Abstract
Ancient Greek thought was not simply rational and analytic but also mythical and intuitive, originating as it did from a fine intellectual and perceptual versatility where myth instigated but also crowned both philosophical thought and poetry. This chapter tests the above hypothesis in the case of Sappho, combining poetry, philosophical and geographical theory, plus mythology, to explore, more particularly, the following themes: Μyth as a bridge to wisdom, collective as well as multifaceted; the dynamism of the archaic poetic genius, namely, how the cosmogonic philosophical and scientific atmosphere of Sappho’s time is reflected in her poetry; her interaction with Homer’s poetic tradition; her own poetic self and milieu; fragmentation in Sappho’s poetics as a characteristic shared with modernism; analogy and nature in her poetry, plus the bonds between Sappho and Modern Greek poets like Odysseus Elytis. Space in Sappho accrues not just as a theoretical concept, but also as seat of sacredness and social participation, while nature reflects immediately the human condition, both personal and collective.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
On the latter, see Jin (2020). The Greeks conceived of the εἰς ἄτοπον απαγωγή/reductio ad absurdum (reduction to absurdity) argument through which an argument or proposition is tested by proving its absurd or ridiculous consequences when it is carried to logical conclusion. The earliest example of a reductio ad absurdum argument can be located in a satirical poem attributed to Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 570–c. 475 BC).
- 2.
See Morgan (2000).
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
The latter in Steiner (2007, 53).
- 6.
More on Einstein’s philosophy of science in https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/einstein-philscience/. Karl Popper, one of the greatest philosophers of science of the twentieth century, was also a social and political philosopher of considerable stature and a self-professed critical-rationalist, see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/. A political-philosophical argument, the positivism dispute (German: Positivismusstreit) started in 1961 between the critical rationalists (Popper, Hans Albert) and the Frankfurt School (Theodor Adorno, Jürgen Habermas) on the methodology of social sciences. The Frankfurt School ‘critical theory,’ drawing on concepts from the Hegelian and Marxian tradition, claims that sociology cannot be severed from its ‘metaphysical’ heritage; empirical questions are necessarily rooted in substantive philosophical issues (Strubenhoff, 2018).
- 7.
Quoted in Porphyrios, see Loukaki (2016a, 48, note 13).
- 8.
- 9.
Besides literature and gender studies, a discipline developed in the 1970s, Sappho is also related to the ‘archaeology’ of the latter. Favouring a rather dry argumentation on patriarchy and power structures, gender studies avoided themes such as empowering processes in which both genders participated, like the Eleusinian Mysteries, the mythical and divine aspect of womanhood, or female archetypes like Antigone, Medea, Electra and Lysistrata (Loukaki, 2019).
- 10.
Elea, also spelled Ὑέλη (Hyele), Roman Velia, ancient city in Lucania, Italy, about 25 miles southeast of Paestum, was home of the Eleatic school of philosophers, including Parmenides and Zeno. Source: https://www.britannica.com/place/Elea.
- 11.
See Abou-El-Seoud (2016).
- 12.
The polis functioned as an urban centre with its surrounding countryside but also as the city-state, the total of geographical territoriality, civic institutions, and as a particular set of social, cultural and political conditions. Both senses of the word were common throughout antiquity.
- 13.
Lobel-Page 31 / Voigt 31 / Gallavotti 2 / Diehl 2 / Bergk 2.
- 14.
- 15.
In contrast to the old, spontaneously developed cities, such as Athens, Sparta and Corinth, with the labyrinthine paths that follow land morphology with irregular blocks plus sacred and public buildings scattered randomly, the colonies of Miletus, the hometown of Hippodamos, as well as the new cities of Magna Grecia (South Italy and Sicily) are characterized by straight streets, regular building blocks and the central location of the public buildings and temples. Equal land distribution in the new homeland also refers to democratic uniformity. Hippodamos, continuing this tradition, shapes in urban terms a philosophical position for the rational organization of city life and the implementation in the urban space of the idea of equality, human measure and rational planning through the paradigm of the city of Piraeus, contributing to the smooth running of the city. Newer cities that followed the standard of Piraeus such as the Thurii, Rhodes, Abdera and Priene are essentially simple variations or improvements to the Piraeus model (Steinhauer, 2000).
- 16.
Homeric poems were codified. Panhellenism was reflected in the rise to prominence of the Delphi oracle and the Panhellenic games. Colonies, particularly in Magna Grecia and Sicily, were thriving.
- 17.
Plato knew Thales as one of the seven sages, as a practical astronomer and a geometer, capable of clever inventions for technical needs. This image is confirmed in Aristophanes but also in Diogenes Laertius. The latter, in his first book said that the Ionian Philosophy began with Anaximander; Diogenes Laertius found Thales wise but did not include him among philosophers. Philosophy was motivated by practical needs, yet there were also mystical trends at work in tandem, see https://www.iep.utm.edu/thales/#H7.
- 18.
The atomist Heraclitus from Ephesus superseded the limits of material monism and, maintaining an idea of a cosmogonic essence, put forward the deeper unity of things, in structure or ordering, to the point of ridiculing those who denied opening up themselves to the cosmic drama.
- 19.
This clashed with Hesiod’s Theogony, though separation between earth and sky was a familiar idea since the latter’s time.
- 20.
Logos (Moira-Necessity) under various guises constantly recurs among philosophical thought, at least up to Plato.
- 21.
In Heraclitus and the other Presocratics.
- 22.
- 23.
In a cathartic manner according to Papaioannou ibid. Myth in tragedy resonates Logos as it indicates that human arbitrariness jeopardizes cosmic foundations (see Papaioannou, 2003, 115).
- 24.
This indeed happened on the small Cycladic island Despotiko in the summer of 2011, see http://www.ethnos.gr/article.asp?catid=22784&subid=2&pubid=63237202.
Poet Giorgos Seferis (1981, 232) wrote of his own experience: Down towards the seashore the ruins all strewn on the ground apart from a few standing columns. I was told that, from the supernatural kouros of the isle of Naxos the body, one piece, and the pelvis, another piece, is in Artemision here; the hand, in the Delos museum; and the toes of the left foot with the base in the British Museum. This represents sufficiently well how many dispersed members one has to collect in one’s brain to form some knowledge of antiquity.
- 25.
Williamson (1995, 48–49) tells in detail the story of the discovery of Sappho’s papyrus texts (among the Oxyrhynchus papyri), mentions the immense editing task necessary in the past, and assesses the possibility of recovering more fragments. Strabo in his Geography called her ‘a unique being: in the whole of history I can think of no other woman who can even remotely match her as a poet’ (cited in Schmidt, 2004, 211).
- 26.
To the Greeks ‘cosmos’ means simultaneously cosmic universe, ontological layout, well-governed polity, fair human relations and beauty; it also expresses the rounded character of Greek education (Papaioannou, 2003, 31).
- 27.
ἐν δὲ λείμων ἰππόβοτος τέθαλεν
ἠρίνοισιν ἄνθεσιν, αἰ δ᾽ ἄηται
μέλλιχα πνέοισιν
ἔνθα δὴ σὺ στέμ‹ματ᾽› ἔλοισα Κύπρι
χρυσίαισιν ἐν κυλίκεσσιν ἄβρως
ὀμ‹με›μείχμενον θαλίαισι νέκταρ
16οἰνοχόαισον.
†τούτοισι τοῖς ἑταίροις ἐμοῖς γε καὶ σοῖς†
Fr. 35
- 28.
Marlowe’s Tamburlaine in Papaioannou (2000, 56–58).
- 29.
For in-depth analysis, see Loukaki (2016b).
- 30.
See the case of Theophrastus's Enquiry into Plants or Historia Plantarum (Greek: Περὶ Φυτῶν Ιστορία, Peri Phyton Historia) who was, along with his mentor Aristotle's History of Animals, Pliny the Elder's Natural History and Dioscorides's De Materia Medica, one of the most important books of natural history written in ancient times, influential in the Renaissance.
- 31.
Ἀστέρων πάντων ὁ κάλλιστος
Ἔσπερε πάντα φέρων ὄσα φαίνολις ἐσκέδασ᾽ αὔως,
†φέρεις ὄιν, φέρεις αἶγα, φέρεις ἄπυ† μάτερι παῖδα.
Lobel-Page104a
- 32.
Fr. 53, and also mentioned in fr. 54.
- 33.
ἀπὺ Σαρδίων...
.... πόλλακι τυῖδε νῶν ἔχοισα
ὤς ποτ’ ἐζώομεν·....
σε θέᾳ σ’ ἰκέλαν, Ἀρι-
γνώτα σᾷ δἐ μάλιστ’ ἔχαιρε μόλπᾳ·
νῦν δἐ Λύδαισιν ἐμπρέπεται γυναί-
κεσσιν ὤς ποτ’ ἀελίω
δύντος ἀ βροδοδάκτυλος σελάννα;
πάντα παρρέχοισ’ ἄστρα φάος δ’ ἐπί-
σχει θάλασσαν ἐπ’ ἀλμύραν
ἴσως καὶ πολυανθέμοις ἀρούραις·
…
πόλλα δὲ ζαφοίταισ’ ἀγάνας ἐπι-
μνάσθεισ’ Ἄθτιδος ἰμέρῳ
λέπταν ποι φρένα κῆρ δ’ ἄσα βόρηται·
Lobel-Page 96/Voigt 96/Diehl 98, Gentili (1990, 83).
- 34.
In Sappho as in Anacreon, love is unrefusable (Gentili 1990, 91). It is the magic, inescapable power of a god who confuses and terrifies.
- 35.
Human or natural beauty is reflection of divine beauty (Giebel 1990, 114).
- 36.
Hesiod equates the time of harvest to the time of their heliacal rising (the time when a star or constellation first becomes visible above the eastern horizon just before sunrise) and the time of sowing to the time of their setting (see Loukaki, 2016b).
- 37.
During the geometric, archaic, and classical periods the festival honoring the goddess would have taken place around 22 May in the Gregorian calendar. The Pleiades rose at the time of the annual festival, around 20 to 25 of May. Since the Orion and the sun were calculated to be visible then from the Sparta temple, the whole cosmos appeared to participate.
- 38.
Such as dry earth and liquid water, hot fire and cold air (Veikos 2016, 86 and elsewhere).
- 39.
Δέδυκε μὲν ἀ σελάννα
καὶ Πληίαδες· μέσαι δὲ
νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχετ’ ὤρα,
ἔγω δὲ μόνα κατεύδω
Diehl 94/Voigt 168b/Cox 48
- 40.
ποικιλόθρον’ ἀθανάτ’ Ἀφρόδιτα,
παῖ Δίος δολόπλοκε, λίσσομαί σε·
μή μ’ ἄσαισι μηδ’ ὀνίαισι δάμνα,
πότνια, θῦμον,
ἀλλὰ τυίδ’ ἔλθ’, αἴ ποτα κἀτέρωτα
τὰς ἔμας αὔδας ἀίοισα πήλοι
ἔκλυες, πάτρος δὲ δόμον λίποισα
χρύσιον ἦλθες
ἄρμ’ ὐπασδεύξαισα· κάλοι δέ σ’ ἆγον
ὤκεες στροῦθοι περὶ γᾶς μελαίνας
πύκνα δίννεντες πτέρ’ ἀπ’ ὠράνω ἴθε-
ρος διὰ μέσσω·
…
1D,191P
- 41.
It is within the context of this anthropomorphism that we can discover one of the roots of reflections on history by Greek thinkers, both early and highly sophisticated. Human acts bring about catastrophes, marked not only by mythology but also by the art of the early Greeks, above all tragedy (Janko 1997).
- 42.
Sappho said to a local woman who did not belong to her thiasos that death would bring her oblivion in both the realm of Hades and the world of men; yet she evidently hoped for a better afterlife for her own circle. Such hopes were entertained because of the close bonds she maintained with gods and particularly with the Muses (Gentili 1990).
- 43.
Friedrich (1978) in The Meaning of Aphrodite explores the importance of Aphrodite for eighth and seventh century BC Greek poetry, particularly that of Homer and Sappho.
- 44.
Hesiod had a vision of the Muses on Helicon.
Bibliography
Abou-El-Seoud, E. (2016). A study guide for Sappho’s fragment 34 (Poetry for Students, vol. 44. Project editor S. Constantakis). Gale.
Cassirer, E. (1955). The philosophy of symbolic forms, vol. 2, Mythical thought. Yale University Press.
Devare, A. (2016). Exploring past myths through Giambattista Vico and Jyotiba Phule. Contexto International, 38(3). http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0102-85292016000300763
Dietrich, B. C. (1983). Divine epiphanies in Homer. Numen, 30(1), 53–79.
Dodds, E. R. (1951). The Greeks and the irrational. University of California Press.
Dossey, L. (2010). The science of premonitions: How knowing the future can help us avoid danger (Kindle ed.). Amazon.com Services.
Einstein, A. (2011). Out of my later years: The scientist, philosopher, and man portrayed through his own words. Philosophical Library/Open Road.
Friedrich, P. (1978). The meaning of Aphrodite. The University of Chicago Press.
Frisby, D. (1988). Fragments of Modernity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Gentili, B. (1990). Poetry and its public in Ancient Greece: From Homer to the fifth century. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Giebel, M. (1990). In Gr. Sappho. Plethron.
Gregory, A. (2013). The Presocratics and the supernatural: Magic, philosophy and science in Early Greece. Bloomsbury.
Janko, J. (1997). Two conceptions of the world in Greek and Roman thought: Cyclicity and degeneration. In M. Teich, R. Porter, & B. Gustaffson (Eds.), Nature and society in historical context (pp. 18–36). Cambridge University Press.
Jin, Y. (2020). Tao, Nature and Man. Springer.
Kakridis, I., & Roussos, E. (Eds.). (2021). Greek mythology (vols. 1–3). Ta Nea.
Kirk, G. S., Raven, J. E., & Schofield, M. (2006). The presocratics. Educational Foundation of National Bank.
Loukaki, A. (1997). Whose genius loci? Contrasting interpretations of the ‘sacred rock of the Athenian Acropolis.’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 87(2), 306–329.
Loukaki, A. (2016a). Living ruins, value conflicts (1st ed., 2008). Routledge.
Loukaki, A. (2016b). The geographical unconscious (1st ed., Ashgate, 2014). Routledge.
Loukaki, A. (2019). In Gr. The ‘move’ of the city and moral dilemmas in ancient heritage protection: The case of Knossos. In Proceedings of the 12th international congress of Cretan studies, 21–26.09.2016. https://12iccs.proceedings.gr/en/proceedings/category/38/34/395
Loukaki, A. (2019). In Gr. Archetypal matriarchal space and present-day perspectives: The female element in Eleusinian sacred spatialities. In A. Afouxenidis, S. Gialis, Th. Iosifides, & E. Kourliouros (Eds.), Geographies in a liquid epoch-Critical essays for space, society, and culture in honour of Lila Leontidou (pp. 420–443). Propobos.
McKirahan, R. D., Jr. (1994). Philosophy before Socrates. Hacket Publishing.
Miller, A. J. (2002). Einstein, Picasso: Space, time, and the beauty that causes havoc. Basic Books.
Morgan, K. A. (2000). Myth and philosophy from the Presocratics to Plato. Cambridge University Press.
Pantermalis, D. (2018). In Gr. Eleusis-The 2018 Exhibition. The Acropolis Museum Editions.
Papaioannou, K. (1995). In Gr. Humans and their shadow. Enallaktikes Ekdoseis.
Papaioannou, K. (2000). In Gr. Cosmos and history. Greek cosmology and western eschatology. Enallaktikes Ekdoseis.
Papaioannou, K. (2003). In Gr. Mass and history. Enallaktikes Ekdoseis.
Papaioannou, K. (2004). In Gr. from the Ancient Greek to the European Humanism. University of Piraeus.
Papaioannou, C. (2009). Art and Civilization in Ancient Greece. Athens: Alternative Editions.
Papaioannou, K. (2016). In Gr. Philosophical essays. Enallakikes Ekdoseis.
Schmidt, M. (2004). The first poets. Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Seferis, G. (1981). In Gr. Straying from Homeric Hymns. In Dokimes (vol. II, pp. 217–248). Ikaros.
Sinos, R. H. (1998). Divine selection: Epiphany and politics in archaic Greece. In C. Dougherty, & L. Kurke (Eds.), Cultural poetics in archaic Greece: Cult, performance, politics (pp. 73–91). Oxford University Press.
Stafford, B. M. (2001). Visual analogy-consciousness as the art of connecting. The MIT Press.
Steiner, G. (2007). In Gr. Nostalgia for the absolute (1st ed. 1974). Agra.
Steinhauer, G. (2000). In Gr. Ancient Piraeus. The city of Themistocles and Hippodamos. In G. A. Steinhauer, S. A. Malikouti, & V. Tsokopoulos (Eds.), Piraeus centre of shipping and culture (pp. 8–123). Ephessos.
Strubenhoff, M. (2018). The positivism dispute in German sociology, 1954–1970. In History of European Ideas, 44(2), 60–276.
Vamvacas, C. J. (2009). The founders of western thought—The Presocratics: A Diachronic parallelism between Presocratic thought and philosophy and the natural sciences. Springer.
Vegetti, M. (2000/2003). History of ancient philosophy (10th ed.). Travlos.
Veikos, Th. (2016). In Gr. The Presocratic philosophy. Gutenberg, Athens
Williamson, M. (1995). Sappho’s immortal daughters. Harvard University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Loukaki, A. (2023). Sappho’s (630–570) Poetics and the Science of Her Time. In: Harry, C.C., Vlahakis, G.N. (eds) Exploring the Contributions of Women in the History of Philosophy, Science, and Literature, Throughout Time. Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39630-4_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39630-4_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-39629-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-39630-4
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)