Page:The Poems of Sappho (1924).djvu/22

16 comparatively young when she returned to Mytilene, for the tradition is that she soon afterwards married a man called Cercolas, who came from the island of Andros, and that later she had a daughter whom she named Cleis, after her own mother. One of the surviving poetical fragments refers to this daughter by name, but nothing more is known about her. To judge by the absence of any further reference to Cercolas, it may be inferred that he played no very important part in the life of Sappho, or that possibly he did not live very long. In any case, history gives us no later information concerning him. One episode, until comparatively recently always included in biographical accounts of the poetess, is that associating her name with the possibly mythical Phaon. Although this story of Sappho’s alleged love for Phaon, who according to tradition was a boatman endowed with unusual physical beauty, was prevalent in ancient and mediaeval times, and although it helped to inspire the poetical efforts of many writers and has been handed down to very recent times as if it had some authentic foundation, there is no real reason to accept as true the statement that Sappho ever even saw the Leucadian promontory, much less leaped from it as the Phaon legend suggests. The story is no doubt a myth founded on an allegory tricked out in the meretricious trappings of mediocre poetical efforts, and it is probable that any other name than that of Sappho would have served as the incarnation of scorned femininity in the poems upon this