LHMP #586 Parker 1993 Sappho Schoolmistress

This is not so much an article about the actual historic Sappho (though bits of that creep in) but rather an investigation into how certain widespread myths and misrepresentations of Sappho arose and spread. In particular it addresses the myth that Sappho was head of an organized school like institution for young girls, either with or without an overlay of formalized pederasty. Even apart from the nominal subject, it presents a strong argument for asking “How do you know? Says who and where?” rather than accepting popular authority. [Note: This is a point I’ve harped on a lot in the field of historic re-enactment. My phrasing is, “If you don’t know how you know something, you don’t really know it.”]

Parker points out that the great majority of Sappho scholarship simply repeats assumptions without examination or contextual evaluation. Another of the author’s points is that Sappho is held to a unique standard of interpretation, with the obvious parallels to other ancient poets ignored in favor of creating special pleading that supports the existing mythology.

[Note: If you want an example of how frustrating it can be to try to untangle layers of echoed mythology, check out my blogs on trying to track down evidence for “lesbian bordellos in 18th century London.”]

The “”Sappho schoolmistress” myth was strongly supported by various 19th and early 20th century scholars who wanted to reject the homoeroticism of her poetry – especially within a modern social context that was becoming concerned about the social dynamics of single-sex boarding schools. Thus Sappho was refashioned as a chaste spinster schoolteacher, devoted platonically to her students but perhaps the subject of their romantic crushes, whose job was to prepare them to return to public life and the expectation of marriage.

As Parker points out (repeatedly in the article) nowhere in any of Sappho’s surviving work is there any mention of teaching, or any context equivalent to a school. Yet scholars who assumed a school context then sifted through the poems to identify motifs from which they could reconstruct a curriculum: music, poetry, social graces, beauty practices. Another part of the myth is the framing that an older Sappho interacted with young (unmarried) girls in a ritualized context, and that Sappho performed her poems in this context.

References to Sappho as a teacher our first found in much later commentary, as from Ovid, however these references do not envision a formal school context. See, for example, Ovid’s “What did Sappho of Lesbos teach the girls except how to love?” (And references in the same passages to other male poets “teaching” subjects are never similarly interpreted as formal education.)

Once a school (or alternatively, a “thiasos” or ritual organization) has been assumed, then scholars interpreted references to rivalry in the poems as indicating schools competing for enrollment, rather than individual romantic rivalry.

The image of Sappho having pederastic relations with much younger girls ignores inconvenient references, such as the Suda that distinguishes one list of names as “companions and friends…for whom she was slandered as having a shameful love” from a separate list of “pupils.” This Suda is part of an extensive tradition of creating a biography for Sappho from the content of her poems – in the absence of more direct evidence.

Another problem of interpretation with respect to assigning ages to the subjects of Sappho’s poetry is the narrow interpretation (in Latin sources) of “puella” as “young girl,” when a wider review of context shows that it could be used just as often for mature women or goddesses, especially when the object of love.

A confounding factor in the interpretation of Sappho’s social context is the pervasive mapping of male social and sexual structures onto women. Thus, the assumption that society on Lesbos in Sappho’s time must have had a female equivalent of the male age-differentiated pederastic relations documented centuries later in entirely different Greek polities. This mapping strongly contributes to the image of a mature Sappho leading and presiding over a following of young girls – whether in support of an interpretation that the relationship was sexual, or in order to refute it.

There are no references in the poetry to suggest that Sappho was older than the other women mentioned. Other than the handful of epithalamia (wedding wongs) in praise of a young bride, there are extremely few references to age at all, and when mentioned it can be in a context recalling Sappho’s own youth.

There is a detailed dissection of several Greek references that do seem to be referring to female age-differentiated relationships (which are certainly fascinating on their own), pointing out the difficulty of assuming that practices on Sappho’s Lesbos followed the same pattern. (They may, they may not, the point being that there is no solid proof.) There are gaps in both time and space between this evidence and what it is applied to. And it is pointed out that the expressions of love and admiration between women in “maiden songs,” which are often used to bolster the idea, are between age-mates.

A section of the article addressing the image of Sappho specifically as a “music teacher” largely rehashes the same arguments as before. Similarly for a more marginal theory that Sappho instructed girls in sensuality and sexuality in preparation for marriage. (If anything, the epithalamia supposed to convey this teaching express regret for leaving girlhood behind for marriage.) Parker connects this “sex education” myth to a long tradition of invoking same-sex sexual initiations as “preparation for marriage” to excuse their inclusion in lesbian pornographic works such as Chorier’s Satyra Sotadica or Cleland’s Fanny Hill.

The article concludes by emphasizing how scholars have artificially isolated Sappho from other ancient Greek poets in order to interpret her life and work in ways that support pre-existing myths. When considered as a peer and equal to male poets the simplest understanding of Sappho is that she was a poet, sharing her work with companions (most likely female) on social occasions, and more rarely as part of a ceremonial context such as weddings.

I’ve left out a lot of the more interesting details of this analysis. The article is worth reading on its own (although it assumes a certain level of background knowledge).