And losing colour, sense, and breath,
I seem quite languishing in death.”
Longinus calls this the most perfect expression in all ancient literature of the effects of Love. It happens, however, to have nothing to do with Love. For, as Plato’s “love” is merely ecstatic friendship between man and youth, so Sappho’s love is friendship between two women. This is the opinion of Bode and Müller, and it is entirely borne out by the language of the original text.
It has been suggested that Sappho, being a woman, and a Greek woman, could not have addressed such glowing words to a man without violating the current notions of decorum; and hence wrote as if she were a man addressing a woman. But Sappho was one of the Æolian women who had greater liberty than the Athenians; and she was, moreover, a blue-stocking who would not have stuck at such a trifle as shocking Greek notions regarding woman’s privileges. And in some of her poems she does mention a youth “to whom she gave her whole heart, while he requited her passion with cold indifference” (Müller).
One of the Platonists, Maximus Tyrius (dis. 24, p. 297), takes the same view regarding Sappho. “The love of the Lesbian poet,” he says, “what can it be, if we may compare remote with more recent things than the Sokratic art of love? For both appear to promote the same Friendship, she among women, he among men. They both confess they love many, and are captivated by all beauties. For what Alkibiades and Charmides are to Sokrates, Gyrinna and Atthis and Anaktoria are to Sappho.” “Even Sokrates confesses that it was from Sappho that he partly derived his noble views of the enthusiastic love of mental beauty” (Phædon, c. 225).
To one of the girls just referred to, Sappho addresses these words: “Again does the strength-dissolving Eros, that bittersweet, resistless monster, agitate me; but to thee, O Atthis, the thought of me is importunate; thou fliest to Andromeda.” “It is obvious,” says Müller, “that this attachment bears less the character of maternal interest than of passionate love; as amongst Dorians in Sparta and Crete analogous connections between men and youths, in which the latter were trained to noble and manly deeds, were carried on in a language of high-wrought and passionate feeling, which had all the character of an attachment between persons of different sexes. This mixture of feelings, which among nations of a calmer temperament have always been perfectly distinct, is an essential feature of the Greek character.”
Greek Love, i.e. Friendship, being thus tinged and strengthened, as we see in the cases of Sokrates and Alkibiades, Sappho and Atthis, by jealousy, ecstatic adoration, exclusiveness, admiration of personal beauty, and other qualities which modern civilisation has transferred to Romantic Love, we are enabled to understand why Friendship was so much more potent and prevalent in antiquity than it is now, when, having lost these traits through the differentiation of emotions, it seems “insipid to those who have tasted Love.”
The lesson to be learned from this whole discussion on Greek Friendship is of extreme importance to the psychology of Love. It is this: The Greeks were too intellectual and refined not to have at least a vague presentiment of the higher possibilities and charms of imaginative Love. But Greek women—with the rare exceptions referred to—were too stupid to enable the men to realise their vague ideal. Hence they sought it in ardent attachments to youths, who were quick-minded and able to sympathise with their intellectual aspirations. And thus Greek Love became identical with male friendship—the female friendship referred to being a sort of compensating echo.
Greek Love is symbolised in the mythic youth Narcissus, who scorns all the beautiful nymphs that are eager for his caresses, and falls in love with his own image reflected in the water.