A Lecture delivered before
the Classical Association
of Victoria, 1913.
SAPPHO
T. G. TUCKER,
LITT.D. (CAMB.), HON. LITT.D. (DUBLIN)
Professor of Classical Philology in the University of
Melbourne
MELBOURNE
THOMAS C. LOTHIAN
1914
PRINTED IN ENGLAND
Copyright.
First Edition, May 1914.
7
It is hardly possible to realise andjudge of Sappho without realisingher environment. The picturemust have its background, and thebackground is Lesbos about the year600 B.C. One may well regret neverto have seen the island now calledMytilini, but known in ancient timesas Lesbos. There are, however, descriptionsnot a few, and with thesewe must perforce be satisfied. Onthe map it lies there in the Ægean8Sea, a sort of triangle with roundededges, pierced deeply on the south bytwo deep lochs or fiords, while towardeach of its three angles it risesinto mountains of from two to threethousand feet in height. One wayit stretches some thirty-five miles,the other some twenty-five.
It is twenty-five centuries ago sincethis island was the home of Sappho,of Alcæus, and of a whole school ofthe most finished lyric poetry andmusic ever heard in Greece. Fromits northern shore, across only sevenmiles of laughing sea, the poetessmight every day look upon the Troad,the land of Homeric legend; and9in the North-East distance, over thebroadening strait, rose the storiedcrest of “many-fountained Ida.” Theair was clear with that translucency ofwhich Athens also boasted, and inwhich the Athenian poet rightly orwrongly found one cause of theAthenian intellectual brilliancy. Theclimate was, and still is, famous for itsmildness and salubrity. The Lesbiansoil was, and still is, rich in corn andoil and wine, in figs and olives, inbuilding-wood and tinted marble. Itwas eminently a land of flowers andaromatic plants, of the rose and theiris, the myrtle and the violet, andthe Lesbians would seem to have10loved and cultivated flowers muchas they are loved and cultivated inJapan.
Such was the land. The Greeks whoinhabited it belonged apparently tothat Achæan-Æolian branch whichwas the first to cross from Europe tothe north-west Ægæan and to oust,or plant colonies among, the oldernameless—perhaps “Pelasgian”—occupants.This is not the place todiscuss the tribal or even racial differenceswhich once existed betweenÆolian, Ionian, and Dorian Greeks.Their divergence of character wasgreat; it was of the first significanceas exhibited in war, in social life, in11art. The fact that each division spokethe Greek tongue, though with variousaccents and idioms, is no longer heldas proof that their racial origin andcapacity were the same. Betweenthe Greek of Lesbos and the Greek ofSparta there were differences in temper,in adaptability, and in taste, as greatas those between the English-speakingIrishman, with his nimble sympathiesand his ready eloquence and wit,and the slower if surer Saxon of Mid-lothian.If we touch upon this questionhere, it is mer