Herodotus, Doricha, and Charaxus

Herodotus provides the first testimony of a song by Sappho addressed to her brother Charaxus, in the context of a discussion about one of the Egyptian pyramids (Hdt 2.134–5). According to him, the Greeks associated one of the pyramids with the name of Rhodopis, a Greek courtesan from Thrace who lived in Naucratis, a contemporary of the Egyptian king Amasis, and a fellow slave of the storyteller Aesop:

Herodotus says that Rhodopis desired to ‘leave a memorial of herself’, but she achieved this not by the construction of a pyramid in Egypt as the local stories of the Greeks would have it (Herodotus points out that the expense of a pyramid would be far beyond the resources even of a successful courtesan) but by dedicating iron roasting spits at Delphi, paid for by one tenth of her personal fortune. He adds:

Herodotus’ story about hetaerae who seek fame and achieve it in songFootnote ⁷ is the background against which an epigram quoted by Athenaeus by the Hellenistic Posidippus (writing c.270 bc) must be read:

The poem sets out an elegant series of conceits: the courtesan (whom Posidippus calls Doricha, rather than Rhodopis) achieves the memorialization which Herodotus tells us she was so desperate to achieve not by Egyptian pyramids, or even Greek spits, but by the apparently more ephemeral, yet eventually more durable, medium of Naucratean papyrus and poetry, through the mousopoios Sappho – and of course through Posidippus himself (a Greek living in Egypt like Rhodopis, and a poet like Sappho) via his own poem written on the bright pages of Egypt, mute objects, yet ‘ringing’ the name of its subjects to posterity.

Posidippus’ poem calls to life the experience of reading Sappho on the papyrus pages, which, perhaps in homage to Sappho's original medium of song, are oxymoronically described as ‘ringing’ or ‘sounding’. Egypt helps memorialize the Naucratis-dwelling Doricha through the production of papyrus and of scholarly editions of Sappho. Charaxus has, in Egyptian papyri, returned ‘home’ to Naucratis. (The poem, with its themes of survival through papyrus, anticipates in uncanny fashion our own recovery of the name of Charaxus – and probably of Doricha too, on which see below – on Egyptian papyri.) Posidippus’ poem suggests that he saw Doricha/Rhodopis as a ‘local hero’, a link between the fabulous Sappho and his own Egypt, between her poetry and his.

There is probably a final ironic twist. Posidippus is aware of the famous Herodotus passage, in which Sappho is said to have ‘derided’ Charaxus for the affair. The source of Doricha's ‘fame’ is invective immortality in one of the canonic lyric poets. For all her efforts, this is what her fame amounts to.Footnote ⁹

But there are practical problems with the story of Charaxus, Sappho, and Rhodopis/Doricha. First, it is hard (though not impossible) to reconcile with the chronology of Sappho. Rhodopis is said by Herodotus to have lived at the time of Amasis (c.570–526 bc), whereas Sappho belonged to the previous generation (she was a contemporary of Pittacus and Alcaeus, normally thought to have been born around 620).Footnote ¹⁰ Second, obviously, the names do not match. This was already a problem for ancient readers. The Rhodopis mentioned by Herodotus was, apparently, not to be found in Sappho. This problem was addressed by Strabo (17.1.33):

Athenaeus, another Naucratean, referring to the Herodotus passage in his introduction to his quotation of the Posidippus poem considered above, puts forward the same explanation for the discrepancy in names, but is not fully convinced:

Like Strabo, Athenaeus here adds further details. These might stem from an original Sapphic song, but they are rather prosaic and sound more like speculation by later scholars: why did Sappho attack Doricha? Because she had ‘robbed Charaxus of large sums’. What was Charaxus doing in Naucratis? He was there because he was ‘trading in wines’.Footnote ¹¹

The story of Charaxus’ liaison with the courtesan from Naucratis is also to be found in other ancient sources.Footnote ¹² These accounts show how ancient writers attempted to resolve the problem of the lack of mention of Rhodopis in Sappho, apparently by identifying her with Doricha, a woman who (as we shall see below) was apparently attacked, or at least mentioned, in Sappho. However, Athenaeus, for one, believed that the neat identification of the two figures was not correct.

Moreover, the tale that Herodotus reports about Rhodopis has many elements which suggest a basis in oral story rather than Sappho's songs: the association with the quasi-mythical Aesop, wealthy courtesans, slavery, regained freedom, pharaohs, and pyramids – it all suggests an oral tradition embellished by association with glamorous or mysterious literary figures: Aesop and Sappho. Yatromanolakis, in his book on the ancient reception of Sappho, argues plausibly that, at an early stage in her reception, stories about Sappho accompanied renditions of her poetry in symposia. In such a context, it was natural for Sappho's name to be associated with another common theme of symposiastic discussion: famous hetaerae. His conclusion is that ‘Sappho's Dorikha…was assimilated with the culturally vibrant figure of Rhodopis’.Footnote ¹³

Likewise, much of the detail of the Posidippus poem – the perfumes, shawls, and early morning cups – seems likely to be the invention of the Hellenistic poet and not from Sappho. In the same passage in which he records the poem (13.596c), Athenaeus says that Posidippus also ‘often’ mentioned Doricha in his Aesopia: so Doricha (probably identified with the Herodotean Rhodopis) already enjoyed a life of her own in Posidippus’ works. Posidippus had a track record of poetic embellishment of stories about Doricha, the famous courtesan who had consorted with Aesop and been attacked by Sappho.

It would be tempting to consign the whole Rhodopis/Doricha story to the mass of later myth-making which we know was produced by the Sappho tradition, such as the story that she was married to a man called Kerkylas, or that she threw herself of the cliff at Leucas out of love for a man called Phaon.Footnote ¹⁴ We know that such data reported as facts in the later tradition are not based on Sappho's poems. In the case of the story of Charaxus and Doricha/Rhodopis, however, there are important differences.

In the first place, Herodotus (an early and authoritative testimony) says that Sappho derided Charaxus in a melos (‘song’).Footnote ¹⁵ He would not have said this, I think, if he just had in mind some tradition outside the songs of Sappho (for example, as suggested by Lidov, a comic sourceFootnote ¹⁶); his words must mean that he is claiming the existence of a melos by Sappho in which she derided Charaxus. Secondly, there is the Posidippus poem, which, as we have seen seems to rely for its point on the existence of a Sappho song depicting the relationship between Charaxus and a courtesan. So does that mean that in this case we must conclude there is for once real Sapphic fire behind the smoke of the later tradition?Footnote ¹⁷ Let us look more closely at these texts.

First, Herodotus. We should note that Herodotus does not actually say that Sappho in her songs attacked or mentioned Doricha/Rhodopis, but merely: ‘As for Charaxus, when, having freed Rhodopis, he returned to Mytilene, Sappho derided him a great deal in a song (ἐν μέλει Σαπϕὼ πολλὰ κατεκερτόμησέ μιν)’ (Hdt. 135.6).Footnote ¹⁸ Though the pronoun μιν here is gender neutral, it is clear from the context that Herodotus means that Sappho derided Charaxus, not Rhodopis.Footnote ¹⁹ Herodotus does not cite the melos which mentioned the Rhodopis affair, or even, as we might have expected, link the melos to the courtesan story he has recounted by saying, for example: ‘derided him because he had wasted his money with an hetaera’, or ‘derided him for his involvement with Rhodopis’. This suggests at least that the Rhodopis story in the form Herodotus has just recounted it was not actually to be found in Sappho's songs. Indeed, we can safely conclude that, since, as we have seen, there was apparently no one called Rhodopis to be found in Sappho. So what was to be found in the melos mentioned by Herodotus? His way of mentioning it leaves open the possibility that the derision of Charaxus in the song was not related to a liaison with a courtesan at all. Herodotus may mean that (even though the story of the Doricha/Rhodopis–Charaxus liaison he has described was not, in fact, to be found in Sappho) the existence of a song or songs in which Sappho ‘derides’ Charaxus, gives credence to the story, or provides a context for it. The words ‘when, having freed Rhodopis, he returned to Mytilene, Sappho derided him’ could suggest that Herodotus is linking the derision to the Rhodopis episode; alternatively, he may mean that the derision in the song belongs to a different stage of Charaxus’ life, after his sojourn in Naucratis, when he was back in Mytilene.

It is remarkable that Athenaeus (who is certainly free enough in quoting the text of lyric poets) likewise does not cite a Sapphic source text in support in telling the Doricha/Rhodopis story – instead he quotes Posidippus.Footnote ²⁰ This might suggest that there was no Sappho poem to cite which gave good support for the Rhodopis tradition recorded by Herodotus, or a Doricha–Charaxus liaison, and Posidippus was the only clear poetic authority for this story that Athenaeus was aware of. Indeed, one might think that any ancient author, wishing to resolve (or at least cast light on) the Rhodopis/Doricha issue, would only have to quote Sapphic lines – yet none does. This may suggest that later readers were not able to find the song to which Herodotus appears to refer.

What about the Posidippus poem? Yatromanolakis rightly lays weight on it, regarding it as evidence of a Sappho song on this topic: ‘Poseidippos’ epigram attests that he was familiar with a song or songs related to Kharaxos and Doricha, a woman who lived in Naucratis.’Footnote ²¹ The significance of Posidippus’ epigram is not so much that his mere inclusion of the story of Charaxus and Doricha means that such a story must have had a basis in the songs of Sappho. Hellenistic poets were willing to draw on the web of stories which had grown up around Sappho, as well as, or instead of, the songs themselves, and felt free to add their own embellishments.Footnote ²² Rather, the significance of this poem is that its carefully contrived irony seems to require the existence of an actual depiction of Charaxus and Doricha in Sappho's songs – without this, the whole point of the poem – the irony of Doricha's survival in literary depiction – would seem to fail.

The Posidippus poem, more than any other text, suggests the existence of a Sappho song about Charaxus and Doricha. But because of the absence of any citation or clear account of the content of a Sappho song on this topic, I think it also plausible that the Posidippus poem is itself founded on the famous Herodotean tradition of a Sapphic invective against her brother and his courtesan lover (together with the existence of a named Doricha in Sappho – see below). The story of Sappho's brother and his involvement with an hetaera, and above all Herodotus’ statement that it somehow appeared in a melos of Sappho, would have been rare and invaluable biographical subject matter for later authors, who would certainly have wanted to exploit it to the maximum possible extent, even if they could not find the actual song in Sappho's corpus.Footnote ²³ Despite the formation of editions of known Sappho songs in the Hellensitic period, a person in the ancient world would probably have regarded it as quite possible that a song of Sappho existed even if they had not seen it or heard it themselves, especially if Herodotus said it did. For Posidippus to build his elegant conceit, the Herodotus passage, the appearance of a Doricha chastised by Sappho in her ‘bright pages’, and possibly the treatment of this famous episode in his own or other authors’ works, could have been enough.

For a Doricha must certainly have been mentioned in Sappho – otherwise there would be no point in correcting Herodotus’ Rhodopis to Doricha.Footnote ²⁴ Indeed, among the surviving fragments, fragment 15 of Sappho apparently mentions her (lines 9–12):

The first letter of the crucial name is missing in the papyrus, and the reading of the second letter unclear. However names ending in ‘-richa/-os’ are rare, and the restoration ‘Doricha’ is logical, given that ancient authorities associate Doricha with Sappho's poetry – if (as concluded by Yatromanolakis) this reading is not inconsistent with the ink traces.Footnote ²⁵ But who is Doricha?Footnote ²⁶ If we were reading this song without the baggage of later ancient writings about Sappho, we would probably conclude that she is one of Sappho's rivals in eros or in song.Footnote ²⁷

It is possible that Doricha is mentioned in this song in relation to her involvement with Charaxus, but (despite an attempt to introduce a Charaxus reference by a speculative restoration of an earlier line in the poemFootnote ²⁸) there is nothing which requires us to believe it. If a Doricha was mentioned by Sappho with a wish that she meet with erotic failure, it is plausible that later scholars, searching Sappho's songs for evidence of the Rhodopis affair, would identify the unfortunate Doricha with the Rhodopis they could not find.

In my view, we cannot be sure from the evidence whether the stories in the later tradition were based in some way on an actual Sappho song about a liaison between her brother Charaxus and a Naucratean hetaera, or whether they are all founded in oral stories, the passage in Herodotus, later scholarly exegesis, and later poetic invention. Many readers will still feel that the best explanation of the passages considered above is that an original Sappho song or songs dealing with Charaxus’ relationship with an hetaera living in Naucratis (whether fragment 15 and/or other songs) has been overlaid with oral tradition and poetic invention. This may be the case, but, in the absence of a clear citation of Sappho, and considering the fantastic or romantic elements in the later stories, for my part I would be very cautious about accepting it.

So how does the publication of the new papyrus affect our view of the Doricha/Rhodopis/Charaxus story? We now know for certain that Charaxus was mentioned in Sappho's songs, and the identification of him as the singer's brother is very plausible (see below).Footnote ²⁹ Moreover, he is abroad, and may well be involved in trade. If Charaxus is the same as the ‘brother’ in the existing ‘brothers’ song, fragment 5, he has been guilty of some fault. This is all consistent with the tradition. Moreover, the depiction of Larichus as apparently not yet come of age – he must ‘raise his head’ and ‘become a man’ – is also consistent with testimonia that Sappho in her songs depicted a brother Larichus as a wine-pourer in the prytaneion (civic dining hall), a role suited for a boy/young man of good family.Footnote ³⁰

On the other hand, neither the new papyrus nor fragment 5 mentions Doricha or a liaison between Charaxus and a woman, or any connection with Egypt. The fault of the brother in fragment 5 seems more likely to be political, rather than erotic (see below). In the tradition, Sappho attacks or strongly admonishes Charaxus.Footnote ³¹ By contrast, in the new song and fragment 5, the singer's relationship with the male subject of the song is one of honour and affection: the female singer's happiness and fortunes are carefully and subtly linked to the honour and fate of the male family member. The publication of the new song reinforces, rather than diminishes, the gap between the later tradition about Charaxus and what we actually find in the Sapphic corpus.

It is of course possible that discovery of a further fragment could change that. There may well have been further works by Sappho on the subject of Charaxus.Footnote ³² Herodotus clearly believed that there was a Sappho song in which Charaxus was strongly derided.Footnote ³³ It seems from the testimonia that there was at least one or more other Sappho songs focusing on the relationship with male family members (in particular a song in which Sappho depicted Larichus as a wine-pourer in the prytaneion).Footnote ³⁴

But with the publication of the new song, stories about Charaxus’ affair with a Naucratean of Sappho seem less likely, not more likely, to be the sort of thing that we would find in a song of Sappho.Footnote ³⁵ Even if one believes that there were Sapphic songs attacking Charaxus and/or Doricha for their erotic liaison, it is also clear that fragment 5 and the new song do not form part of such a narrative, but have a wholly different thematic and/or are from a different period of time.

The stories which later circulated about Charaxus show the caution required in dealing with Sappho tradition unsupported by actual quotation from her songs. We can see that an oral and/or textual Sappho tradition, separate from the songs, developed at an early stage, and it is apparent that Hellenistic authors were engaged both in rococo embellishment of this tradition and in opportunistic attempts to unite the tradition to Sappho's text. The risks to a nuanced reading and textual restoration of Sappho posed by starting from this kind of tradition are obvious.Footnote ³⁶ We need to form a judgement on who people named in preserved fragments are, how they are to be perceived, and their relationship to the singer, audience, and other figures in the songs, on the basis of the actual songs which have come down to us, not preconceptions engendered by these later Sappho stories.

The new song

In the new song published by Obbink (which I will call ‘fragment 9a’ or ‘the new song’), the speaker addresses another person (‘you’) on the subject of Charaxus, who is away at sea. The end of the song is marked in the papyrus, so there is no missing text at the end, but at least one initial stanza is missing. Obbink notes that traces of letters of a previous stanza can be inferred from an existing papyrus fragment. These are two few to draw any conclusions from them.Footnote ³⁷

The dramatic form is apparently a conversation (or rather a monologue to an addressee) reported by the singer/speaker, without a framing narration – that is, the same dramatic format as Horace's Soracte Ode and Alcaeus 338, or (probably) Sappho fragment 96 (on these parallels, see further below). But the lack of the opening means that we cannot be sure.Footnote ⁴⁰

The gender of the speaker and ‘you’ are not indicated by the grammar. However, it seems safe, on the basis of Sappho's other songs, to regard them both as female. The dialogue in the song is typical of dialogue between women in other Sappho songs, as we will see below (it is hard to imagine θρύλησθα [‘chattering away’], for example, being addressed to a man). It also seems safe to see the first-person speaker as identified with the persona ‘Sappho’, familiar from other songs (on which, again, see below). Charaxus is a person close to them, who is on a sea voyage, expected to return home (τυίδε; line 7).

The singer proposes a prayer/sacrifice to Hera for Charaxus’ safe return. In addition to the aim of bringing Charaxus back, prayer to the gods, the speaker implies, demonstrates and encourages the right frame of mind to deal with his absence. Though the formal prayer ends at line 9, the wishes which the singer goes on to express in respect of Larichus can be seen as a part of the wider prayer offered by the song itself, so that the prayer would continue: ‘and may Zeus send a daimon as helper for us all, and may Larichus raise his head and become a man, and save us from our despondency’. A scene in which women pray, and discuss how they should pray, for the return of a man on whose fate or fortune they depend, has parallels in Homer, in the figure of Penelope, and later in tragedy, especially in the figure of Electra. I will return to these parallels below.

A striking feature of the song is that it is focused on the experience of the singer and her addressee, at least as much as it is on Charaxus. Their prayer is not just for Charaxus to return, but to return to find ‘us’ unharmed (line 9).Footnote ⁴¹ The description in stanza 3 of the storms that confront Charaxus shifts by the last stanza to the troubles confronting the speaker and addressee (βαρυθυμία, ‘despondency’). The πόνοι (‘troubles’; line 14) which the daimon will banish are, we suspect, not just those of Charaxus at sea but also those of the women at home. The Zeus-sent daimon-protector in stanza 3 is sent to protect Charaxus, but there is also the suggestion that the two female characters are themselves in need of the intervention of a daimon, and that Charaxus and/or Larichus may fill this role – a figure sent by Zeus to help them. Indeed, the connection of thought in the final stanza, with its surprisingly abrupt introduction of Larichus, is apparently: ‘Zeus will send a daimon to protect Charaxus, and for us (κἄμμες; line 17), our daimon is Larichus, if only he would become a man.’ The fact that the song is in the form of a reported dialogue between women about prayer focuses attention on the relationship between the women, and what is happening to them, as much as it does on Charaxus.

The connection between the experience of Charaxus and the experience of the women is reinforced by the parallels in wording in stanzas 3, 4, and 5:

1. Stanza 3, lines 11–12: ‘Clear weather comes quickly (αἶψα πέλονται) after great storms.’

2. Stanza 4, lines 15–16: ‘Those to whom the king of Olympus wants to send a daimon to rescue them from their toils, they go (πέλονται) blessed and wealthy.’ (Zeus's power to calm the storms in the natural world finds parallel in his power in human affairs to release a person from the storms of life and make them wealthy.)

3. Stanza 5, lines 19–20 ‘As for us, we will be swiftly released (αἶψα λύθειμεν) from great despondency, if Larichus becomes a man.’ (The release of the women from troubles at home by Larichus parallels the release of Charaxus from a storm at sea.)

The storms that Charaxus may suffer at sea parallel the metaphorical storms that the speaker and the addressee suffer at home, and the release of Charaxus from his trials at sea parallels the release of the two characters from βαρυθυμία at home. The pair are looking not just to the gods but to the two men in the song for help. The toils of the man at sea are juxtaposed, or rather gradually merged, with those of the women who wait at home. Both men and women must rely on, and pray to, Zeus and the gods in the respective sufferings that afflict them. For the women, however, the daimon he sends takes a very human form: Charaxus and the young Larichus. As with Odysseus returning to Ithaca, the divine will is worked out through a human actor.Footnote ⁴² The same thought is apparently in Aesch. Cho. 115–21, where the Chorus, advising Electra on how to pray to Agamemnon, tell her: ‘remember to mention Orestes…calling to mind those responsible for the murder…that there should come for them some daimon or mortal…to kill them’. The prayer for the god to intervene is closely related to the prayer for the man to return home.

Can we be sure that Charaxus is the singer's brother? On the basis of the text of the new song, he could potentially be another relative, or even a non-relative on whose safe return and success the pair depend. But the degree of concern, the fervent prayers (πόλλα λίσσεσθαι; line 6) suggest a close family member. Charaxus is unlikely to be the singer's husband: that would not fit with the addressee asking the singer to pray for him. The ancient tradition believed that Charaxus and Larichus were the brothers of Sappho (and, in the case of Charaxus, this goes back to Herodotus).Footnote ⁴³ Even if this belief was based on no better evidence than we have ourselves, it does fit the scenario of this song very well. There is also the parallel of Sappho fragment 5, which is addressed by a sister to a brother, with prayers for a return from a voyage in similar language to the new poem. It is safe to conclude that Charaxus is a brother. It is significant that Charaxus is apparently named without acknowledging who he is (though he may have been further identified in the lost opening); it follows that he was identifiable by the original audience without further help. The introduction of personal names removes the song from the generic sphere: it is a song about a person known to the singer, the addressee, and the audience. Although Sappho is not named in the song (at least in the surviving portion), as she names herself in other songs, the proliferation of personal detail apparently constructs the singer as ‘Sappho, the one with the relatives Charaxus and Larichus’. The scene described may be a typical scene with which the audience may empathize, but it is specifically ‘Sappho's’ brother away at sea, who is the subject of this song.Footnote ⁴⁴

What is the nature of the voyage on which Charaxus is engaged? Strabo says that he was a wine trader, but this kind of detail is perhaps unlikely to have figured in a Sappho song, and may be a guess. νᾶϊ σὺν πλήαι (line 2) would fit a trade voyage (a ship filled with goods), but could mean ‘with the company intact’.Footnote ⁴⁵ The pair are looking to Charaxus and Larichus to release them from great βαρυθυμία – a strong word. As we noted, the ‘great storms’ in stanza 4 may be as relevant to the group at home as they are to Charaxus at sea. If the pair, as women, rely on Charaxus in general for protection and to take their part, it is plausible that his mere absence (together with the apparent minority of Larichus) may cause the πόνοι and βαρυθυμία they experience, just as the absence of Odysseus and Telemachus is the cause of the troubles of Penelope.Footnote ⁴⁶ It is also possible that the voyage is not just for trade: it might be a military expedition, or even a return from exile, on which the women rely. Even if it is not, we may imagine that the instability of Mytilenean political life could mean that a man's extended absence even for peaceful purposes, such as trade, might have serious consequences for female family members.

Who is the second-person addressee? Footnote ⁴⁷ Sappho's mother is preferred by West, Obbink, and Ferrari.Footnote ⁴⁸ She is attested both in the tradition and in Sappho's songs, and ‘mater’ (‘mother’), can now be restored in fragment 9.Footnote ⁴⁹ Certainly, the addressee must be someone as closely affected by the absence, and concerned with the fate, of Charaxus, and also of Larichus, as the singer herself, which strongly argues for a family member. Sappho's mother as addressee has the advantage of economy: there is no need to posit a further family member in addition to those recorded in the tradition. However, the implied criticism in ἄϊ θρύλησθα (‘always chattering away’) could be seen as less suited to addressing a mother. This has already been noticed by Bettenworth, leading him to suggest that the addressee is a nurse.Footnote ⁵⁰ I will return to her identity below.

The addressee is gently admonished, and then encouraged to an attitude which will bring her strength and consolation: pious formal entreaty to the gods, together with a resigned acceptance of fate which only they (the gods) know. The addressee's ‘chattering’ about Charaxus is the symptom of an unfocused anxiety, contrasted with the clarity and resolution which will be inspired by, and realized in, the formal prayer to the gods proposed by the singer (just as Eurycleia in the Odyssey [4.750–7] advises Penelope, distraught at the departure of Telemachus, to wash, put on fresh clothes, and pray to Athena). Perhaps the singer also means to propose a better subject matter for the prayer: whereas the addressee is depicted as wanting/envisaging a return of Charaxus ‘with a full ship’ (presuming this means ‘full of goods’), the prayer suggested by the singer is more modest: for him to return safely and find ‘us’ safe and sound (compare fragment 5.1: the brother should come back ‘unharmed’).Footnote ⁵¹ ‘The rest’ (presumably including prosperity going beyond safety) is to be left to the gods.Footnote ⁵²

Behind this consolation and ‘wise advice’, the singer's own concern for Charaxus is implicit: he is as dear (or dearer) to the Sappho-speaker as he is to the addressee, though this concern is seen through the viewpoint of the addressee. We can imagine that the singer is restraining her own emotions to console the addressee; the consolation may be partly the singer's own consolation to herself.

The schema of the new song – in which the singer, the ‘I’ persona, talks to an addressee about an absent third person dear to the addressee – is also found in Sappho fragment 96. There the singer consoles a female addressee (probably the Atthis named later in the song) about a woman who has now gone away (apparently to Sardis – line 1):

Here, as in the new song, there is an implied closeness between ‘Sappho’ and the addressee (‘don't worry, she remembers her gentle Atthis’). Both songs deal with loss and absence, through a dramatic dialogue between two women. In both songs, the singer calls to mind the relationship of two of its (named) members before a circle who know them: in fragment 96 it is a friendship/erotic relationship, in the new song a kinship relationship, and in both songs the singer-persona (a figure with insight and wisdom) offers consolation. Both songs are an example of a type of Sapphic song which imitates real female dialogue, using emotional expression (‘her heart is consumed’), colloquial forms (‘you are always chattering away’ – compare fragment 94: ‘honestly, I wish I were dead’), and the use of personal names to add intimacy and the impression of a real dialogue.Footnote ⁵³ These are songs apparently composed for an intimate circle, replaying, or at least mimicking, the relations and experiences of its members.Footnote ⁵⁴ Through their depiction of the relationship between singer, addressee, and absent individual, both songs create a complex emotional interplay.Footnote ⁵⁵

In both the new song and fragment 96, the consolation is marked by a shift of register: the colloquial beginning moves in fragment 96 to an epic-style expanded simile, and in the new song to ‘great storms’, a ‘daimon’, and a moral injunction to ‘leave it to the gods’, a topos from epic.Footnote ⁵⁶ The addressees are offered the consolation of poetry, lifting them from present anxiety to a wider vista of beauty/the divine, to contextualize their emotion.Footnote ⁵⁷

Common to both songs is the use of complex dramatic forms. In the new song, the theme (concern for a loved one) is projected through the form of a prayer. This use of prayer form as a dramatic focus is familiar from fragment 1, in which ‘I love her’ is dramatized as prayer: ‘Aphrodite, I love her, help me to get her’. In the new song this dramatic schema is more complex: an exhortation to prayer is embedded in a dramatic dialogue. ‘I wish Charaxus would return’ becomes ‘Gods, please send me back Charaxus’, which becomes in turn ‘[addressee], bid me pray for Charaxus’, and finally ‘Don't chatter about Charaxus, you must leave it to the gods – bid me to pray for him’. This complex dramatic form allows the singer's concern for her brother to be depicted in its relation to a number of actors: ‘you’, ‘me’, Charaxus, the gods, and ‘us’.

The Sappho-singer's own emotions towards Charaxus are ‘refracted’, as it were, through those of the addressee. We can compare the way, for example in fragment 31 (in which the singer describes to the beloved the effect of seeing her talking to a man), the singer's passion for the song's addressee is made more complex, more intense, by being seen through the eyes of the male figure watching her: the third person serves to ‘refract’ the emotions of the Sappho figure, who watches him, an experience reported to the addressee by the singer.Footnote ⁵⁸ Another example is fragment 94, in which the singer describes a recent scene in which, parting from another woman, she has consoled her by calling to mind the passionate experiences they have shared. The singer's consolation is, however, put in context by the opening of the song (‘honestly, I wish I were dead’ – presumably the words of the singer). This frames the consolation, creating a kind of dialogue between the singer and herself, controlling in her farewell an emotion she later, in recounting it, cannot restrain.Footnote ⁵⁹ In the new song, too, the complex positioning asks the audience to infer the emotions of the singer, rather than displaying them overtly. This dramatization of emotion can be seen as a typically ‘Sapphic’ feature. The use of this same type of dramatic form in the new song helps confirm it as Sappho's.

Because of the similarities to fragment 96 and fragment 94, I suggest that we should see all three songs as having the same cultural and performance context. These are songs for a circle of women, probably young women, united by an affection typically depicted as eros, and by song, fashion, culture, and heightened emotion.Footnote ⁶⁰ In the new song, this wider audience group can possibly be detected in the first-person plurals in the third stanza. This ‘we’ is, in the first place, the combination of ‘you’ and ‘I’, or perhaps (presuming the characters are related) the family in a more general sense. However, the move to ‘we’ in the later stanzas also occurs in fragment 5 (line 7), where there is no second-person addressee (‘may he become a joy to his friends and a bane to his enemies, but may no one be one to us’). It is quite possible that the audience group were linked to the action of the song not just by their empathy for the situation of the women depicted in it, but also by a personal concern with Charaxus’ fate because of family or ‘political’ ties.Footnote ⁶¹

For this reason, I would prefer to imagine the addressee in the new song, too, as a member of this kind of group of younger woman, rather than a mother – for example, a sister. θρύλησθα (‘chattering away’) would then be the gentle chiding permitted by intimacy. This would fit with the impression in all three poems (fragments 94 and 96, and this one) that the singer offers her consolation to a younger addressee (though the status as consoler comes perhaps partly from her position as poet).Footnote ⁶² We could imagine that the singer is the older sister of both the addressee and Larichus (consoling the one and exhorting the other to become a man). In that case, both women – singer and addressee – are likely to be young and unmarried. A woman deeply concerned about the fate of a brother and praying for his safety is likely to be an unmarried woman, one not under the protection of a husband.Footnote ⁶³ Such a figure is well known from myth: an Antigone or Electra (see further below). Sophocles’ Antigone and Ismene, or his Electra and Chrysothemis, provide a later literary parallel for two sisters discussing a brother's fate.

It is true that the addressee is envisaged as ‘telling’/‘bidding’ (κέλεσθαι) the singer to pray to Hera, which might suggest that the addressee is more senior. But does it? ‘κέλομαι’ may be used for a request to perform within the Sapphic circle, as fragment 22: ‘I bid you (κέλομαι σἐ), taking up the lyre, to sing of Gongyla’. It is the singer herself issuing the instruction ‘tell me to pray’. Telling a person to tell you to offer a prayer may be a diplomatic way of making an offer to pray on your joint behalf, or perhaps there is a reason (her youth?) why the addressee cannot herself approach Hera's altar. Or the singer may simply be asking for the chance to perform the prayer precisely because she thinks that she will do a better job – as though the singer were saying (contrasting her addressee's ‘chattering’ with her own poised Sapphics and developed tropes): ‘that's not how you ask for Charaxus back – let me do it’. As Obbink observes, the prayer for Charaxus’ safe return discussed at the song's start is in fact already delivered – by the new song itself.Footnote ⁶⁴

A much more serious objection to the idea that the addressee is a sister is that the tradition does not record any further siblings of Sappho (apart from another brother, ErygiusFootnote ⁶⁵). If, in fact, a further family member is addressed in this song, we would have to assume that the Sappho biographical tradition (one of whose main objects was apparently to catalogue identifiable family members) had failed to register her. This would only be plausible if the new song did not make the identity of the interlocutor clear. On the identity of the addressee, we can therefore conclude that she is a female family member, but more we cannot say.

If the new song displays dramatic schemata typical of Sappho's other surviving songs, it also contains another motif very familiar from the Lesbian poets: that of the storm as a metaphor for the travails of life. In Alcaeus, in particular, storms are rarely purely meteorological events; they are also metaphors for the shared affliction and solidarity of the group before whom the songs are performed, and of the outrageous blows of Mytilenean factional politics.Footnote ⁶⁶ I suggest that the storms and windy blasts in the new Sappho song also have a metaphorical significance. The literal storms which threaten Charaxus reflect the afflictions of ‘us’ at home. As I suggested above, these afflictions might be linked (as in Alcaeus) to the stormy world of Lesbian political faction.Footnote ⁶⁷

Another feature of the new song familiar from other archaic poetry is the attitude of pious resignation and resilience in the face of adversity which it advocates: ‘leave things to the gods, only they know what will happen’.Footnote ⁶⁸ But in this song it has a flavour which relates particularly to the female experience of endurance to fate: it depicts the resilience which must be displayed when the man who normally provides protection is away, or himself in danger: to endure patiently and with nobility – the virtue of a Penelope. Pious prayers to the gods will focus this attitude of noble acceptance and endurance, in contrast to the ‘chattering’ of the first stanza. As we have seen, the song implicitly compares the travails of Charaxus at sea with the endurance of the women waiting at home – both must look to the gods, to the intervention of a daimon. As with Odysseus and Penelope, the suffering of the man away is mirrored in that of the woman who waits for him at home, without news, without his protection (these parallels are explored further below). The role required of the woman is patient but not entirely passive. The last stanza, with its wish for Larichus to ‘become a man’, suggests a further dimension to the woman's role, as promoter and supporter of masculine virtue, and as participant in the world of honour relationships. The women in the song rely on their men not just to return safely but to act as men in support of family honour, and are themselves participants in the world of honour relations.

I conclude this section by setting out some important points which I think may be inferred from the new song: (i) Sappho's circle, for whom, and in whose company, songs such as fragment 96 or the new song were performed, contained family members (a mother or a sister); (ii) other members of the circle, even if not family, were closely enough concerned in the fate of Sappho's family to be a suitable audience for songs about the members of that family; and (iii) songs taking the form of prayers for absent men were as suitable a topic for song in the circle as were songs about absent women.

The new song: what is missing?

The new song is complete apart from its opening: one, or maybe two, initial stanzas are missing.Footnote ⁶⁹ The loss of this opening has robbed us of the mise en scène, the scenario, which gives sense to our reading of the rest of the text. It may have helped to set up the introduction of Charaxus, and also of Larichus in the final stanza, both of which seem rather abrupt in the surviving text.Footnote ⁷⁰

It is plausible that the song opened by naming its addressee (the ‘you’ of the first surviving stanza), as in other Sapphic songs, possibly also identifying her relationship to the speaker.Footnote ⁷¹ We can make further inferences about the content of the preceding stanza from the fact that something is needed in the opening with which the ἀλλὰ (‘but’) in the first surviving stanza of the new song is set in contrast. It could be: ‘[something is the case], but you are always chattering that Charaxus should come [or has come] home’, but for that we might have expected the first surviving stanza to begin ‘σὺ δέ’. So it is likely that the ἀλλὰ καὶ must be contrasted with something in the missing opening that the addressee does not do, namely: ‘you do not do X or should do X’, but instead are always chattering…’.Footnote ⁷² The opening of our surviving stanza also shows that at least some of the previous stanza was composed of the singer's speech to the addressee, making it somewhat less likely that there was a ‘frame’ in which the singer explains how she came to be talking to her interlocutor.Footnote ⁷³

Could other similar songs suggest an opening? A potentially close parallel is Alcaeus fragment 338. This is the song which inspired Horace's Soracte Ode – in which there are similarities of thought and wording with the new Sappho song.Footnote ⁷⁴ Like the Sappho song, the Soracte Ode is a reported monologue of the speaker/singer giving an interlocutor advice on the correct attitude to take to the gods (this may also have been the case with the Alcaeus song, which is fragmentary). To explain the similarities between the Soracte Ode and Sappho we could suppose either that Horace draws on the Sappho song as well as Alcaeus fragment 338; or that the Soracte Ode draws on the missing sections of Alcaeus fragment 338, which shared the same general schema as the new Sappho song.

The Alcaeus fragment is:

In the lost sections of this song, as in Horace, it is plausible that the adversity of the natural world outside suggested to the singer the power of the gods, and the attitude of pious resignation which is the consequence of human powerlessness in the face of adversity, the topos which we find in the Soracte ode (and also in the new Sappho song):Footnote ⁷⁵

These parallels might suggest that the new Sappho began in a ‘grand’ style, like Alcaeus or Horace, with a description of a storm or a winter scene. But in the new Sappho song, the description of nature calmed by the gods comes later, in the third surviving stanza. The surviving portion starts in a more colloquial style, with a dialogue between women.Footnote ⁷⁷

Thus the opening should be in the conversational style as well, so as to lead naturally to the colloquial θρύλησθα in line 1. Likewise, an opening with a moral topos seems ruled out: that also comes later (‘leave it to the gods, who have the power both to bring storms and make us blessed’). So we need a beginning in Sappho's ‘dialogic’ style, such as: ‘[<name of addressee>, worrying about a loved one will not bring him back home any sooner, but youFootnote ⁷⁸ do not listen to me] … but are always chattering for Charaxus to return’. This would be consistent with the ‘ring’ form which is evident in the song. It starts and ends with the dialogue between the speaker and addressee. Their discussion of, and concern for, the personally named individual ‘brothers’ frames a moral reflection about the power of the gods, and the correct attitude to the absence of a loved one.

The opening might also have contained a brief description of the situation that gives rise to the dialogue. Fragment 96 may offer a parallel. The opening of this poem too is lost, but ‘Sard[is]’ is preserved in the first stanza, apparently linking to line 6 (‘she stands out among the Lydian women’). The song apparently started by saying that the woman who is its subject has gone to Sardis. The new song, too, might have started by saying that Charaxus was absent at sea, possibly introducing the role of Larichus as well.Footnote ⁷⁹

Fragment 5

The same group of papyri that has given us the new song also provides additional line beginnings from fragment 5, another Sappho song about a male relative away at sea, of which we already have substantial portions from papyrus. These additions to fragment 5 were published by Burris, Obbink, and Fish in the same edition of Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik as the new song:Footnote ⁸⁰

The scenario here is more straightforward than in the new song: the singer prays to the Nereids for the safe return of her brother. The relationship between the actors is made completely clear: ‘brother’ in line 1, picked up by ‘sister’, now confirmed in line 9. Unlike in the new song, however, the figures are conspicuously not named – so that we have one song which refers to Charaxus without identifying him as a brother, and another which refers to a brother without naming him as Charaxus.Footnote ⁸¹ The avoidance of personal names is in marked contrast to their liberal use in the new song, especially in a prayer where one might expect the persons prayed for to be named (see the next section). This suggests that a different, more generic effect is aimed at, that the lack of names may encourage a reading as a literary version of a prayer which may be delivered by any (Mytilenean) woman. The detail about the brother's past is also apparently generic (the text is fragmentary), or at least very allusive: the reasons for the brother's absence, his location, and the nature of what he has suffered or the mistakes he has committed seem not to be specified (though ἐπαγ[ορί]αι πολίταν in line 14 may have a more specific application – see below). Against this background, the restoration of a personal name into one of the lacunas in the text (such as – predictably – that of Doricha by WestFootnote ⁸²) seems wrong.

In fragment 5, there is none of the dramatic complexity or interplay of actors that we find in the new song. However, though the song starts as a prayer for a safe return, as it progresses, it starts to reveal details of the brother's history and of the relationship between the brother and the sister. The brother has committed some kind of offence in the past (ἄμβροτε – line 5). The singer loves her brother and prays for his return, but through the medium of the prayer she indirectly admonishes him. She prays for him to achieve his heart's desire, but also to show her more honour and to erase his past mistakes. Once again, there is a focus on the effect of the brother's absence on the praying sister, and on the wider group: ‘us’ (lines 7–8). The female role in encouraging or requiring male moral performance (which we saw in the new song – that Larichus should ‘become a man’) is more pronounced here. The brother should help his friends and harm his enemies, and show more honour to his sister. There is a strong suggestion that he has been deficient in these areas in the past. The prayer is not just for a return but for a version of the ‘triumphant return’ of an Odysseus or an Orestes, sweeping enemies away and restoring honour.

Unfortunately, despite the line beginnings supplied by the new papyrus, the content of the final two stanzas is still not clear.Footnote ⁸³ But ἐπαγ[ορί]αι πολίταν is the most likely restoration in line 14 – ‘through the accusation of the citizens’. This suggests that the brother's ‘mistake’ was not some dalliance with a Naucratean courtesan but political – that his absence, return from which is the subject of the prayer, may be an exile.Footnote ⁸⁴ Such a fate would fit a Mytilenean man of the time of Alcaeus and Pittacus.

Despite the differences, there are clear similarities between the two songs:

• • A woman prays to the gods for the return of an absent male, probably in both poems a brother.

• • Concern for the absent man is accompanied by concern on the part of the singer for her own well-being.

• • The prayer for safety is mixed with the hope that a man will offer better support than that given up to this point (in the new song, that Larichus will ‘raise his head’).

• • The singer-persona is herself implicated in the tribulations of absence described in the poem. She is driven to a supplicatory prayer by circumstances (in contrast to the prayer of fragment 1, with its confident appeal to Aphrodite based on the singer's ‘personal’ relationship with her).

• • There is a suggestion of the involvement of a wider group: ‘we’/‘us’.

• • There are also hints of a wider background of Mytilenean political faction, though these are very allusive/indirect.Footnote ⁸⁵

Getting ready to pray

So the scenario in both fragment 5 and the new song is a woman who waits and prays for a man upon whose safety she relies. Like many of the erotic songs of Sappho, these are songs of separation.Footnote ⁸⁶ It was the lot of an island-dwelling woman in archaic Greece to remain at home while men were at sea (particularly in the Mytilene of the time of Alcaeus and SapphoFootnote ⁸⁷), just as it was the lot of all those women whose husbands in the epic tradition went to fight at Troy. In this section I will suggest that the prayers of the brothers poems form part of a tradition in Greek literature and myth in which women pray, and discuss praying, for the return of absent men.

The archetypal woman who waits is Penelope. In Book 4 of the Odyssey, having waited twenty years for the return of Odysseus, and being forced to endure the insulting conduct of the suitors, she learns that Telemachus, too, has set off by ship. Like the characters in the Sappho songs, the men upon whom Penelope is dependent for safety are absent, one missing at sea, the other untested, yet to become a man, and now he too has gone away to sea. Without their presence, she has no protection from enemies. She turns for comfort to female companions, lamenting:

Like the speaker in the new Sappho song, Eurycleia proposes to Penelope that the right response is to pray to the gods, suggesting a specific deity, in this case Athena, and Penelope accordingly prays to her (4.762–6). Answering her prayer (4.795 ff.), Athena comes to Penelope at night in the form of her sister Iphthime, offering consolation, and telling her that the gods will protect Telemachus. Like the women in Sappho's brother's songs, Penelope needs a male protector to return home and (in the case of Telemachus) to ‘raise his head’ and become a man, and like them she is consoled by women close to her. For these women, the ritual act of prayer also has the psychological effect of restoring the ‘right’ attitude to the gods and to events which they are unable to influence. For Penelope, prayer is an act involving her regaining composure and control: Eurycleia advises her to bathe, put on fresh clothes, go upstairs to the women's quarters, and make a prayer to the gods (4.750–3). The prayer is an act appropriate to, and beneficial for, a woman in these circumstances.

The Sappho ‘brothers’ songs have an even closer parallel in myth and literature: Electra, an unmarried woman, at the mercy of her enemies, who relies on her brother and spurs him on to action in support of her and the family.Footnote ⁸⁸ With no husband or son to protect her interests, she is at the mercy of enemies within her family.Footnote ⁸⁹ Her only hope is that her brother, Orestes, will return, as her protector, to right the wrongs she continues to suffer. Like Penelope, Sophocles’ Electra is comforted by the chorus of Argive women, who (like the singer in the new Sappho song), remind her of the power of Zeus:

Like the addressee in the new Sappho, Sophocles’ Electra has a female companion in whom she can to some extent confide: her sister, Chrysothemis. Electra urges Chrysothemis not to offer the impious libation that Clytemnestra wants her to make to the dead Agamemnon, but rather to pray to him for revenge and Orestes’ return. As in Sappho fragment 5, prayer is envisaged as a medium not just to further the brother's return home but to require a moral performance of him, to help friends and harm enemies and restore the family honour:

The gods’ power to help the women will be accomplished through the return of the mortal individual as the gods’ agent. So it is natural that the prayer for the return of the individual becomes a means of contact with, an address to, the absent man himself, a request for his help (as in fragment 5). Indeed, in the dramatic context of Electra's prayer in Aeschylus’ Choephori, the ‘absent’ Orestes is, unknown to her, actually present, overhearing the prayer. His presence illustrates how the medium of prayer (‘please, god, may he come’) is seen as a means of conveying a message to the man prayed for. Prayer gives the praying women strength in the face of apparent powerlessness, including the confidence to recommend a moral course not just to their female companions, but also to men.

A common element of these depictions is a scene in which the woman whose man is absent shares her emotion with her fellows and is offered solidarity or consolation, and in which the content of the prayer itself is discussed and planned. So Aeschylus’ Electra in the Choephori first consults at length with the female chorus as to how she should construct her prayer before she delivers it:

Part of the aim in her consultation is apparently to help her get the prayer just right, in the belief that its construction and quality will influence its power to move the god. After asking Hermes to intercede, Electra delivers the prayer, with a libation, to Agamemnon at his tomb (124–51):

This prayer offers some close parallels to the Sappho songs. Together with Sappho frag 5 and the new Sappho, it suggests a structure for a prayer to a god for the return of an absent man:

1. 1. ‘[Name of god], help us’: frag 5.1 (Nereids); frag. 9a.6 (Hera); Aesch. Cho. 124 and 130 (Hermes and Agamemnon).

2. 2. ‘May he [the absent man] come hither’: frag. 5.2 (τυίδ᾽ ἴκεσθαι); frag. 9a.7 (ἐξίκεσθαι τυίδε), cf. Aesch. Cho. 137 (ἐλθεῖν Ὀρέστην δεῦρο), unharmed: frag. 5.1 (ἀβλάβην), frag. 9a.7 (σάαν ἄγοντα νᾶα).Footnote ⁹¹ The central topic of the prayer, the return of the individual, is expressed with absolute clarity and succinctness.

3. 3. ‘May he bring help/vengeance’: frag 5.10 (μέσδονος τίμας), cf. Aesch. Cho. 142–4 (death, vengeance). The prayer then sets out what the returning person shall do.

4. 4. ‘And as for us, at home, help us by…’: frag. 5.7 (γἐνοιτο δ᾽ἄμμι); frag 9a.9 (κἄμμες) and 17 (κἄμμες); cf. Aesch. Cho. 142 (ἡμῖν μέν). Finally, the prayer turns to wishes specific to the women waiting at home.

The various actors and the wishes for each are carefully distinguished using personal pronouns. The prayer, though delivered by an individual, is for ‘us’, reflecting the wider community – of women, of the house – to which the prayer-maker belongs.

These texts paint a consistent picture of planned prayer as a typical and socially recognized reaction by a woman to the absence of a man. They suggest that a rehearsal or discussion between women in the family may typically have preceded such a prayer,Footnote ⁹² which was then delivered by a chosen delegate (perhaps the closest relative, or one talented in words in music). The dialogues in these texts introducing the prayer locate the prayer as arising in female social interaction.

These ‘waiting women’ from literature and myth form part of the background against which Sappho's audience heard and understood the ‘brothers’ songs. They would have identified the mythical and literary type to which the described experience belonged: a scene familiar from literature, myth, and the real experience of the singer and her circle, related to a form of prayer frequently practised. The literary pedigree gives such a role status or nobility. It is also a topos which embodies values displayed in adversity, paralleling heroic values: cunning and resilience (Penelope), fortitude and determination (Electra). These Sapphic songs promote and celebrate a female virtue set, familiar from the depictions of Athenian tragedy, but in Sappho's case alone composed by a woman for a female audience.

The new song, together with fragment 5, complements our view of the ideology of the Sapphic circle. Its members were (as we know from existing fragments) bound by close personal ties towards each other (often expressed as an erotic attachment), by a commitment to culture (instantiated in skill at song and in personal adornment), and, as we now see from the brothers poems, by a shared relationship towards the male world (in the sense of being jointly concerned with the fate of the same male figures, whether by family or faction). These songs also show us the rehearsal and reinforcement of a view of correct behaviour to be displayed by women in adversity, paralleling the moral code of the Alcaean symposium.

Audience

I have argued that the new song is parallel in form to that of fragments 94 and 96: a dialogue between women, dealing with absence/departure/loss. This suggests that they are ‘circle songs’ – songs replicating and replaying for a circle of women the sorts of discussions they are used to engaging in, an artistic re-creation in dramatic form of the passionate yet refined conversations cultivated by the group. The new song provides further support for the idea of a Sapphic circle (perhaps similar to male symposiastic gatherings) as the audience for at least certain of Sappho's works, and also for the idea that the group was united by familial and/or political, as much as by friendship, romantic, or artistic, linkages.

The new song could not have been used ritually as the text for an actual prayer, since it advertises itself precisely as a kind of rehearsal for such a prayer. We may infer that fragment 5 was not composed as an actual prayer either; that, like the new song, it too is a piece for performance within the group, imitating a prayer. I assume that the audience for such a song was the circle of women whose dialogues are depicted. But, in that case, what was the point of the performance of this kind of imitation of a prayer – or ‘prayer recreated through art’ – within the group?

In the first place, the performance of these songs, though not strictly speaking a prayer, must have had a kind of prayer function.Footnote ⁹³ Though performed as art before a group they were still an appeal to the god. Probably, as we have seen, they make use of actual prayer forms. In addition, however, performed in the group, recreating and rehearsing prayer, they are a way of dramatizing themes of close concern to the group. Its members probably not only performed such prayers themselves at Mytilenean altars but also spent time giving thought, together with others, as to how to express such appeals in a way which would best distil emotion, accurately set out the subject matter, and persuade the god. Within the group, the one who was best at turning longing into a tight verbal and musical appeal to the gods was the mousopoios (muse-maker) Sappho herself.

But what about the brothers – did they hear the songs? Scholars who write about these songs often seem to assume that they were Sappho's intended audience. Indeed, the element of moral commentary on, and admonition of, the men involved – which is a distinctive element in both songs – suggests to many readers that the men were intended to hear them. I have argued above that this element of ‘appeal’ to the brothers in the songs might be explained by the way that prayer for the return of the individual is perceived as a means of contact with, an address to, the absent man himself. But is it possible that one or other brother is envisaged as actual audience or recipient of the song?

The absent brother apparently cannot be the primary audience of either fragment 5 or the new song: he is ex hypothesi not in Mytilene to hear it. But the melos mentioned by Herodotus (2.135.6), in which he says Sappho ‘derided’ Charaxus, certainly appears to have been intended to reach Charaxus (though Herodotus imagines him back in Lesbos when so addressed). This could suggest that the new song may also have been intended to reach the world of men, as a reminder of the reliance that the singer and her group placed in the men's performance, and the suffering caused by their absence, a communication between the female circle and the world of men.

In that case, however, how could the songs have been delivered to the brothers? Stehle suggest that some of Sappho's songs were composed as written texts to be sent to their recipients, and Pelling also raises this is as a possible account of the production of the new song.Footnote ⁹⁴ But such an account of these works (as a kind of poetic epistle) is hard to reconcile with the widely (and in my view rightly) held view that Sappho's works are performance pieces – songs by a singer in an oral culture – and I have argued above that there are compelling reasons to see the brothers poems as composed for performance in a circle. Moreover, the new song involves two brothers: if the song were to be ‘sent’ to either brother, Larichus – the one who must ‘become a man’ – might seem the better candidate. If we are to see the brothers as an audience of the song, we would need a method for it to reach both of them.

There is really only one method by which both brothers could have heard the song, one which is entirely consistent with what we understand about the nature and performance of Sappho's works: namely, via words sung to music. It would be easy to imagine that Sappho's songs quickly reached outside the circle; that the walls of the female gathering were permeable; that performance in the circle was a type of oral publication, a springboard to reach wider audiences (just as Alcaeus’ songs, performed in the symposium, could quickly publicize a political message in wider Mytilenean society). It is certainly very plausible that Larichus, at home in Lesbos, heard the new song soon after performance. Perhaps it even got to Mytileneans abroad, borne by the power of oral transmission and the prestige of Sappho's words and music, and reached Charaxus, not through Egyptian papyrus but in words and music. Some modern songs have two audiences in this way: John Lennon's ‘Woman’, for example, a song about betrayal and devotion with generic application, published on vinyl to the wide world, is also a public apology to be heard by Yoko Ono.Footnote ⁹⁵

If this hypothesis is correct – that the brothers were a secondary audience of the song – there would be an additional complexity to the reconstruction of the addressees and audiences. The primary audience in hearing the song would be aware that it was also intended for the ears of the brothers, and so would have heard it not just as an account of women dealing with loss through prayer but also as a personal and collective communication from the female to the male. If there was a male audience, they would be aware that their performance had already been assessed, the impacts of their behaviour experienced, and the emotional effect of their absence felt, by the group of women. This would be true whether or not we imagine the male audience as ‘secondary’ – that is, in addition to an original female audience – for the song itself contains a dialogue in which these effects are depicted. Presuming the songs were first performed and then transmitted to the brothers, the resonance for them would be in reconstituting in their imagination not just the described dialogue between the two women but also the original performance.Footnote ⁹⁶

Certainly, Sappho's works must have reached the world of male oral transmission at some point, in order for us to hear them still today. The discussion of a male audience, which the brothers poems seem to invite, raises the possibility that Sappho envisaged that even the most apparently intimate and ‘female’ of her songs were also, through re-performance, to be published to men.

As far as the ‘brothers’ songs are concerned, if Sappho did use them to address men, the method she chose to use – the depiction of a dialogue between two women affected by their behaviour – is not just poetically effective (illustrating the impact of absence on the family through a personal dialogue between family members); it also suggests that Sappho preferred to address men in her songs obliquely, with circumspection and delicacy, couching requests to improve conduct in the form of prayers or of prayers within dialogues. It is hard to imagine, on the basis of fragment 5 and the new song, a song in which the singer ‘greatly derided’ Charaxus, as recorded by Herodotus (2.135).

Conclusion: Sappho's ‘brothers’ poems

We can see the new ‘brothers’ song as a type of Sapphic song on the subject of male relatives which is fully consistent with fragment 5. The erotic adventures of Charaxus and Doricha that we might have expected, on the basis of the secondary sources, to be the subject of a Sappho song about Charaxus are not to be found in the ‘brothers’ poems which we now have. The surviving songs do not support the idea that Sappho's songs contained some kind of cycle of poems depicting the story of Charaxus and Doricha. Even with the restoration of the name Doricha in fragment 15, the surviving fragments provide no evidence that the Doricha/Rhodopis story which we find in Herodotus and elsewhere was based in Sappho's songs.

Instead, what we find in Sappho's brothers poems is a type of song about young women waiting and praying for the return of absent men, a theme with roots both in literature and myth, and in the real experience of the women in Sappho's audience group. These songs enacted and dramatized to the audience the suffering of the waiting woman, advocated a morality of female endurance and resignation to the divine will (presented as similar to the endurance values of male morality), and represented women playing an active role in the honour of the family and group. They depicted women finding courage and solace in adversity, through prayer, song, and solidarity with each other, and with the audience group before whom the songs were performed. They suggest for the first time how the world of Sappho and her audience – the world of luxury, eros, and cult which is presented to us in the majority of her songs – was affected by the struggles, absences, and exiles, the literal and factional storms, which Alcaeus and his philoi endured.