Can Sappho be freed from receivership? Part Two

Abstract

Continuing the essay that started with Part One, I consider once again here in Part Two the first word in Song 1 of Sappho, where the goddess Aphrodite is invoked as poikiló-thronos, and I return once again to my proposed interpretation of this word as ‘wearing [a dress decorated with] pattern-woven flowers’. In the illustration for Part One, I already showed a picturing of such a mode of dress in a vase painting where Aphrodite is seen wearing a woolen himation or ‘shawl’ wrapped around her and covering her from the waist down. Observing the floral patterns that decorate her shawl, I now show, as a cover illustration for Part Two, a comparable vase painting. This time, we see the picturing of a cult statue of Aphrodite, whose toes seemingly come to life as they curl over the edge of the pedestal on which she takes her stand, and, this time around, the goddess is wearing a full-body gown, which is decorated, once again, with floral patterns. I was alerted to this point of comparison by my colleague Natasha Bershadsky, whose generous ongoing advice about comparanda between representations in the visual and the verbal arts has been for me a most treasured resource. This picture of Aphrodite, as I will argue here in Part Two, is relevant to the ancient reception of Sappho in the ancient world—which I continue to distinguish, as in Part One, from any would-be receivership of her songs in our own world.