2. Sappho and the Distrinctions between Choral and Monodic Poetry

Critics of the traditional division between choral poetry and monody have pointed out that it is not very old. Plato (Leg . 764d-e) is the first to mention it, and he speaks about the performances of songs, not about their monodic or choral character.^[34] The archaic Greeks themselves do not seem to have been particularly interested in the distinction, for a number of archaic Greek genre names could refer to a poem sung by a soloist or a choral song, such

[29] On exchanges, see Rosenmeyer, "Alcman's Partheneion I" 338, who points to frs. 26, 38, 39, and 40; on prooemia , see Segal, "Alcman" 128.

[30] On the monodic character of Alcman fr. 59a, see Davies, "Alcman fr. 59a P.," review of Calame 387-88, and "Monody" 54-55.

[31] Besides these different kinds of "maiden songs," Alcman, just as Sappho, also composed marriage songs: for the evidence see Contiades-Tsitsoni, Hymenaios 46-67, with Muth's prudent remarks (review of E. Contiades-Tsitsoni 587).

[32] Most, "Greek Lyric Poets" 95-96; Burnett, Three Archaic Poets 209; Gentili, Poetry and Its Public 81.

[33] Bremmer, "Adolescents" 138; Buxton, Imaginary Greece 23-24. It is is worth noting that other female poets in the classical period were credited with having composed songs for young women's choruses as well: Calame, Les chœurs 2:174; Snyder, The Woman and the Lyre 40, 50 (Corinna), 54-55 (Praxilla), 60 (Telesilla).

[34] Davies, "Monody" 57, Lefkowitz, "Who Sang Pindar's Victory Odes?" 191. Cf. Fäber, Die Lyrik 1.16, and Harvey, "Classification" 159 n. 3.

as the skolion ,^[35] the epinikion ,^[36] and the hymenaios .^[37] The differences between choral and monodic poetry that one finds most often cited concern

1. their metrics: the meters of choral songs are said to be more elaborate, the strophic structures longer.

2. their language: monodic poets stay closer to their local dialects, while choral poets make use of a more artificial language, based on Doric and the epic.

3. their contents: choral poets are less intimate and personal than monodic poets.^[38]

Note that these differences are all relative: they may be less the result of the number of performers of the song than of the individual poet, the subject of the song, the audience, and so on.

I will now examine how these distinctions relate to Sappho's poetry:

1. There can be no question of any clear, metrical division between Sappho's choral and monodic poetry since we possess wedding songs (frs. 27, 30), as well as supposedly monodic songs (fr. 1), in the same Sapphic stanza.^[39]

[35] Harvey, "Classification" 162. Dicaearchus (fr. 88 Wehrli) distinguished three different types of drinking songs: first a song sung by all the guests together, then stanzas sung by each of the guests in turn, and finally songs sung by the experts.

[37] See n. 4 above, p. 151. In general, archaic Greek terms for poetry mark the occasions of the song rather than any formal features: see Calame, "Réflexions" 118; West, Studies 7, 23; Fowler, The Nature of Greek Lyric 90; Gentili, Poetry and Its Public 36.

[38] E.g., Bowra, Greek Lyric Poetry 6; Kirkwood, Early Greek Monody 10-11 (who makes an exception for Sappho: 10); Most, "Greek Lyric Poets" 89; Campbell, "Monody" 161. Segal, "The Nature of Early Choral Poetry" 125, is already more cautious. See for the history of the distinction Davies, "Monody" 58-61.

Sappho also used the dactylic hexameter for wedding songs (frs. 105, 106, 143) and for such a song as fragment 142, believed to be the opening line of one of her "amorous" songs.^[40] The idea that choral meters are always complex is based in large part on Alcman's first partheneion, which has a fourteen-line stanza. Yet not all dance songs need have been so intricate as this one, which was clearly composed for a solemn occasion.^[41] One should note that Alcman composed three-line stanzas as well.^[42]

2. Page in his commentary on Sappho and Alcaeus followed Lobel in his assessment that Sappho wrote in her Lesbian vernacular, "uncontaminated by alien or artificial forms and features," with the exception of some "abnormal" poems.^[43] However, this distinction, which has recently been disputed,^[44] does not correspond to a division between her choral and supposedly monodic songs. Some of the "abnormal" poems appear to be monodic (notably fr. 44), while some wedding songs are as "uncontaminated" as her supposedly monodic songs (frs. 27, 30). Again, we should be aware of other circumstances that can determine the use of, for example, epic diction. Thus it is to be expected that Sappho is able to use more diction familiar to us from epic in poems composed in the hexameter or in a meter close to it (all "abnormal" poems). They are also more appropriate for a song in which she recounts an epic story, like fragment 44, yet no one would argue on this basis that fragment 44 is a choral song.^[45]

[40] Campbell, Greek Lyric 1:157. We, of course, associate the dactylic hexameter mainly with the solo performances of Homer and Hesiod.

[41] I would argue the same for Pindar's epinikia and the tragic choruses. Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Comp . 19 = Stesich. test. 28 Campbell) maintained that "the ancient poets, I mean Sappho and Alcaeus, made their stanzas short, so they did not introduce many variations in their few colons, and they used the epode or shorter line sparingly, but Stesichorus, Pindar, and the like made their periods longer and divided them into many meters and colons for the sheer love of variety " (my italics): no mention of monodic versus choral structures.

[42] Fr. 3.3 col. iii Page/Davies and, possibly, ft. 14a: see West, "Greek Poetry" 181. This, incidentally, spoils Davies' neat division between "eastern" and "western" poets ("Monody" 63-64).

[43] Page, Sappho and Alcaeus 327. The so-called abnormal poems are frs. 44, 104a, 105a, 105c, 1066-9, 142, and 143.

[44] Hooker, Language and Text ; Bowie, The Poetic Dialect ; and Nagy, Pindar's Homer 94 n. 60. It appears that Sappho's poetry, just like that of Alcaeus, is a complicated mix of old Aeolic, epic, and her local dialect. The same is essentially true for Alcman's (choral) poetry: Calame, Alcman xxiv-xxxiv.

[45] Rösler, "Ein Gedicht," following Merkelbach ("Sappho und ihr Kreis" 17) and Frankel (Early Greek Poetry 174), has actually argued that fr. 44 was a choral (wedding) song, but on different grounds. For the latest twist in the interpretation of this poem, see Lasserre, Sappho 81-106, and Contiades-Tsitsoni, Hymenaios 102-8, who both argue that it represents a monodic wedding song (cf. n. 4 above, p. 151).

3. This brings us to the contents of Sappho's songs. Many pages have been written about the profoundly personal feelings that Sappho expresses in her lyrics. But can we be sure that these are really her own feelings? Can we be sure that any of the early Greek poems is "personal," for that matter?^[46] What is "personality" in such a group-oriented society as archaic Greece? Central to the debate have been poems in which the poet clearly impersonates a character.^[47] Some of these we find, interestingly enough, among Sappho's fragments as well.^[48] I will not pursue this matter further here. Instead, I will focus on some of the similarities between Alcman's partheneia, Sappho's choral wedding songs, and her so-called love poems.

The discovery of Alcman's partheneia has greatly changed the perception of early Greek choral poetry. Fränkel commented on the first fragment: "the style in the second half of Alcman's maiden song is as simple as that of the monodies of Sappho; in content choral lyric is frequently as personal as monody."^[49] Of course, he meant to say that the chorus , not Alcman himself, was as "personal" in this song as Sappho in her poems.^[50] But if this is true and the same degree of intimacy can be found in Alcman's choral songs as in Sappho's fragments, we must allow at least for the possibility that Sappho's songs were performed by a chorus of young women, just like Alcman's partheneia and her own wedding songs.

Indeed, the same degree of "intimacy" can not only be detected in Alcman's partheneia but in Sappho's wedding songs as well. In fragment 112 Sappho has a choir of girls sing to the bride: "your form is gracious and your eyes / ... / honey-sweet; love streams over your desire-arousing face."^[51] One is hard pressed to find another fragment of Sappho that is so "intimate" as this one. The similarity between Alcman's partheneia, Sappho's own

[46] On this vexed question, see most recently Slings, "The 'I' in Personal Archaic Lyric," and Jarcho, "Das poetische 'Ich.'" For some of the consequences this has for the distinction between choral and monodic poetry, see Russo, "Reading the Greek Lyric Poets" 709-10.

[47] Dover, "The Poetry of Archilochus"; West, Studies 22 f.; Rösler, review of Tsagarakis, and "Personale reale o persona poetica?"; Slings, "The 'I' in Personal Archaic Lyric" 4 f.

[48] Fr. 102 (impersonating a girl speaking to her mother), fr. 137 (dialogue between a man and a woman). For more examples, see Tsagarakis, Self-Expression 77-81.

[49] Fränkel, Early Greek Poetry 170 n. 3.

[50] Compare Bowra, Greek Lyric Poetry 32, on Alcman fr. 3: "We are left with the impression that the whole company is in love with her [Astymeloisa]."

wedding songs, and her fragments about the erotic appeal of young women strongly suggests that the latter could have been performed in public and possibly by others than herself.

If we cannot rely on any formal distinction, how then do we judge which fragments qualify for a choral performance, which for a solo one, and which possibly for a mixed mode? I suggest that we study carefully the situation described in the poems, together with any traces of the addressee and possible identification marks of the speaker. In most cases, however, too little of the poems survives to make even an educated guess as to how they were performed, and we had better accept this conundrum instead of touting these fragments as prime examples of personal lyric.