Thinking of Desiderata While Tracing the Reception of Sappho in the Ancient World

Abstract

For a picture that illustrates one of my many desiderata as I go about tracing the ancient reception of Sappho, I have chosen a line-drawing that shows a close-up from a vase painting. The painting, if we were to view it in its entirety, centers on the youthful male beauty Adonis. In the moment that is captured by the painter, Adonis is being kissed by a personified Eros, a cupid. Meanwhile, framing the figure of Adonis on both sides are two female beauties—or I could just as readily say two girls—whose names, indicated by lettering placed next to their beautiful gures, are likewise personifications—the girl to our left is Eunomia and the girl to our right is Eukleia. In the close-up, we see Eukleia, personified as ‘she who has genuine kleos’—where kleos means ‘glory of song’. The girl is holding a lyre in her left hand, and she is fingering the strings of her lyre while a little bird is perched on the index finger of her right hand. In the light of related essays of mine that I have listed in the Bibliography below, a girl like Eukleia could be imagined, I would like to think, as Sappho herself.