About the same time Martial (c. 40-104 A.D.) cites a poem[149] of Canius on Sappho: “Sappho the lover praised a poetess: more pure is Theophila, yet Sappho was not more learned” (Ker).
In the second century A.D. Sappho was especially popular. In the time of Hadrian, Dracon of Stratonicea wrote a book about Sappho’s metres. In the days of Plutarch[150] the songs of Sappho were often sung at dinner parties. And Aulus Gellius (170 A.D.) in his Attic Nights[151] shows us that Sappho was all the rage in his day as in the time of Plutarch. It was the custom “after the chief courses were disposed of and the time was come for wine ... to have delightful renderings of a number of the songs of Anacreon and Sappho.” In the second century many writers on grammar, such as Apollonius Dyscolus and his son Herodian, Hephaestion (on metre), Demetrius (perhaps first century A.D.), Hermogenes, Maximus of Tyre, and Aristides (on rhetoric), Aelian, Pausanias, and Pollux quote Sappho abundantly. The great satirist Lucian (c. 120-c. 200 A.D.) calls her “the delicious glory of the Lesbians,”[152] makes her the standard for ladies of learning who write poems, and has her contribute to one of his pictures “the elegance of life.”[153] In Loves (I, p. 905) he uses almost the very first words of the second ode. That Galen, another writer of the second century A.D., who knew not only medicine but also the popularity of Sappho, was speaking with authority on literature when he said that Sappho was “the poetess,” is shown by the fact that most of the papyri with quotations from Sappho date from his time or from the third century, the century when Athenaeus and Philostratus, who cited much from Sappho, were living.
In the fourth century Eusebius, Themistius, and the Emperor Julian, as well as Himerius, often quote her. Ausonius in Idyl VI says:
Et de nimboso saltum Leucate minatur
Mascula Lesbiacis Sappho peritura sagittis.
Claudian in his work on the Marriage of Honorius and Mary (ll. 229-235) makes Mary “never cease under her mother’s guidance to unroll the writers of Rome and Greece, all that old Homer sang, or Thracian Orpheus, or that Sappho set to music with Lesbian quill” (Platnauer). In the fifth century the Christian writer Synesius and that compiler of chrestomathies Stobaeus often quote from Sappho. There is nothing to be gained by giving a long list of the writers on technical subjects to whom we owe so many fragments of Sappho not found on papyrus or parchment. Enough have been cited to prove that Sappho was much read in the first four and even the fifth centuries A.D. Himerius[154] especially proves her popularity in the fourth century, for he rewrites many of her songs in poetic prose and makes much use of Sapphic epithets and repetitions of words. The fragments (E. 68, 101) have influenced him in his Orations,[155] and in the epithalamium,[156] which he dedicated to his friend Severus in 354 A.D., Sappho’s influence is very apparent ([see above pp. 88 ff.]). The bride is likened to an apple and the bridegroom to Achilles, although in the fragments preserved we have no Achilles but rather Ares.
The many epigrams[157] referring to Sappho, from Plato’s couplet written in the fourth century B.C. to the time of Paul the Silentiary (who died 575 A.D.), some of which we have quoted above, bear out the testimony for Sappho’s continuous influence through these thousand years; and now we can trace the reading of Sappho down to the seventh century, thanks to the finding in Egypt of two manuscripts of that century (E. 34, 82-86). Probably, however, Sappho’s works were not much read even as early as the end of the sixth century. If so, Paul the Silentiary would never have written the epigram that appears in the Greek Anthology.[158] I give a literal translation: “Soft Sappho’s kisses; soft the embraces of her snowy limbs, soft every part of her, but her soul is of unyielding adamant. For her love stops at her lips; the rest belongs to her virginity. And who could endure this? Perhaps one who has borne it, will endure the thirst of Tantalus easily.” As Professor Gildersleeve[159] says: “Could Paulus have ever read anything of burning Sappho? We often envy the Byzantines their richer stores, but they seem to have been more familiar with Menander than with the early lyrists.... Tell us, Pothos and Himeros, why has Paulus taken the name of Sappho in vain? We forgive him for playing with Theocritus’ Galatea but he ought to have let Sappho sleep alone.” Perhaps Paulus had heard of the question debated in school and society ever since the days of Didymus; and so he came to her defence with an interesting compromise on her tantalizing chastity.