The Language of Lesbian Lyric: Local Tradition and Epic Influence in Sappho and Alcaeus

Abstract

This dissertation provides a comprehensive reassessment of the poetic language of the two Lesbian poets, Sappho and Alcaeus. Their poems are still widely considered to mostly reflect the spoken Lesbian dialect of the day, with minor epic intrusions. This view contrasts with our current understanding of the dialects of Greek poetry as formalized literary languages, grounded in but not identical to the spoken dialects of Greek and associated with specific poetic genres. How we conceive the language of Sappho and Alcaeus affects how we reconstruct the poetic tradition that preceded them and more broadly the relationship between Lesbian lyric and epic poetry. This dissertation analyzes the language of Sappho and Alcaeus focusing on traits guaranteed by the meter to show how linguistic variation was inherent to how they composed. Chapter 1 examines the developments internal to the Lesbian dialect that the poets exploit for metrical flexibility. Chapter 2 focuses on borrowings into the diction of Lesbian poetry that we can trace to Ionic and epic poetry. Chapter 3 discusses the overall distribution of this evidence in the corpus of the two poets and how it informs our perspective on the existence of a local Aeolic tradition of poetry in Lesbos before Sappho and Alcaeus and its relationship with epic poetry, using Sappho 44 (the wedding of Hector and Andromache) as case study. In particular, this dissertation argues for the existence of native processes of metrical lengthening and metrical shortening within the poetic diction of Sappho and Alcaeus. The availability of these artificial processes—alongside archaisms—to both Sappho and Alcaeus points to a long-standing poetic tradition in Lesbos. At the same time, the quality and distribution of epic borrowings in Sappho and Alcaeus’s poetry suggests both active engagement and deep familiarity with the compositional grammar of epic poetry. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that the language of Lesbian lyric is a formalized literary language, with links to both an older, lost tradition local to Lesbos and epic poetry. Both Sappho and Alcaeus show their mastery of this linguistic medium, suggesting that they share the same poetic training and background.