The Oxford History Of The Classical World

composed a witty male-chauvinist piece whose 118 lines compare women unflatteringly with various
animals (fr. 7). Bitter invective marks one iambic fragment of Anacreon (fr. 318); another (fr. 335),
addressing a reluctant girl as an unbroken filly in an extended double-entendre, exhibits the wit that
dominates his melic poetry (below, p. 106). But the most colourful exploiter of autobiography and
invective was Hipponax of Ephesus (C. 540 BC). Prayers to Hermes, god of thieves, and sordid orgies
with the mistress of the sculptor Bupalus, take us lower in society than Hipponax probably lived. Perhaps
he carried Archilochus' mixture of fantasy and reality one stage further, and complete poems might show
us an interesting coda to the iambic tradition.

Alongside iambic recitation and aulos-accompanied elegy, both composed for individual performance,
there flourished singing to the lyre, 'melic' poetry. This was sometimes sung by individuals (like the songs
of Sappho and Alcaeus) and sometimes by choirs (like those of Alcman and Pindar). Whereas elegy
originated in Ionia and retained features of the Ionic dialect even in Dorian Megara and Sparta, melic
poetry was at home everywhere. When individuals sang to the lyre, therefore, their vernacular was used,
which aided the directness often praised in archaic monody. Apart from some work-songs, most monody
seems, like elegy, to be intended for symposia or comparable female gatherings. Such gatherings existed,
at least in Lesbos, since it is from Sappho of Lesbos (c. 600 B.C.) that some of our masterpieces come.

Sappho's poetic personality is as clear as her life is obscure. The singer is forever in love: Aphrodite's
patronage helps her win girls who reject her (fr. 1); for her the love-object outshines anything else
mankind admires (fr. 16); desire precipitates complete physical collapse (fr. 31). Love is not simply the
centre of Sappho's universe, it is her universe. When not creating song around 'her own' feelings she
presents herself consoling a girl-friend leaving her in tears:

'and honestly I want to die'

• so sobbing, many times, she left me

and she said this [to me]

'My god! what awful things are happening to us:

Sappho, I swear I am leaving you against my will.'

And I replied to her in these words:

'Go with a light heart, and with memories

of me, for you know how we cherished you.

And if not, then I want to

remind you [ ]

[ ] and we had good times

For ma[ny garland]s of violets

and roses [ ] together

and [ ] you put on beside me