How a girl dances in an Aeolic way, whether she is wearing sandals or not
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Date
February 13, 2021
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Center for Hellenic Studies.
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Citation
Nagy, Gregory. 2021.02.13. "How a girl dances in an Aeolic way, whether she is wearing sandals or not." Classical Inquiries. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.eresource:Classical_Inquiries.
Abstract
In this brief essay, I consider again the beautiful sandals worn by the girl from Lesbos who is described in a song of Anacreon that I analyzed in my previous essay for Classical Inquiries (Nagy 2021.02.06). Even though the poetic dialect of Anacreon is Ionic, the sandals worn by the girl are described in this song with a word that is shaped in the Aeolic dialect of Sappho. I argue that we see here a Sapphic “signature” for these sandals, signaling that the girl is pictured as dancing, and that she is dancing in a way that girls are imagined as dancing in the songs of Sappho—whether or not they are wearing sandals.
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Classical Inquiries
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