Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/194

172 172 HISTORY OF THE is the Ionic metre (Ionici a minori), which he used to express the emo- tions of his passionate nature *. § 6. We come now to the other leader of the Lesbian school of poetry, Sappho, the object of the admiration of all antiquity. There is no doubt that she belonged to the island of Lesbos ; and the question whether she was born in Eresos or Mytilene is best resolved by supposing that she went from the lesser city to the greater, at the time of her greatest celebrity. She was nearly contemporaneous with her country- man Alcfceus, although she must have been younger, as she was still alive in 01. 53. 568 b. c. About Ol. 46. 596 b. c, she sailed from Mytilene in order to take refuge in Sicily f, but the cause of her flight is unknown ; she must at that time have been in the bloom of her life. At a much later period she produced the ode mentioned by Herodotus, in which she reproached her brother Charaxus for having purchased Rhodopis the courtesan from her master, and for having been induced by his love to emancipate her. This Rhodopis dwelt at Naucratis, and the event fails at a time when a frequent intercourse with Egypt had already been established by the Greeks. Now the government of Amasis (who permitted the Greeks in Egypt to dwell in Naucratis) began in Olymp. 52. 4. 569 b. c, and the return of Charaxus from the journey to Mytilene, where his sister received him with this reproachful and satirical ode, must have happened some years later. The severity with which Sappho censured her brother for his love for a courtesan enables us to form some judgment of the principles by which she guided her own conduct. For although at the time when she wrote this ode to Charaxus, the fire of youthful passion had been quenched in her breast. ; yet she never could have reproached her brother with his love for a courtesan, if she had herself been a courtesan in her youth ; and Charaxus might have retaliated upon her with additional strength. Besides we may plainly discern the feeling of unimpeached honour due to a freeborn and well educated maiden, in the verses already quoted, which refer to the relation of Alcaeus and Sappho. Alceeus testifies that the attractions and loveliness of Sappho did not derogate from her moral worth when he calls her " violet-crowned, pure, sweetly smiling Sappho §.'' These genuine testimonies are indeed opposed to the ac- counts of many later writers, who represent Sappho as a courtesan. To refute this opinion, we will not resort to the expedient employed by Every ten of these Ionic feet formed a system, as Bentley has arranged Horat. Carm. III. 12. Horace, however, has not in this ode succeeded in catching the genuine tone of the metre. See ahove ch. II. § 7. f Marrii. Par. ep. 36. comp. Ovid Her. xv. 51. The date of the Parian marble is lost; hut it must have been between Olymp. 4-4. 1. and 47.2. I II. 135, and see Athen. xiii. p. 5f)fi. Rhodopis or Doricha was the fellow slave of ^sop, who flourished at the same time (Olymp. 52). § 'lb7rXo%', ocyva, ftsiXi%cf/.i3i i'«T<p«r. See above § 4.
 * Fragm. 36. Blomf. 69. Matth.