The Oxford History Of The Classical World

And many garlands

woven from flowers about your soft neck

[ ] fashioned

And with m[uch] myrrh

from rich flowers [ ]

and royal you rubbed your skin

And on soft beds

tender [ ]

you would satisfy desire [ ]

And there was no [ ] nothing

holy nor [ ]

from which [we] kept away

No grove [ ]

[ ] sound

[ ]'

(fr. 94)

These lines well illustrate Sappho's simple language and presentation. Recollections of shared pleasures
demonstrate that, whatever roles (e.g. music teacher) are alleged on the scanty evidence of certain poems,
she claimed that of lover of girls unashamedly and openly. Presumably audiences knew, and might
include, her current flame, though in two songs (frs. 1, certainly complete, and 31) Sappho, in declaring
love, names no beloved. Girls are named when Sappho's interest is less immediate: Anactoria, whose
absence provokes the love-object's exaltation in fr. 16, or Atthis, recalled as a past flame in fr. 49. Atthis'
part is different in fr. 96, consoling her for the departure of her lover. Solace is drawn from memory of
mutual fondness (cf. fr. 94), but also from the lover's beauty:

now she shines out among the women of Lydia

as sometimes, when the sun has set,

the rosy-fingered moon

outshines all the stars: and its light

spreads over the salt sea

and alike over the many-flowered fields

and the dew falls fair, and in full

bloom are the roses ...

(fr. 96. 6-13)

Despite the image's ambiguous relation to the girl it evocatively conveys her beauty: with Sappho's rococo