In France, Claude Ramey (1801) exhibited a seated statue; Duret (1806), a Sappho writing to Phaon; Beauvallet (1817), a bust; Diebolt (1848), a dying Sappho of noble and poetical expression. Other statues of Sappho were made and exhibited in the Salon by Laurent (1849), Grootaers (1852), Travaux (1852, now in the Louvre), Aizelin (1853, bronze), Loison (1859), Grabowski (1859), Clésinger (1859, three statues, “Sappho singing her last song, Seated on the Leucadian rock,” “The youth of Sappho,” and a polychrome statue), Robinet (1861), Doriot (1872), and Signora Maraini. In America, too, from the days of Story and Hezekiah Augur to the bronze doors of the new Detroit Public Library Sappho has been a subject for sculpture. Many are the busts which are inscribed to-day with the name of Sappho, such as that by A. Gennai in the possession of Mrs. W. B. Hill of Baltimore, or that by Sheldon.
In painting, though not often a subject for the greatest painters, Sappho was represented in Greek and Roman days and ever since right down to the most famous modern picture of her and her pupils by Alma Tadema, of which we have given a description above ([p. 32]). Several pictures, such as Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love, have been supposed by great critics to represent Sappho, but it is difficult to agree with Poppelreuter that Titian really meant to paint a Naiad counselling Sappho, who is lamenting her love in the forest, to take the Leucadian leap.[134] In some cases fortunately the painters themselves have labelled them. Raphael is perhaps the greatest painter who pictured her. He brings her significantly in his Parnassus ([Pl. 24]) into juxtaposition with Petrarch, who dedicated four verses of his tenth eclogue to her ([see p. 136]). She is represented prominently to the left of the doorway, resting her left arm on it and holding in her left hand a papyrus roll with the name Sappho upon it. Other minor painters who have painted Sappho are Treshain (1683, “The Adventures of Sappho”), Ansiaux (1801), Ducis (1812), Vafflard (1819, “Sappho rescued from the water by a stranger”), Girodet (1828, a series of compositions from her first love affair to the legendary leap), Lafond (1831), Vien (1833, “Sappho playing the lyre,” and “Sappho reciting to Phaon”), Chasseriau (1850), Chautard (1855), Agneni (1857, “Sappho rescued from the water by the Nereids”), Credès (1859), Kauffmann (two beautiful pictures, “Sappho inspired by love” and “Sappho talking with Homer;” these like many of the other pictures were also engraved). Barrias painted a sleeping, nude Sappho, with her lyre by her side, and represents her perhaps repeating the words: “The silver moon is set; The Pleiades are gone; Half the long night is spent, and yet I lie alone” (Merivale). Other painters of Sappho are Fragonard, Gros, Devosge, Bartolazzi, Picou (1863), Loir (1864), Chifflart (1865), Bertrand (1867, “Death of Sappho”), Gastaldi (1873, “Sappho meditating suicide”), Gleyre (“Couch of Sappho”). Hector Leroux in his “School of Sappho” represents her standing in the atrium of a Roman house, with lyre in her left hand, on a platform inscribed with the name of the Lesbian Sappho, evidently giving instruction to her many friends and pupils who stand and sit in various postures in the audience.
This is only a partial list and could easily be extended, but enough has been said to show that a knowledge of the real Sappho and her writings and the legends connected with her will help one to be a sound and intelligent critic of much in the realm of art.
VI. SAPPHO’S INFLUENCE ON GREEK AND ROMAN LITERATURE
If Sappho’s influence on art has been considerable, her place in literature has been far more remarkable. Nearly every thought in her fragments, which were known before the recent papyrus additions, has been borrowed or adapted by some ancient Greek or Roman poet or some modern poet in English, Italian, French, German, or modern Greek. Even the Spanish, Scandinavians, and Russians ([p. 233]) know her, though not so well acquainted with her as the authors of other nations. A very remarkable thing is that her writings have in all the ages been almost never unfavorably criticized from a literary point of view, no matter how her character was regarded. We have already, in giving a résumé of Sappho’s writings, cited many an echo, many a translation, many a dilation or dilution, but have seen that the real flavor of Sappho’s Greek cannot be transferred to any other language. In this and succeeding chapters, however, some of the names of writers who owe much to her will be brought together. She herself was original and coined many a new idea, many a new word, and perfected a new form of metre. Just as a modern poet, Tennyson for example, is indebted to his predecessors, Keats, Shelley, Shakespeare, for images and ideas, she was somewhat indebted in language and thought to Homer,[135] who filled the fancy of the Lesbians and was himself, probably, born at the neighboring Smyrna. She took little from Hesiod, although we find a few echoes of him which I cite in a note.[136] On the other hand, succeeding poets of the next hundred years seem to have taken little from her. Mimnermus probably knew the second ode, and his lines are included in the Corpus of Theognis.[137] If the fragment “Gold is Zeus’ child, no moth nor worm devours it (E. 110)” is Sappho’s and not originally written by Pindar himself, then Pindar took that idea from Sappho.[138] Herodotus tells the story of Rhodopis, and Plato, who would exclude poets from his ideal state, makes Socrates speak in the Phaedrus of the beautiful Sappho as one of the wise ancients, and he calls her the Tenth Muse in his famous epigram.
Aristotle, who refers to her three times, is the first one definitely to quote her verses and that twice in the Rhetoric (E. 91, 119, and [p. 159]). Aristotle’s pupil Theophrastus, who was also born in Eresus cites her (περὶ λέξεως, Mayer, 1910) as the representative of charm in all its forms. That essential element of charm is emphasized by Plutarch and by Demetrius, the rhetorician of the first century A.D., in his Essay on Style. Another pupil of Aristotle, Chamaeleon (310 B.C.), wrote a book about her.
Sappho’s influence was not great in the field of Greek and Roman tragedy. Aeschylus and Sophocles betray no acquaintance with her, but Euripides was considerably affected by her verses on love. When he writes in Electra (l. 67), “I consider you a friend equal to the gods,” he is thinking of the first verse of Sappho’s second song. Plutarch cites Aristoxenus as saying that the tragedians learned the mixed Lydian mode from her. In comedy Aristophanes had a slight acquaintance with her, and he was thinking of Sappho’s first hymn in his suffragette play Lysistrata (ll. 723 ff.), where a love-sick devotee of Aphrodite endeavors to escape from the Acropolis on the back of the sparrow, Aphrodite’s bird. Epicrates dealt with Sappho in his comedy, Anti-Laïs, before the year 392 B.C.; and Athenaeus applies the words of Epicrates to himself:
And all the songs that Sappho sang so sweetly,