That she would not come back again,
Unbound their curls; and all in tears,
They cut them off with sharpened shears.
V. SAPPHO IN ART
The high regard of the ancients and moderns for Sappho appears especially in art. In olden days she was honored in town-hall and library. Many a statue and bust of her was erected and she was one of the few historical characters who were painted on Greek vases, which even quote her verses. She was sculptured also in terra-cotta and bronze.[103] It is well established[104] that her image was engraved on coins of Eresus and Mytilene,—a unique honor in early Greek days. Many ([Pl. 10, 11]) in the British Museum, in Paris, and elsewhere[105] bear representations sometimes of her head on the obverse with the lyre on the reverse, and sometimes her full figure standing or sitting. They differ much in the manner of the arrangement of her coiffure, some even showing the hair covered by a kerchief, a fashion still prevalent in modern Lesbus. They may be traced back to different types. Those which bear her name date from Roman Imperial times. In general Furtwängler[106] is right in contending that it was not the custom to honor distinguished persons in such a manner before the days of Alexander. But the beautiful head which appears on early Greek coins of Mytilene of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. may easily be Sappho and not her patron Aphrodite, even in cases where the type is adapted to that of the goddess of love. The lyre on the reverse and the individual features which resemble some of the busts of Sappho point that way. The beautiful face on the old coins was copied from some statue, perhaps one that was even earlier than that of Silanion. Farnell well says:[107] “the later hero cults of Homer at Smyrna, Sappho at Lesbus, and Aristotle at Stageira reveal the deep conviction of the Hellenic spirit that science and art are divine powers.” If the head on these Mytilenaean coins is really Sappho, it is a silent but eloquent testimony to the reverence her name acquired after her death and to the perfection of her living work.
The oldest possible representation of Sappho with which I am acquainted is an archaic terra-cotta relief from Melos in the British Museum.[108] It dates only a few years after Sappho’s time, and though not inscribed it may represent Sappho and Alcaeus. Sappho appears as a slender lady of average height (not of short stature as Ovid says), dressed in a long Ionic woven tunic and wearing sandals. She sits with lyre in left hand and plectrum in right, and the bearded Alcaeus stands before her with bowl in left and extending his right hand. He seems to be expressing with a smile his admiration of her new poetry, so different from his own archaic measure. There is probably no reference, as in the case of the Munich vase from Sicily,[109] to the famous lines which we have quoted ([p. 27]). On this vase the names Sapho (so spelt) and Alcaeus are painted beside the tall and stately figures who appear with lyre and plectrum. Sappho seems to be rebuking with almost a pouting expression her fellow-townsman Alcaeus, who bows his head as she speaks to him the famous lines. This pictorial translation of her verses and other representations show her great popularity in Athens in the fifth century B.C. This Munich psycter or cooling mixing-bowl ([Pl. 12]) for wine may date as late as 460 B.C. and has been attributed to a fictitious lady painter of the Free Style by Hauser, but his attribution has not been generally accepted.[110] Furtwängler was probably right in connecting the vase with the Brygus painter. My learned friend, the great Oxford expert on vases, Mr. J. D. Beazley writes me that very likely it was not by the Brygus painter himself, but surely in his manner. On an earlier vase, now in the Czartoryski collection in Cracow ([Pl. 13]), dating from the end of the sixth or the beginning of the fifth century B.C., according to Beazley a vase roughly related in style to the Nicoxenus painter, a contemporary of Euthymides, we have the earliest certain representation of Sappho.[111] She is a tall, draped figure with smiling countenance, walking to right and holding a seven-stringed lyre in her left hand and a plectrum in her right. She appears on only this one black-figured vase, which would seem to indicate that she did not become popular in Athens till long after her death, when red-figured vases were the vogue. The story of Solon adds testimony to the same effect, and probably a corpus or collection of her writings used by the later Alexandrian editions was in the book-stalls at Athens even in the last years of the sixth century. Otherwise it is difficult to account for her frequent portrayal on Attic red-figured vases. The lost Middleton vase,[112] ([Pl. 14]), probably of the South Italian (Lucanian) Style, shows Sappho, whose name is now thus spelt, seated on a four-legged stool while a nude winged Eros hastens towards her with a wreath. The painter probably knew the poems of Sappho which pictured Eros as bitter-sweet, and Sappho’s other word-pictures of the sorrows of love, for he has labelled Eros “wretched.” One thinks of Horace’s querentem Sappho puellis de popularibus. Mr. Beazley, however, suspects the inscription talas, and thinks that kalos (beautiful) was written. It is greatly to be hoped that the vase will soon be found again so that we can have a rereading of the letters. On the Michaelis vase in late Polygnotan style,[113] which is in the Jatta collection at Ruvo in Italy ([Pl. 15]), we possibly have an apotheosis of Sappho. Aphrodite is painted with a cupid on her right shoulder like the Aphrodite of the Parthenon frieze, judging the contest of Thamyris. Near Apollo are three Muses, and near Thamyris are four. Sappho is evidently leaning for support on Aphrodite, receiving a little dove from a little Eros, and is pictured as a Muse herself, as in Plato’s epigram. On another red-figured vase[114] in private possession, Sappho is in the midst of her pupils.
Several vases even show knowledge of her writings. The most important is the hydria or water-jar in Athens ([Pl. 16]), dating about 430 B.C.,[115] which Mr. Beazley would put in the group of Polygnotus, somewhat in the style of the Hector painter, though not by him. Sappho is seated on a light-backed chair or klismos; she is reading from a papyrus roll, while Nicopolis behind holds a wreath over her head. Two maidens stand in front, one, Callis, holding a lyre. Scholars have long tried to make sense out of the letters on the papyrus, and several, such as Comparetti and Aly, have considered them un-Sapphic; but Edmonds, the great English expert on Sappho, has got a new reading for the last word and thinks this is column 1 of a book entitled Winged Words, a phrase borrowed from Homer. The verses are an introductory poem to Sappho’s works with an invocation to the Gods, after which follows the verse: “The words I begin are words of air, but for all that, good to hear.” I do not feel that the solution is satisfactory or Sapphic, and an examination of the vase itself proves that Edmonds’ reading will not stand; but no one has yet made a better proposal. On another vase, in the Louvre, attributed to Euphronius[116] we have an echo of Sappho in the words (E. 23), “I long and I yearn.” A beautiful fifth century cylix ([Pl. 9]) by the erudite and versatile Sotades,[117] whose wonderful signed terra-cotta horse, mounted by an Amazon, has recently been brought to Boston from Meroe in Egypt, pictures a girl on tiptoe trying to pluck the sweet apple which is reddening on the topmost bough. I have no doubt that Sotades was illustrating Sappho’s song.
Possibly on the so-called Steinhauser terra-cotta fragment[118] the seated figure is Sappho; she is nude above the waist and holds her lyre in her right hand. She is looking into the air enraptured and sublimely inspired.