The Complete Poems of Sappho

Sappho: (born 630 BC) Daughter of Simon or Eumenos or Eerigyios or Ecrytos or Semos or Camon or Etarchos or Skamandronymos. Her mother was Cleis. She was a woman of the island of Lesbos, from the town of Eresus, and was a poet of the lyre.She flourished during the 42nd Olympic games, when Alcaues, Stesichorus, and Pittacus were also living. Her three brothers were Larches, Charades, and Ergyius. She was married to a very wealthy man named Cerkylas who traded from the island of Andros. Her daughter was Cleis. She had three companions and friends named Atthis, Telesipps, and Megera, but her relations with them earned her a shameful reputation. Her pupils were Angora of Miletus, Gongyla of Colophon and Eunica of Salamis. She composed nine books of lyric songs and invented the plectrum. She also composed epigrams, elegiac verse, iambic poetry and solo songs. 

 -Suda Encyclopedia (Tenth Century AD) 1

At face value it seems like we’re unsure of Sappho’s paternity; she has some girl friends that got her into trouble; she was a prolific writer, and contributed three major inventions to the lyrical/ musical world: the plectron, the pektis and the mixolydian mode. Upon further review, we realize that the name of her husband is actually a dirty joke, Cerkylas of Andros being loosely translated as “Prick from the Isle of Man.”2  Almost everything we know of her is suspect except for her own words and of these we have roughly one percent in fragmentary form and only one poem, "The Ode to Aphrodite" in its entirety. She is more of an enigma than anything else. 

I say “suspect” because many of her contemporary male writers were not huge fans. Since there was no way to refute her talent, her ancient contemporaries often slandered her. “She was called a prostitute and mocked on stage as immoral. And in a world where males prized a woman’s fair skin and well shaped form, second only to her modesty, she was described as short, dark, and ugly, even though the earliest portraits of her on vases portray a beautiful woman.” 3  Lucian describes her as a “nightingale with deformed wings enfolding a tiny body.” A rumor was spread that she jumped off a cliff because of the unrequited love of the boatman Phaon. Tough crowd. 

Return, Gongyla - Fragment 22

A deed

your lovely face

if not, winter

and no pain

I bid you, Abathis, 

take up the lyre

and sing of Gongyla as again desire 

floats around you

the beautiful. When you saw her dress

it excited you. I’m happy.

The Kypros-born once

blamed me

for praying 

this word: 

I want 

Willis Barnstone (2006) 

By the time we get to the first century AD, Seneca seems exhausted by the endless uninformed besmirching.

The grammarian Didymus wrote four thousand books. I would pity anyone who simply had to read so many supremely empty works. Among his book he inquires about the birthplace of Homer, the real mother of Aeneas, whether Sappho was a prostitute,and other things which you ought to forget if you know them. And then people complain that life is short. 

-Seneca Letters to Lucile's Ep.88

Ann Carson echoes Seneca when talking about Sappho’s sexuality: “Controversies about her personal ethics and way of life have taken up a lot of people’s time throughout the history of Sapphic scholarship. It seems that she knew and loved women a deeply as she did music. Can we leave the matter there?”4  Carson thinks such inquiries are merely a modern obsession that have little place and add little value to the discussion.

Despite the frenzy of intrigue she created, and of which we have an historical breadcrumb trail, she also left a trail of admirers. Her work is astounding. Plato calls her the Tenth Muse, and even our misogynistic friend Aristotle has to concede that she has earned her place in history as wise and honored, “although she was a woman.” (Aristotle Rhetoric 1398B)

In a world where everything from Homer to Augustine was written by men, what Sappho did was significant. Sappho provided a window into the lives of her contemporary fellow women, her poems brought the epic narrative into the home and took their place at the hearth. They are poems of friendship and love, desire and heartache. 

Ode to Aphrodite - Fragment 1

Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind,

child of Zeus, who twists lures, I beg you

do not break my heart

but come here if ever before

you caught my voice far off

and listening left your father’s

golden house and came,

yoking your car. And fine birds brought you, 

quick sparrows over the black earth

whipping their wings down the sky

through midair-

they arrived. But you, O blessed one, 

smiled in your deathless face

and asked what (now again) I have suffered and why

(now again) I am calling out

and what I want to happen most of all

in my crazy heart. Whom should I persuade (now again)

to lead you back into her love? Who, O

Sappho, is wronging  you?

For if she flees, soon she will pursue.

If she refuses gifts, rather will she give them. 

If she does not love, soon she will love 

even unwillingly. 

Come to me now: loose me from hard 

care and all my heart longs

to accomplish, accomplish, You 

be my ally. 

(Ann Carson, 2002)

In this prayer, not only is Sappho placing herself within the confines of the poem, the object of her desire and the deity she prays to are both women. Within the confines of this safe place she pours out her heart and her longings to the goddess, whom she has an obvious relationship with. And gently, almost like a mother hen, Aphrodite responds with humor and compassion. Again she comes to Sappho’s aid. Again she is called upon to help Sappho restore a broken heart and unrequited love, as an ally, as a comrade in arms. Even against her will Aphrodite will do this thing, and the sixth stanza becomes almost an incantation. A magical love potion. 

Interesting side note: Not only was Aphrodite worshipped as a goddess of war, but she was also the patron goddess of prostitution. And it was also a spat between Aphrodite, Athena and Hera that lead to the Trojan War. 

According to Philip Freeman “Most of her poems are songs of love wholly unlike the epics of Homer, who lived in the century before her. Gone are the blood and glory of the Trojan War and the monster-battling adventures of Odysseus. Instead, the verses of Sappho are deeply personal and celebrate the joys and agony of the human heart.” (Searching for Sappho, xvii) 

While this is true in a way, both the Trojan War and monsters still find their way into her world, but from an entirely different view point. The Trojan War is referenced constantly but from a distance, such as in poems about the wedding of Hector and Andromache or the beauty of Helen. The monsters of Homer become the nightmares of children, as the monster Gello haunts all the little children, snatching them away to their death.  

What Sappho does is change the perspective. The magnifying glass zooms in on the life and context of Homer, but then focuses on the unlikely subject of women and children, who in that day and age were only marginally separated. According to Hesiod, the best age for marriage for a young woman was four to five years after puberty, but girls from wealthy families tended to get married even younger, some as early as twelve or thirteen. Even when Plato and Aristotle encouraged families to wait at least until the Spartan custom of eighteen, this suggestion was largely overlooked. In this sense the very really monsters where not the ones far off on a distant shore but the ones between the bedsheets. While there is no way to ascertain the childbirth mortality rate, it would have been high. 

Many of Sappho’s poems would have been sung at weddings. They were performance pieces, and at times both celebratory and mournful. Between the lines (or fragments) is a world where women were esteemed slightly higher than the family ox; an almost invisible world of pain and heartache and fear. 

Walking to a Wedding - Fragment 27 

Yes you were once a child

come sing these things

talk to us and give us 

your grace

We are walking to a wedding, and surely 

you know too, but quickly as you can 

send the young virgins away. May gods

have 

Yet for men      road to

great Olympus 

Willis Barnstone (2006)

During the Renaissance two of Sappho’s poems, “Seizure” (Fragment 31) and “The Ode to Aphrodite” (Fragment 1) were included by Longinos in his essay On The Sublime and Dionysius On Literary Composition. Besides these two poems, for more than two thousand years, the works and writings of Sappho had almost completely disappeared. Then, in 1896, two archeology students from Oxford, discovered a cache of papyrus scraps in an ancient cemetery in the city of Oxyrhynchus, and since then there as been a fairly exciting trickle of discoveries, the most recent being the discovery of the “Brothers Poem” in 2012. 

My introduction to Sappho was through Willis Barnstone’s translation and I was completely blown away. Here’s his translation of fragment 88a:

As Long As There is Breath - Fragment 88

You might wish 

a little

to be carried off

Someone

sweeter

you also know

forgot

and would say

yes

I shall love   as long as there is breath in me 

and care

I say I have been a strong lover

hurt

bitter

and know this

no matter

I shall love

Willis Barnstone (2006)

But then to round it out I read Ann Carson’s translation and a completely different view emerged. What Barnstone had rendered as being legible, Carson leaves with the footprint of the illegible. These are after all fragments, and so much of the translation has to do with how each word is not only translated but stitched together with the fragments surrounding it. Here’s Carson’s version: 

88B

]me

]

]

]you

]

]

shall love

]

]

]

88A

]

]in front

]toward

]loosen

]you would be willing

]slight

]to be carried

]someone

]more sweetly

]and you yourself know

]forgot

]

]someone would say

]and yes I

]as long as there is breath in me

]will be a care

]I say I have been a strong lover

]

]painful

To echo Strabo, Sappho is an amazing thing. She is the poet for anyone who has ever been in love or suffered loss. She speaks of the joy of the dawn, in a world where each day was governed by the goddess Fortuna, the goddess of fate, where life slips through your fingers and the years slip away, and your knees refuse to dance. In a world of pain and heartache her poetry is breathtakingly immortal. 

Seizure - Fragment 31

He seems to me equal to the gods,

that man who sits opposite you

and listens near

to your sweet voice

and lovely laughter. My heart

begins to flutter in my chest. 

When I look at you even for a moment. 

I can no longer speak. 

My tongue fails and a subtle

fire races beneath my skin, 

I see nothing with my eyes

and my ears hum

Sweat pours from me and a trembling

seizes my whole body. I am greener

than grass and it seems I am a little 

short

of dying

But all must be endured, for even a poor

man…

Philip Freeman (2016)

The raw emotions and the physicality of this poem are almost visceral. Philip Freeman dives into her language and finds interesting comparisons again between the language of Sappho and that of Homer: 

“First her heart begins to flutter. Sappho was not the earliest to imply this motif; Homer uses the same Greek word (ptoeo, “to flutter, fly away”) to describe the emotions of Penelope’s suitors in the Odyssey, as does Alcaeus when he says Helen was overcome by her lover, Paris. This is not just a quaint metaphor, but a physical description of a heart set racing by passion and pounding wildly in the poet’s chest.” 5

While modern readers might miss the extreme eroticism of the final stanzas…it gets pretty intense. 

Sappho is using language previously reserved for warfare. The word to describe her weakening tongue is the same word Homer uses to describe “a chariot falling to pieces on the battlefield.” 6  Her language is militaristic, because the boundaries between love and war at times are murky, and as a woman, she is positioning herself from a vantage point where despite never fighting a battle with shields and swords, she is living one every day. 

To a Woman of No Education - Fragment 55 

When you lie dead no one will remember

or long for you later. You do not share the roses 

of Pieria. Unseen here and in the house of Hades, 

flown away, you will flitter among the dim corpses. 

Willis Barnstone (2006)

Footnotes:

1. Freeman, Philip. Searching for Sappho: The Lost Songs and World of the First Woman Poet. New York; London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016. pg. xi

2. Campbell, David, ed. Greek Lyric Poetry: A Selection. London: Macmillan, 1967. 5n. 4.

3. Freeman, Philip. Searching for Sappho: The Lost Songs and World of the First Woman Poet. New York; London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016. pg. xxi

4. Carson, Anne. If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho. New York: Vintage Books, 2002. pg.12

5. Freeman, Philip. Searching for Sappho: The Lost Songs and World of the First Woman Poet. New York; London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016. pg. 123

6. Ibid. 

Reading List:

Searching For Sappho - Philip Freeman 

The Complete Poems of Sappho - Willis Barnstone 

If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho - Anne Carson 

Girl Interrupted: Who was Sappho: The New Yorker - Daniel Mendelsohn
Her Master's Voice: Sappho's Dialogue with Homer - P.A. Rosenmeyer 
The Sapphic Revolution- Ryan Platte

The Confessions - Augustine

There is a misconception about belief, stemming from Plato’s cave, that once we have crawled out into the light we have found the answers. The ancient philosophers poured themselves into the questions of ‘what is good’ and ‘what is reality’ in order that they might understand their place in the cosmos. The oracle at Delphi commanded them to “know thyself”. When Descartes picked up the baton with cogito ergo sum there was the fundamental supposition that it is possible to locate the self in the midst of reality. 

For Augustine, only through truly knowing God will he ever then know himself, and the act of writing is a way of synthesizing his quest. This ‘knowing’ is not a singular definitive act, but a relationship. Augustine blazes a trail where the soul is allowed to wrestle with the complexity of the world around us while still holding fast to truth. His life quest to know God would be constant, always seeking and searching, “created to be the creature who beats its fists against the breast of the divine: ‘because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is unquiet until it rests in you.’”(xxii)

According to Patricia Hampl (1997) what would have made Augustine’s contemporary readers of The Confessions gasp “was not his admission of lust, but his acknowledgement that, after conversion, indeed even as a bishop of the Church, he is still searching and speculating about God and himself.” (xvi) 

The Confessions is comprised of thirteen books, the first nine are autobiographical and begin with his conception and end with the death of his mother Monica and his subsequent overwhelming grief. Then, abruptly, almost without warning or interlude in Book X he begins an inquiry into memory and then delves into speculations on time and eternity, and finishes off with Book XIII, his own treatise on the allegorical retelling of the Creation narrative in Genesis. While this all feels very abrupt and disjointed to the uninitiated (me) Patricia Hampl says this: 

“In fact, the movement from his life to his reading of Genesis is not smooth- it is ablaze. The writing becomes more, and not less, urgent. His story, for Augustine, is apparently only part of the story. There is a certain logic at work. Having constructed himself in the first nine books, Augustine rushes on to investigate how God created the universe- how God, that is, created him. And all of us, all of this. Reading Genesis with his laser-beam gaze is a form of concentrated life. Reading, pondering, is experience.” (xxiii) 

What makes Augustine’s work so profound is the strength he has to ask questions. There are more questions than assertions peppered throughout his work, nothing is taken for granted in this mysterious world and in this incomprehensible process we call living. As we get into the narrative, Augustine is clearly troubled by the mystery of existence. Instead of David Copperfield’s succinct “I was born”, or Felix Krull’s self congratulatory platitudes “there you lay in the subterranean twilight…etc” Augustine, the Bishop of Milan, is honestly stymied by his existence.

“Yet allow me to speak, though I am but dust and ashes, allow me to speak in your merciful presence, for it is to your mercy that I address myself, not to some man who would mock me. Perhaps you too are laughing at me, but still you will mercifully toward me, for what is it that I am trying to say, Lord, except that I do not know whence I came into this life that is but dying, or rather, this dying state that leads to life? I do not know where I came from.” 

(Book I 6:7)

This is crazy. I have conversations on a regular basis with people about existence and cosmology and I am frequently shocked by the level of certainty that people express about life. There’s a certain adherence to a simplistic worldview. Life is simple. Existence is simple. The words of Jesus are simple. I find this whole acceptance of simplicity to be somewhat disconcerting. Augustine gets right to the heart of the matter: we exist, but how and why now?

Between the lines there is a constant narrative with contemporary philosophical thought. The complexity of life, the omniscient and omnipresent creator is in direct contradiction to The One of the Neoplatonists. The One from whom all things exist is ultimately unknowable. Existing not as a being but rather an emanation. The further away from the source of being we get the more we lack the ability to discern what is good, therefore evil exists within us as a result of our distance from truth. 

According to Plato, we all have a postnatal memory of being good, and deep within the recess of our soul, if we excavate far back enough we can regain our goodness. This baton will be picked up by Rousseau and his conception of the ‘noble savage’…if we can get back to the moral simplicity of the savage, unsullied by the degradation of society we can find untarnished moral truth. To Rousseau’s ‘noble savage’, Augustine counters with an actual savage, using the narrative of his youth to dispel any notion of a pure being existing at birth. Every base impulse exists within him without prompting or nurturing and he finds himself upon adolescence a petrie dish of lust and desire.

“From the mud of my fleshly desires and my erupting puberty belted out murky clouds that obscured and darkened my heart until I could not distinguish the calm light of love from the fog of lust.” (Book II 2:2) 

I’ve read reviews of the Confessions that say that Augustine was trying to come to terms with his early lifestyle of depravity. These reviews tend to equate “confessing” with shame and guilt. What Augustine is doing is the exact opposite of this. Despite his youthful depravity God is not far off, his relationship with his creator is not conditional on his being good or just or faithful, but on the faithfulness of God. 

“You were ever present with me, mercifully angry, sprinkling very bitter disappointments over all my unlawful pleasure so that I might seek a pleasure free from all disappointment.” (Book II: 2,4)

Left to himself he becomes infected with the ‘foul mange of the soul’. He blindly struggles through, until he happens upon Cicero. It is while reading Cicero that there is a trickle of hope for something more. Cicero promises an immortality that comes only through wisdom. Yet ultimately proper speech and style are not enough, one must also seek truth. Augustine hangs up the mantle of his youth, and instead dons the cloak of a seeker. 

“Feverishly I thrashed about, sighed, wept and was troubled, and there was no repose for me, nor any council. Within me I was carrying a tattered, bleeding soul that did not want me to carry it, yet I could find no place to lay it down.” (Book IV 7:12)

Here’s the thing, Augustine doesn’t live in a vacuum of faith. He happens to have an overbearing mother, who has been praying for his salvation from day one. She seems to discredit the life trajectory he has been on by the faith based assertion that God will draw him to himself. She simplifies his quest for truth into something almost pitiable. He resents her faith, he resents her assurance, and more than that he has grown up as a casual observer of this faith and finds it wanting. 

There are at least two serious hurdles for him with this christian faith:

#1: He views the bible as a series of inelegant writings, even at times barbaric. How can a christian synthesize the embarrassing scenarios of violence, rape and deceit that are found throughout the Old Testament?

#2: The origin of Evil. If God is supreme and pure goodness, evil could not be a divine creation. If all things were created by the Divine, including evil, God could not be as good as the church claimed. 

In Book V he finds an answer to the first problem in the renowned rhetorician and  Bishop of Milan, Ambrose. Initially Augustine listens to his sermons fascinated by his style and presentation of the scriptures, but before long, he finds Ambrose’s exegesis of the scriptures compelling. Augustine had been reading everything literally, and through the lens of the allegorical a whole new interpretive meaning becomes illuminated. He realizes that the christian faith is after all intellectually respectable. His rational arguments against the christian faith are faltering, so he decides to become a catechumen in the Catholic Church, and with one foot in the door, he waits until some kind of overt certainty presents itself. 

As to the origin of evil, by Book IX we have a clear understanding of where it comes from. Not from God but from man. Augustine uses himself as a case study for original sin. After spending nine years with the Manichaeans that believed every person is comprised of the spiritual light and material darkness, he moves on to the Neoplatonists, where evil is simply moving away from the one eternal source. They believed the solution to evil was diligent study, discipline and mystical contemplation that would lead them back toward the ineffable One.

Sounds great. But how exactly does one do this? Is study and contemplation enough? What about the part of him that enjoyed doing what was wrong? Augustine wants us to realize this: “well after his intellectual questions had been answered, he continued to resist conversion because, to him, baptism means chastity. In fact, the most famous line in The Confessions is the prayer: ‘Grant me chastity and self-control, but please not yet.’”(xxi)

How do you get beyond the hump of ‘please not yet’? Augustine comes to the realization that there is only one way: through the mediator between God and humankind, the man Jesus Christ. Recognizing truth is not enough, we must be picked up and carried into it. 

“Come Lord, arouse us and call us back, kindle us and seize us, prove to us how sweet you are in your burning tenderness; let us love you and run to you.” (Book VIII 4:9) 

He sees truth. He sees God, he is at the entrance of the cave, and yet that human gesture to reach out and grasp it, to step out into the light is impossible. Every night he says to himself, ‘tomorrow, tomorrow I will put an end to my depravity’. His weakness is soul crushing. Eventually he finds himself in a garden, under a fig tree and pours out his heart to God. He has found him, but he is too weak to embrace him. Then he hears a little child shout out “Pick it up and read, pick it up and read!” He finds his bible and at random opens it up and begins to read: 

“‘Not in dissipation and drunkenness, nor in debauchery and lewdness, nor in arguing and jealousy; but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh or the gratification of your desires.’ I had no wish to read further, nor was there need. No sooner had I reached the end of the verse that the light of certainty flooded my heart and all dark shades of doubt fled away.” (Book VIII 12:29) 

This brings us to Book X. After nine books illuminating his need for a redemption and his ultimate salvation, he wants us to know that this is not the end of the story. He is daily beset by temptation, whether from his senses seeking after their own pleasure or the occasional images of Roman dancers in his dreams; even his dreams are in need of redemption. The only ‘safe haven’ for his soul is in God. 

After spending time looking at himself under the microscope of introspection, he zooms out to the macro. Just as God was the author of the narrative of his life, He is the author of the universe. While he needed to be carried into truth, creation needed to be carried into existence through the spoken Word. The Logos. In Plato’s Timaeus the offspring of the Demiurge is called the Logos, the creative source behind existence, yet incapable of relationship. For the christian, the Logos, while being the author of creation, is also our mediator and exists to daily intercede on our behalf as the man Jesus Christ. Neoplatonist philosophy led Augustine back to Christianity, but eventually even this philosophical template was wanting. He found the Truth that is written in the scriptures to be even greater.  The Logos is more than an impersonal creator, He is the Son of God, indeed God himself. The Word that is uttered eternally and through Him all things come into being in one simultaneous creation that exists beyond time and our ability to comprehend.

The next three books are an act of worship; an act of seeking relationship with the incarnate wisdom. He searches the scriptures, listening for the voice of God. 

“Augustine, grappling with Genesis in his study, is no less heated - more so really- than Augustine struggling famously with the flesh. He invents autobiography not to reveal his memory of his life, but to plumb the memory of God’s creative urge. ‘My mind burns to solve this complicated enigma.’ he says with an anguish more intense than anything that accompanies his revelations about his own life. He understands his life as a model of the very creation that is beyond him and of course within him. He writes and writes, and reads and reads his way through the double conundrum, the linked mystery of his own biography and of Creation.” (xxiv) 

The Confessions are bookended between his birth and in the birth of creation, he’s starting all over, but this time from a different perspective. While the Spirit of God was brooding over him, when he was still formless, this same Spirit of God hung poised above the void of creation. Augustine has found his way into the complexity of the Trinity. While his contemporaries had differing views on hierarchy and substance of the godhead, Augustine avoided the fray by turning his attention to a similar triad that exists within ourselves. An imperfect reflection of our creator, summed up as: I am, I know and I will. 

“Let anyone with the wit to see it observe how in these three there is one inseparable life: there is one life, one mind and one essence.” (Book XIII 11:12)

Book X was a tour de force of the complexity of the self. We are multifaceted and in this we reflect our creator. To ‘think” and to ‘know’ is not enough, there is another part of ourselves that exists outside of our knowledge of it; it hovers and broods, coaxing and guiding. When physically Augustine was in anguish about his need for salvation, when he intellectually had been persuaded of truth, the last remaining hurdle was the sanctification of his spirit. This is where we recognize the love of God, in a place beyond intellect, where the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given us.

And what is the conclusion of all of this? Again, Augustine uses himself as an example. When he first found the joy of his salvation he wanted to sequester himself in Cassiciacum, a small community devoted to study. He wanted his days to be spent in quiet meditation and worship. But things don’t go according to his plan. In 391 he travels from Cassiciacum, a small village on the outskirts of Milan, to Hippo, which is in modern day Annaba, Algeria. His goal was to convince a friend of his to join his quiet little community back home, but instead Bishop Valerius decides that Augustine should be his successor. Very much against his will Augustine is ordained as a bishop and a life of quiet contemplation seems to evaporate before his eyes. 

God wants more than reflection and contemplation, he wants charity. Augustine is called into community, and this is where The Confessions end; with an allegorical interpretation of the days of Genesis that doesn’t take place in a vacuum but within the hearts of the church. When god speaks light into creation and into our hearts, it isn’t for our benefit as individuals but for the kingdom. 

“Let there be light; repent for the kingdom of heaven is near, repent, and let there be light.” (Book XIII 12:13) (Gn 1:31; Mt 3:2; 4:17) 

The Eunuch - Terence

CHAEREA: ‘I’m going out to dinner’, said Thais, and off she went with her maids, leaving a few new young ones to wait on the girl. They began at once to get her ready for a bath, while I kept telling them to hurry. Meanwhile the girl sat in her room, looking at a picture on the wall which showed the story of Jupiter pouring the shower of gold into Danaë's lap.I began to look at it too, and my spirits soared to think how he had played the same game long ago: a god turning himself into a man and crawling secretly across another man’s roof coming down to seduce a woman - down through the skylight! And what a god! ‘who shakes the topmost towers of heaven with his thunder’. Couldn’t a mere man like me do the same? He could -  and gladly. During these meditations of mine, the girl was summoned to her bath. She went, had it, and came back. Then maids settled her on a couch. I stood around to see if they had any orders for me. Then one came up and said: ‘Here, Dorus, take this fan, fan her gently with it while we have a bath, and when we’ve finished you can have one too if you like.’ I took it with a bad grace.

ANTIPHO: What wouldn't I give to have seen your shameless face and the figure you cut, you great ass, standing there with a fan in your hand. 

CHAEREA: The words were hardly out of her mouth when there was a rush for the door. They all went off to the bath, chattering the way servants do when their masters are out of the house. The girl meanwhile fell asleep. I took a secret peep at her, sideways behind the fan, like this, and at the same time looked round to make sure the coast was clear. I saw it was. Then I bolted the door. 

ANTIPHO: What then? 

CHAEREA: What do you mean, ‘what then’ you fool? 

ANTIPHO: Oh, all right. 

CHAEREA: Was I to lose the chance offered me, an opportunity so brief, so unexpected and so much desired? My God, if I had, I should really have been what I pretended. (A Eunuch) 

ANTIPHO: True, as you way. Meanwhile, what’s been done about our dinner?

I decided I might as well start with the jugular. The above passage, as one would imagine. horrified St. Augustine (Confessions 1.16 and City of God 2.7) and he cautioned that allowing Terence to be read would likely corrupt schoolboys. 

Because of the elegance of his writing, the plays of Terence were taught not only to children but those joining monasteries and convents throughout the Middle Ages. Augustine argued that there were more innocent ways to learn words like “shower”, “golden”, “lap”, “trick” and “heavenly temples”. The scene described not only serves to work up the lusts of a dissolute youth, but it also fosters a dangerous conception of masculinity. While Jupiter pours himself through the skylight into Danaë’s lap, the youth thinks: “ Well, a poor fellow like me can’t do that, but I have imitated him in the other thing and what fun it was!” (Confessions 1.16:26)

The Eunuch hinges around the rape of Pamphila, which is perpetrated by Chaerea, who has disguised himself as a eunuch. This is the only play in the history of Roman comedy where the rape takes places during the play itself. As we saw in Hecyra, the rape or assault usually took place before the play began and was resolved by marriage within the play itself. The perpetrator in Hecyra, Pamphilus, was inebriated and on his way to visit his courtesan, his acts were unmeditated and spontaneous. Pamphilus eventually navigates the treacherous rite of passage from impressionable youth to respectable member of society and the play ends with his happy exultations about his successful little nuclear family. His wife, Philumena, has a name strikingly familiar to the mythic heroine Philomela, who was raped by Tereus and then had her tongue cut out to ensure her silence. In the Hecyra, Philumena does not appear and her character is voiceless, the crimes committed against her quietly covered and hidden, passed over as the trials and indiscretions of youth. 

Ovid had some unfortunate things to say about women and sex, claiming they liked it rough and often fell in love with their violators. “For the rape victim, forced and violent sexual intercourse is a blessing, while the woman who is unmolested remains dejected and unwanted. In Ovid’s Ars Amatoria when a woman says no she really means yes.” (1) Even though Ovid was born more than one hundred years after the death of Terence, this seems to be a profound insight into the Roman mind and has an almost sinister feeling of modernity about it. 

In the Eunuch Terence subtly challenges the conventional dialogue about rape by pausing and discussing the emotional turmoil and shock Pamphila is submerged in. She is crying and unable to speak, what has happened to her is clearly morally wrong and unjust, even if by Roman standards it does not technically classify as rape. (Only Roman citizens could be raped, as property slaves had no rights or protections under the law.) 

When Pamphila’s mistress, Thais, confronts Chaerea (in disguise as the eunuch Davos) she asks what he as done and he says “not much”…

THAIS: Nothing much! Have you no shame? Do you call it nothing much to assault a virgin and free-born citizen?

CHAEREA: I took her for a fellow slave. 

His defense is that as a fellow slave she would have no rights. But does this argument hold up? As a fellow slave would he be entitled to rape? Within Roman sexual ideology, masculine sexual behavior was strictly defined by hierarchy. Only if you were a Roman citizen, were you the “active” participant and everyone socially lower than you, male or female (the passive, disenfranchised demographic) was fair play. As a slave, Chaerea’s defense breaks down, he has no rights to the property of his mistress, but Thais doesn’t seem phased by his argument. In fact she seems way too cool about the whole thing. She goes along with the charade, pretending to believe Chaerea’s subterfuge, but eventually she gently says: “Chaerea, your conduct was unworthy of you. Even if it were right for me to be insulted like this it was wrong for you to behave in this way…” 

Again… not really sure what is going on here. 

So Chaerea changes tack. He admits that he disguised himself as a eunuch in order to sneak in and have his way with Pamphila. Premeditated. He admits this, but he argues his motives were pure. He did it all out of love. And Thais responds with: 

THAIS: I realize that, Chaerea, and it makes me all the more ready to forgive you. I’m not altogether lacking in human feeling or experience; I know something of the power of love. 

WHAT? 

When Chaerea realizes that Pamphila is a free born citizen, rather than remorse, he feels exultation. He can marry her and all his dreams will come true! Despite play acting as a eunuch, he is far from emasculated. The most awkward and embarrassing episode occurs when his father witnesses his son wearing the costume of a eunuch. It is far more embarrassing and shameful to be caught impersonating the riffraff than perpetrating an assault. In the end Chaerea, a youth with a checkered past, emerges the hero and takes his place as the prototype for masculinity. When given the opportunity to take advantage of a beautiful woman there was only one option a true man would take, assault. To do anything less would be fit for only a true eunuch. That’s the line in the sand. Men actively possess. 

Chaerea’s counterpoint is the soldier Thraso. An officer in the army, and in every way the antithesis of our hero. Thraso is a seasoned veteran, while Chaerea is a rash and impulsive youth; Thraso brings as a gift for his mistress a beautiful sixteen year old virgin, while Chaerea professing love to the audience steals her chastity. Thraso is jealous and suspicious of everyone, while Chaerea has no concept of people existing for anything other than his pleasure. 

Thraso is wealthy, and established. He has had a friendship with Thais in the past and for all intents and purposes can offer her the security that no one else has offered. Her current lover, Chaerea’s older brother Phaedria, has no equity of his own and little to offer beside his passion, ardor and tendency towards histrionics, but for reasons that do not seem entirely clear Thais has evidently made up her mind in his favor. 

While everything falls into place for these good looking brothers, willing to take what is rightfully theirs by their station as real men, Thraso plays be the rules and loses. His jealousy seems petty and boring. His army career seems pale compared to a man willing to style himself as Jupiter. 

As the play comes to a close, all the details are neatly being tied up. Chaerea’s father has agreed to pay all the bills for his son’s courtesan so they can live in peace without the disturbance of visitors or old friends having expectations, subsequently kicking Thraso out of the picture. The father also agrees that now that Pamphila’s citizenship has been vouched for, Chaerea can marry her. 

CHAEREA: Where shall I begin? Who deserves more praise? Parmeno who gave me the idea (to dress up like a eunuch) or myself who dared to carry it out? Or should it be Fortune who guided me and brought so many vital matters to a happy conclusion in a single day? Or my father for his kindness and good humor? All I pray is heaven’s blessing will continue! 

While everyone is happily preparing to walk off stage, Thraso runs around trying to figure out a way to be included. He asks his “friend” Gnatho to put in a good word for him, anything so that he may be included in the good graces of Thais. Technically Gnatho is a parasite, a hanger-on and Thraso is the patron, but here the roles are reversed and Thraso begs a social crumb from his inferiors. 

Gnatho agrees and approaches Phaedria with a plan, since he has no money and Thraso is loaded, why not make use of him in some way? He’s the very man to provide for all the “requirements of love” so that Phaedria’s relationship with Thais would henceforth not cost him a penny! He’s lavish and has a reputation for throwing great parties and lastly he’s a “silly idiot”, a dimwitted snorer with bouts of narcolepsy - pretty much the perfect wingman. Women as a matter of principle find him repulsive and Thais will never be tempted to love him. 

After mulling the proposal over for a nanosecond, Phaedria agrees. All very good points after all, and Gnatho gets up the gumption for one last request. He wants to change his allegiances, his task of being a hanger-on to Thraso has been an exercise in Sisyphean boredom, will the group that he has been at odds with for the duration of the play allow him entrance into the sanctity of the inner circle? In exchange he will offer Thraso: ”for the laughs and everything else you can get out of him.” 

CHAEREA: We’ll take him. 

PHAEDRIA: He deserves it.  

In the end the only one who is impotent is Thraso. Unable to love or be loved. A patron unable to offer patronage; a man stripped of his power and masculinity, willing to play the fool if it will allow him to be in the vicinity of the one he loves, even if the love itself is impotent and rejected. 

1) Chrsytal, Paul. 2015. In Bed with the Romans. Amberley Publishing Limited. Digital

Roman Rape: An Overview of Roman Rape Lawsfrom the Republican Period to Justinian's Reign

 Rape Culture in Ancient Rome

A Companion to Terence

Observations on the Colax of Menander and the Eunuch of Terence

In Bed with the Romans

Terence - Hecyra (The Mother-In-Law)

We all know the romantic comedy outline by heart: boy and girl meet, fall in love, overcome an obstacle and then live happily ever after in matrimonial bliss, ultimately proving to themselves and the world that true love exists. Hecyra destroys this formula and the result is shocking and incongruous to my sensitive modern ears. 

According to Niall Slater (“The Fictions of Patriarchy in Terence’s “Hecyra”), ”In no other ancient comedy are women so noble- or so readily condemned. Nowhere is the contrast between seeming and reality so sharp as between the perception of women held by men in this play and their actual roles. The actions of the Hecyra is double: the unfolding of the real and potentially tragic story of the male perfidy and the parallel necessity of constructing and maintaining a narrative in which all the difficulties are the fault of the women in the play.” 

There’s a temptation to imagine similarities to contemporary modern culture and the Roman Republic circa 180 BC. Maybe less toga wearing? But really other than that aren’t we virtually the same? We struggle with the same grey cloud of a debate between Epicureans and Stoics and the search for the “good” life. We’re obsessed with the appropriate amount of government intervention, and we are adverse to dictatorships. Some of us love to throw the word “patriarchy” around, and we see a case for a solid correlation depending on how conservative the circle you run with is. 

After the Second Punic war (218-241 BC) Rome’s borders have dramatically increased and the slave population has risen exponentially. There is also now a large class of displaced men and women; residue of the turmoil of almost constant war and the fractious politics of the Hellenistic age. The plight for these women without male relatives to protect them is dire and their position in the social structure is tenuous. Usually the way to survive with any stability would be by becoming a courtesan and hoping for a kind and consistent suitor with minimal demands and an infinite supply of cash.

The opening exposition is given by two such courtesans, one of which has just returned after a two year stint with a “brute” in Corinth. They discuss how devoted the protagonist, Pamphilus was to the courtesan Bacchis, always promising her he would never marry. Men are all the same, they say. Never reliable. 

Philotis: Talking of lovers, Syra, precious few of them prove faithful to girls like me. Take Pamphilus for instance; he promised Bacchis no end of times that he’d never take a wife as long as she lived, swore it on an oath so that anyone might have believe him. Now look at him- married. 

Syra: That’s just why I’m always telling you not to be softhearted with anyone. You mark my words, catch whom you can, rob him, fleece him and skin him alive.

Despite his sworn oaths and promises to Bacchis, the marriage between Pamphilus and Philumena has taken place. His father Laches, having grown tired of paying for the never ending “sowing of wild oats” has decided it’s time for his son to marry. Laches picks out the neighbor’s daughter as a bride for his son, and after a few brow beating sessions convinces his son to do his duty, get married and provide the family with an heir. 

Pamphilus dutifully complies, but never consummates the marriage, feeling like to do so would force him to be unfaithful to his one true love. Eventually through his wife’s quiet and dutiful spirit, he begins to find himself under her spell and to clear his head takes a trip for a few months to put life into perspective.  

Recap: Boy and girl get married despite boy being in love with another girl. 

So Philumena is left with her mother in law Sostrata, and everything seems to be going well, minus the fact that her husband has left her and she’s technically still a virgin. But then as the months trickle by, a peculiar tension seems to hover in the air until it becomes an immense unbreathable fog. It’s been 7 months since her marriage and Philumena sequesters herself in her parents’ house and refuses to be seen by visitors or even speak to her mother in law. 

The action picks up with Laches yelling at his wife for obviously being so odious their daughter in law has been forced to return home:

Laches: Heaven and earth, what a tribe they are! In league the lot of them. Every blessed woman with the same likes and dislikes as all the others, and not a single one can you find who’ll show up a different mentality from the rest! Mothers-in-law and daughters-in-l aw, they’re all of one mind - in hating each other. And they’re all of a piece, too, in setting themselves against their men folk, the same damned obstinacy in every one. I’d say they’d all learned their cussedness at the same school, and if there is such a school I can tell you who’s head-mistress: my wife.

His wife, comes running after him, wringing her hands and making unacknowledged protestations about her character and intentions, but it’s no use. Laches can not fathom a world where there would be a surface level of complexity, belonging singularly to the womenfolk, and as such his reasoning is overly simplistic and impotent. 

As people are running hither and thither across the stage, chaos and distress dripping from characters and props, Pamphilus returns to see his family in crisis and without so much as a knock on the door barges into his neighbor’s home to seek out his wife…only to find her in the act of CHILDBIRTH! 

Obviously the child is not his! He never consummated the marriage…as he stands there in shock his mother-in-law quickly assures him of his wife’s good character! It’s not her fault! One evening, about 2 months before they were married Philumena was assaulted and raped on the way home and they were never able to catch the monster that did it. He managed to escape with a ring torn from her finger and her chastity. But can’t bygones be bygones? They’ll get rid of the child and it will be just the same as before, no harm no foul! 

Pamphilus leaves wracked with emotion and confusion, and refuses to take back his wife and equally refuses to acknowledge the child. Despite the fact that he has been no champion of morals himself, apparently the line is drawn at assault. He decides he will remain a bachelor and will live with his mother for the rest of his life, choosing the happiness of his mother over that of his “unfaithful” wife.

Philumena’s father, Phidippus walks into the birthing room and is confronted with a very different situation. The birth of a son! What joy! Why would the womenfolk be trying to cover this up…unless his evil meddling wife Myrrina was trying to sabotage the marriage…she never liked Pamphilus from the beginning and she’s stirring up strife and trouble in a moment that should be joyous and reconciliatory. 

Phidippus quickly makes his way to find Laches and apologizes: It’s not your wife it’s mine! 

As the menfolk try to makes heads or tails of the situation that seems to be in a perpetual state of crumbling around them, Laches comes up with a plan to convince Pamphilus to reconcile with his wife: he will convince the courtesan to vouch for the character of his son. She will tell Philumena that he has remained faithful to his wife and she no longer has any hold on him…and then maybe his wife will fight for him? It’s unclear how this will help…

Bacchis agrees and while she is talking with the women, Myrrina recognizes the ring on the courtesans finger… 

Bacchis: What happiness I have given Pamphilus by coming here today! I’ve brought him so many blessings and removed so many worries. I have saved his son for him, whom he nearly lost through his own fault and the women here; I’ve given him back the wife with whom he believed he would never live again, and I’ve removed the suspicions of his father and Phidippus. And all this train of discovers was set off by a ring! 

What Baccis then describes is an evening about 9 months ago when Pamphilus drunkenly showed up on her doorstep. His hair and clothes were in disarray and after a few questions he admitted to assaulting a girl and pulling off the ring she wore…which he then gave to Bacchus as a gift and she has worn ever since…?

Now everything is clear, and disconcertingly joyous. The girl Pamphilus raped, as chance would have it, was none other than his own dear wife! Hurrah! And her bastard is none other than his own rightful son! 

Bacchis: I’m glad he has found so much happiness through me, though I suppose other women of my sort wouldn’t agree- it isn’t really in our interest for a lover to be happily married, but all the same, I can’t bring myself to act unkindly…

When Parmeno, the slave who has spent the majority of the play running pointless errands to keep him out of the way, is told to bring his master the news that his wife recognized the ring that Bacchus was wearing as her very own, his master’s response is: 

Pamphilus: I’m in heaven if this is really true! …Oh I’m the most fortunate of men! No one could be so lucky in love! Now what reward can I give you in return for this message? Tell me- I can’t think.” 

Recap: Boy and girl get married despite boy being in love with a hooker. Boy eventually falls for girl only to realize she’s been assaulted at which point his honor keeps him from reconciling with his wife, but then he learns that he was the assailant, so all is well.

Pamphilus jumping around and ecstatic with joy says thing like “You have restored me to life and rescued me from hell!” On his way back home to search out his nuclear family he meets Bacchis who winks and smiles and says he’s married to a true lady. They agree not to mention anything that would constitute a past discretion to his father and Pamphilus adds the famous and ironic line: 

Pamphilus: I’d rather this weren’t like the comedies, where everyone ends by knowing everything. In our case, the ones who ought to know know already; and the others who don’t need to know shan’t be told or know a thing. 

Then he turns to leave with a salutation that hopefully all will go well with them from now on. 

The end. 

Somehow I doubt his wife would agree with the sentiment “You have restored me to life and rescued me from hell!”…Her life has been hell for the previous 9 months and she has a hellish life ahead of her. Her quiet attitude and respectful behavior has only won her the compulsory prize of living with her rapist. 

This play has, as one would expect, a variety of mixed reviews. For one, it’s much easier to read than it would be to watch in an amphitheater. According to Betty Radice (1976) “the lively and farcical element, the colorful word play, the earthly vulgarity, the song and dance which made Plautus deservedly popular have gone; instead Terence offers subtlety of plot, development and interplay of character, and economy of dialogue.” 

Once again Terence rejects the role of the slave/servant as the plot generator and humorously keeps the slave off stage for the majority of the play, with his few short lines offering varying grumblings about his ineffectual life. The virtuous heroine is replaced with a commentary on “rape culture”, something that would have been jarring and uncomfortable to digest. 

Terence needed an educated and sophisticated crowd appreciative of Hellenistic nuance, but instead his rabble of a crowd lost interest as we can see from the first two times the play was put on. During the first attempt, a rumor of a tight-rope walker began to circulate and the “shouting and women’s screaming” forced the play to end abruptly. The second time after having made it a little farther, a rumor spread that there would be a gladiator show, resulting in the crowd stampeding out of the theater in a surge and jostle that left the cast scurrying for cover. 

Finally, at the third attempt the play was carried through to completion and while the contemporary reviews were mixed, what is undeniable is that the result is without parallel.