarity is exceptional: the only other fragments in which Sappho mentions her name are 65, 94, and 133. We cannot be absolutely certain that she sang even these songs herself. Alcman composed several songs (frs. 17, 39, 95b) in which he mentions his own name but which nevertheless may have been performed by a chorus,^[13] and both in Pindar's epinikia and later in the parabaseis of Aristophanes (e.g., Nub . 518-62) the chorus or chorus leader can speak in the name of the poet/composer. Sappho further mentions in her poetry that other women sang songs about each other or Aphrodite, and in one case she alludes to a song dance () of Atthis.^[14] Were these their own compositions or did Sappho compose these songs for them, the same way she composed the wedding songs or the hymns?

The testimonial tradition about Sappho is not uniform either. Horace pictures her as plucking the lyre while singing to herself about her girls (Carm . 2.13.24-25 = test. 18), whereas an anonymous poet in the Anthologia Palatina describes her as leading a dancing chorus of Lesbian women, "her golden lyre in hand" (AP 9.189 = test. 59).^[15] Philostratus (Imag . 2.1.1-3), finally, is reminded of Sappho when he sees a picture of a female director () leading a band of singing girls ().^[16] We thus have witnesses

[11] Ibid., 7.

[12] Other references to the performance of Sappho's songs in later times are Plut. Quaest. cony . 622c, 711d, but the number of singers is unclear here.

[13] Calame, Alcman 362 f.

[14] Frs. 21, 22, 96.5. In fr. 96.4 the Lydian woman is further said to have compared Atthis to a goddess and it is not unlikely that she did so in a song.

and/or fragments for at least three different types of performances: Sappho sings, with or without her chorus dancing; full choral performances; performances by one of her companions.

Sappho composed songs about young women,^[17] and she probably composed her wedding songs for performances by them. The Adonis hymn (fr. 140a), with its reference to , may represent another type of song Sappho composed for these girls. Both types of song would have been performed in public.^[18] It is generally assumed that Sappho sang the other songs herself in the small circle of her companions,^[19] but there is really no evidence for this. No one in antiquity says so, not even Horace, who makes Sappho sing to her own lyre in the underworld.^[20] This idea seems to have originated in the French salons of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, whose members believed to have found in Sappho a kindred spirit.^[21] In the nineteenth century Sappho's "salon" was interpreted as a school for young girls and, more recently, as a female thiasos , but, as far as we know, there existed no literary "salons," schools for girls, or private thiasoi in archaic Greece.^[22]

Modern scholars sometimes make reference to fragment 160 in which the speaker says something like: "I shall now sing these songs beautifully to the delight of my companions" ().^[23] We cannot be sure that this is what Sappho actually said

[18] Page, Sappho and, Alcaeus 119; Campbell, "Sappho" 162.

[19] E.g., Page, Sappho and Alcaeus 119; van Erp Taalman Kip, "Einige interpretatieproblemen" 340; Stigers [Stehle], "Sappho's Private World" 45; Burnett, Three Archaic Poets 209 n. 2.

[20] Horace's picture is reminiscent of Achilles playing all by himself on his lyre in Iliad 9 (on which, see 170 n. 102) rather than of a performance before a group.

[21] Compare Saake, Sapphostudien 15-16; DeJean, Fictions of Sappho 43f., 135-36.

[22] See Lardinois, "Subject and Circumstance" 63-64, 75-79. See Parker, "Sappho Schoolmistress" 339, for some examples of scholars who interpreted Sappho's "circle" as a thiasos . Nineteenth-century scholars: Welcker, Sappho 97; Wilamowitz, "Die griechische Literatur" 26.

[23] E.g., Lanata, "Sul linguaggio amoroso" 66; Winkler, "Double Consciousness" 165; Burnett, Three Archaic Poets 216; Campbell, "Sappho" 162.

( does not fit the meter) or that Sappho herself is the speaker, but even if this were the case, to whom would she address these words? She does not use a second-person plural (as the speaker does in fr. 141) and therefore may be speaking about her companions in the presence of a larger audience. In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo the speaker similarly asks his dancing chorus, which consists of young girls (), to remind others how much his singing delighted them (; 170). If the Anthologia Palatina (test. 59) reflects an authentic tradition and Sappho sometimes performed her songs in public while her chorus danced, fragment 160 may have been part of such a song.^[24]

Other possible evidence is fragment 150, in which Sappho calls a house (if is the correct supplement for the unmetrical ) that of "the servants of the Muses" ().^[25] According to Maximus of Tyre, who has preserved the fragment for us, Sappho spoke these words to her daughter, which is probably why most scholars assume that she is speaking here about her own house.^[26] Yet, even if this were the case, the fragment does not say that it was in her house, and only in her house, that Sappho and her companions performed their songs. We do not know what she means by the word , but we encounter the same term again in a Boeotian inscription where it refers to a theater group.^[27] I do not want to deny that Sappho and her companions may have recited songs to each other at her house, but this is by no means evident and, instead, there are good reasons to believe that Sappho composed her songs for public performances.

The closest parallel to Sappho's circle is the groups of Spartan women for whom Alcman composed his songs.^[28] These are young girls, at the brink of marriage, who come together to sing in choruses and perform certain rituals. The Spartan evidence strongly suggests that these groups were trained for

[24] For this type of performance in which a soloist sings while the chorus dances, one may compare Demodocus's song about Ares and Aphrodite, which is sung by Demodocus and danced to by a group of young Phaeacians (Od . 8.262-64), the wedding song in Od . 4.17-19, or the execution of the Linos song in Il . 18.569f. For some applications of this type of performances to other archaic Greek poets, see Davies, "Monody" 62-63.

[26] E.g., Welcker, Sappho 97; Wilamowitz, Sappho und Simonides 73; Kranz, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur 88; Burnett, Three Arctic Poets 211.

[27] IG VII. 2484. See Lanata, "Sul linguaggio amoroso" 67; Galame. Les chaurs 1:367.

[28] Merkelbach, "Sappho und ihr Kreis" 3; Calame, Les chaurs 1:27, 367f.; Lardinois, "Lesbian Sappho" 26-29.

public performances, not for the privacy of the poet's house. This does not necessarily mean that the gifts always had to do both the singing and the dancing. A fresh look at Alcman's poetry might reveal that not all of his "maiden songs" were like fragments 1 and 3, that is, sung by the whole chorus. There is the suggestion of exchanges between the choir and the poet, and of prooemia sung by Alcman himself.^[29] It is also possible that such a "monodic"-looking fragment as fragment 59a was actually sung by the poet while his maiden chorus danced.^[30] I want to argue for such a variety of performances in the case of Sappho's poetry as well.^[31]

Finally, we may question whether any archaic Greek poet, male or female, would have composed poetry for something as intimate as a private group of young, adolescent women. Parallels have been drawn between Sappho's circle and the hetaireia of the Lesbian poet Alcaeus,^[32] but there is quite a difference between a gathering of politically active, adult men and a group of young girls. If Sappho's circle had a counterpart in any male organizations, it was in juvenile bands of boy initiates, not in adult clubs of aristocratic warriors. Such groups were, like Alcman's choruses, trained for performances in public.^[33]