INTRODUCTION
In Sappho's two-line fragment 115V, an unidentified speaker addresses a lucky bridegroom, wondering how best to describe him; the answer follows immediately:
Brides are often compared to plants in melic poetry, where the image suggests youthfulness and eroticism. In Sappho, fr. 105bV, for example, a bride is imagined as a hyacinth trampled by a careless shepherd, and in fr. 105aV she resembles a ripe apple high up in a tree, beyond the reach of an eager apple-picker. But the comparison of a groom to a delicate plant strikes an odd note. In other Sapphic epithalamia, grooms are more often huge, tall and virile; in fr. 111V, for example, the groom is compared to the hyper-masculine Ares.
The questions posed here concern the context of the comparison, and the nuances of the phrase ‘delicate branch’. Is it an image more appropriate for the groom or for the bride? Would ancient audiences have understood it as a compliment or as an insult? In search of answers, we first discuss what we know about Sappho's epithalamia, then consider the evidence for songs of comparison (eikasia) performed at weddings, and finally survey other instances of the words (h)orpax and (b)rhadinos in archaic epic and melic.
SAPPHO'S EPITHALAMIA
The testimonia indicate that Sappho's wedding songs were famous in antiquity.Footnote 2 But modern scholarship does not always agree on which fragments should be labelled epithalamians, and how they were arranged in later editions. André Lardinois argues convincingly that ‘at least one book, probably the ninth, in the Alexandrian edition of her poetry consisted wholly of wedding songs, while other marriage songs were included among the other eight books.’Footnote 3 As Denys Page and Maurice Bowra noted decades earlier,Footnote 4 the organization of songs with nuptial overtones (but not fully identifiable as epithalamia) outside the ninth book was most likely based on metre: thus fr. 27V and fr. 30V, with their ‘sense of excitement and ritual activity’,Footnote 5 were placed in Sappho's first book, along with other pieces in Sapphic stanzas, while fr. 44V found its home in the second book, among the Aeolic pentameters.Footnote 6
Franco Ferrari has studied the nuptial songs (included in and excluded from the ninth book), and believes that those collected specifically as epithalamia (frr. 104V–117V) follow a clear pattern.Footnote 7 First, they were mostly composed in metres not represented in the other eight books;Footnote 8 and second, the ceremonial occasion strongly shaped their composition. Ferrari argues that the Alexandrian editors chose to ‘identify and isolate … those poems that exhibited, with respect to the marriage rite, a precise pragmatic function by articulating its phases and highlighting its main features’.Footnote 9 In other words, individual songs followed the ritual pattern of the ceremony, and each song was performed during a specific phase of the wedding. The phases he distinguishes are 1) the procession of the bride towards the groom's house (fr. 104V); 2) the anticipated loss of virginity (frr. 107V and 114V, and possibly frr. 105aV and 105bV); 3) the song at the bedchamber door (frr. 110V and 111V); and 4) the ‘farewell to the couple at the end of the wedding ritual’ (frr. 116V and 117V).Footnote 10 A final group of songs that offer praise and congratulations to the married pair is more difficult to place within the ritual's temporal frame. This includes, among others, fr. 112V, a makarismos for the couple that opens with an apostrophe to a ‘happy bridegroom’ (ὄλβιε γάμβρε); and fr. 115V, addressed to a φίλε γάμβρε, and the subject of this study.
According to Ferrari, since traditional elements of the genre, as well as the close relationship between song-composition and ritual, shape Sappho's epithalamia, there are few opportunities to move beyond the traditional motifs, which support the ‘specific performative needs of the various phases of the festival’.Footnote 11 But fr. 115V does manage to challenge convention, as we shall argue: here Sappho refashions the conventional praise of the bridegroom, and imports a well-known technique from the symposion, namely the eikasia.
EIKASIA
The eikasia, or game of comparison, is far better known from classical sources than from archaic ones. Those sources usually locate it, as mentioned above, in the playful atmosphere of the symposion, where it works to mock or ridicule a chosen target among the symposiasts.Footnote 12 We may consider Plato, Symp. 215a–c, where Socrates is compared to Silenus and Marsyas, and Xenophon, Symp. 6.8–10, where an interlocutor is compared to men better or worse than he, as examples of such mocking comparisons; the latter example uses the word εἰκάζω (cf. Sappho's Aeolic dialect form εἰκάσδω in fr. 115V). In comedy, the ridiculous comparisons of men to specific types of birds in Aristophanes’ Birds (Av. 804–5, 1290–9), or the humorous insults exchanged at a drinking party in his Wasps (Vesp. 1308–14), where men insult one another with comparisons to donkeys and locusts, also fit the basic category of eikasia.Footnote 13 But in the context of the wedding ceremony alluded to in Sappho, fr. 115V, we may wish to refine the definition.
Eduard Fraenkel may have been the first to draw a specific connection between the game of comparison and Sappho's epithalamic fr. 115V,Footnote 14 but he focussed on eikasia only in its sympotic and comic guise. More relevant for our purposes are Francesco De Martino and Onofrio Vox, who interpret the eikasia in Sappho, fr. 115V as ‘burlesque and aggressive’, combining ridicule and humour, and following in the tradition of carmina popularia.Footnote 15 Alexander Dale, one of the few scholars who looks in detail at fr. 115V, also focusses on the humorous angle, but understands it as specifically epithalamic abuse, possibly meant to avoid any hubris or jealousy that might result from excessive praise of the couple; in addition, he views the comparison to a ‘delicate branch’ as more suitable for the bride than for the groom:Footnote 16
Soft or slender is perfectly suitable for Aphrodite, hardly for the praise of a grown man and bridegroom; elsewhere in the Epithalamia Sappho compared a bridegroom to Achilles, which of course would have been a compliment … a comparison which would be perfectly suitable for a bride is instead used of the groom … Thus in fr. 115 we … have playful abuse directed at the bridegroom.
We will return later to the question of the suitability of a slender branch for this context; of immediate interest is the question of ‘playful abuse’ directed at the bridegroom. R. Drew Griffith claims that praise and blame were never confused in the eyes of the archaic Greeks, and that, while abuse might have served to balance any hint of hubris at a wedding, it ‘was subordinate to the overall task of praise’; quoting fr. 115V, he argues that ‘the wedding eikasia was a type of makarismos, or praise-poem’ appropriate to the celebration.Footnote 17 More recently, Laura Swift also highlights the element of praise in Sappho's wedding songs: it is ‘often achieved by means of a comparison to something regarded as conventionally praiseworthy (a technique known as eikasia)’.Footnote 18 She points to the testimonies of Michael of Italy (fr. 194AV), who reports that ‘Sappho compared her bridegrooms to horses and her brides to flowers’, and Himerius (frr. 105aV and 218V), who writes that ‘Sappho's bride was compared to an apple and her groom to Achilles’. Swift finds evidence of the eikasia technique in fr. 111V, where the groom is compared to Ares, and fr. 115V, where she interprets the comparison to a horpax as a straightforward compliment to his beauty. She sees the eikasia in fr. 115V as part of a ‘conventional motif, and expected part of the ceremonial praise’, reinforced by the ‘ritualistic repetition of the verb εἰκάσδω at the line end’.Footnote 19
We agree with the scholars above who argue that the technique of eikasia is the structuring force behind Sappho's fr. 115V, and that the main function of such a comparison in the context of a wedding is praise, even if the comparison itself may not be fully complimentary—a bit like today's custom of the best man's speech poking fun at the groom. But we still need to clarify what precisely the comparison to a ‘delicate branch’ tells us about the groom. Instead of humorous and possibly bawdy references to the groom's size and the bride's beauty, Sappho here compares the groom to something delicate and small: but is the comparison a sincere compliment to his good looks, as Swift suggests above, or a jocular insult, as Dale would have it? We cannot assess the tone of this comparison without fully understanding the nuances of the comparandum, and for that we must consider how the terms are used in the wider context of archaic poetry.
PLANT IMAGERY
Epithalamia often assimilate bridegroom and bride to divinities, heroes or natural elements,Footnote 20 and placing a couple in a natural setting is one way to highlight the connections between human, divine and natural sexuality. One need only think of the abundant flora in the Hebrew Song of Songs, or of Zeus and Hera's erotic locus amoenus in Iliad 14.Footnote 21 A classic example of the nexus of eikasia, makarismos and marriage is the scene between Odysseus and Nausicaa in Odyssey 6. Odysseus first compares Nausicaa to a goddess (Od. 6.151–2): Ἀρτέμιδί σε ἐγώ γε, Διὸς κούρῃ μεγάλοιο, | εἶδός τε μέγεθός τε φυήν τ’ ἄγχιστα ἐΐσκω· (‘I compare you to Artemis, daughter of great Zeus, most closely, in your appearance and height and person’). He then blesses her parents for their good fortune in having such a daughter, who is described as ‘a lovely shoot (thalos) taking her place in the chorus’ (Od. 6.157).Footnote 22 As Rebecca H. Hague points out, the type of plant to which Nausicaa is initially compared is less suggestive than the comparisons made in wedding songs, where the bride is imagined as a ‘ripe or blossoming plant, one ready to be picked’.Footnote 23 Odysseus continues his speech, however, with yet another plant comparison, this time to ‘a new palm shoot (ernos) coming up on Delos beside Apollo's altar’ (Od. 6.162–3): Δήλῳ δή ποτε τοῖον Ἀπόλλωνος παρὰ βωμῷ | φοίνικος νέον ἔρνος ἀνερχόμενον ἐνόησα.Footnote 24 Just as he wondered at that natural yet divinely inspired phenomenon, so he admires Nausicaa, wonders at her appearance and is afraid to touch her. Hague concludes that ‘the language and standards of praise so closely parallel wedding songs’ that it is clear we are meant to understand, along with Nausicaa, that Odysseus hints, although quite delicately, at marriage.Footnote 25
In the Homeric passage above, the word used for palm shoot is ernos. The same word also occurs in Thetis’ description of Achilles, her infant son, as he develops in childhood and adolescence (Il. 18.56): ὃ δ’ ἀνέδραμεν ἔρνεϊ ἶσος (‘for he was growing up like a young shoot’); and in the simile for Euphorbus’ death at the hands of Menelaus, comparing the victim to a young flourishing olive sapling nourished by man (τρέφει ἔρνος ἀνὴρ ἐριθηλὲς ἐλαίης), but then torn out by the roots in a storm and smashed on the ground (Il. 17.53). Both cases highlight the pathos of a young warrior's premature death,Footnote 26 and, most importantly for our argument, neither image is one of hyper-masculinity. Is the comparable turn in Sappho, fr. 115V, an ‘emphasis on slenderness [that] … reduces the groom to less than heroic proportions’,Footnote 27 and does the idea of a groom who is slim and flexible like a young tree make the idea of the wedding night less threatening to the young bride?Footnote 28 Or is a tree branch inevitably and unavoidably phallic, thus affirming the young man's connection with assertive sexuality and fertility?Footnote 29
While beauty, good fortune and fertility are wished for in the case of both bride and bridegroom at a wedding, certain features seem more suitable for the male partner than for the female. In Sappho, fr. 115V, the conventional gendered values seem to be challenged, as the groom, rather than the bride, is compared to a plant that is young and pliant.Footnote 30 In order to get a better sense of the nuances of this eikasia, let us now consider the exact terms used by Sappho for ‘delicate branch’: (h)orpax (b)rhadinos.
I. (H)orpax and other young plant terms
The word (h)orpax is much less likely to be used metaphorically than some of its synonyms, such as ernos and thalos. Ernos, for example, as mentioned above, occurs twice in Homer as a metaphor for young (but still growing) men destined for an early death. Similarly, the tragedians use ernos metaphorically when speaking of those struck down before their time: Iphigenia and Pentheus are both called ernos.Footnote 31 Other instances of ernos and thalos suggest young men and women just at the cusp of maturity.Footnote 32
In contrast, the three earliest uses of (h)orpax are all non-metaphorical.Footnote 33 The first is a reference in Homer to making chariot wheels out of young, bendable branches (Il. 21.38); the second, in Hesiod, consists of advice given to a farmer to use a whip made of a flexible branch to control his oxen (Op. 468).Footnote 34 And the third is another passage from Sappho, fr. 81V, lines 4–7, preserved in part by Athenaeus, describing garlands made of braided stems or branches of anise (Deipn. 16.674e):
We cannot identify the social context for Sappho's verses beyond some sort of festive occasion, presumably with the accompaniment of music or song in the form of the blessed Graces. Athenaeus reports that the verses express the reason for ‘our practice of wearing garlands’, and explains that ‘Sappho urges those offering sacrifices to garland themselves since what is more adorned with flowers is more pleasing to the gods’.Footnote 35 Krystyna Bartol, taking into account Athenaeus’ reference to sacrifices, believes that fr. 81V was performed at some sort of public ceremony that was at the same time strikingly personal, as it focusses on the seductive beauty of Dika (lines 4–5), enhanced by the use of flower garlands.Footnote 36 These details could suggest preparations for a wedding ceremony, and Bartol therefore identifies fr. 81V as an epithalamium. It is then not a huge conceptual leap from the beauty of this scene—with its emphasis on softness, loveliness, sweet smells (anise) and garlands—to the metaphorical use of (h)orpax in the context of eroticism in Sappho, fr. 115V.
(H)orpax itself, without suggestive context, seems fairly neutral: it can refer to actual young shoots, as in the case of Homer and Hesiod above, and later Pindar, in his description of the branch-carrying ritual (daphnephorikon) performed by young women in a partheneion (2.8 Snell). But even literal usage can point to a more complex web of connections; the women who carry branches in Pindar, for example, do so with ‘soft, delicate hands’ (χερσίν τ᾿ ἐν μαλακαῖσιν), possibly hinting at an erotic connotation within the ritual context, which appears to have put the young women on public display. Sappho's Dika does the same in the passage above, braiding her garlands with ‘soft hands’ (ἀπάλαισι χέρσιν). In order to appreciate the wider connotations of (h)orpax specifically in Sappho, fr. 115V, we need to look closely at its attendant adjective, (b)rhadinos.
II. (B)rhadinosFootnote 37
The basic meaning of (b)rhadinos in archaic poetry is ‘slender’. It appears in Il. 23.583, for example, to describe the slender thong of a whip that Antilochus uses to urge on his horses. Ibycus uses the word in a similarly concrete way to describe pillars supporting the heavens (fr. 336 Davies),Footnote 38 while Stesichorus uses it of javelins (fr. 304 Davies–Finglass).Footnote 39 As in the case of the Homer and Hesiod passages discussed above, these instances may also be interpreted as evidence for items that, while small in girth, are strong and solid: javelins and pillars may be slender, but their slenderness belies their power. More common, however, is a definition that combines aspects of slenderness and pliability, as in the case of plant life. Alcman compares a golden chain to the petals of a slender flower (fr. 91 Davies);Footnote 40 Theognis mentions the slender trunk of the palm tree that Leto discovered on Delos, which was strong yet small enough in girth that she could wrap her arms around it during the pains of childbirth (5–6W: σε θεὰ τέκε πότνια Λητώ, | φοίνικος ῥαδινῇς χερσὶν ἐφαψαμένη …); and, in a later period, Theocritus uses the adjective several times to characterize the slender silhouette of the cypress tree (Id. 11.45, 27.46).
But perhaps most useful for our purposes are other examples of (b)rhadinos referring specifically to human limbs or the body, with the meaning of ‘slim’, ‘slender’ or ‘delicate’. The word occurs in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, when the goddess’ robe falls gently over her ‘slender feet’ as she walks (Hymn. Hom. Dem. 182–3):
Hesiod uses it in the same way of grass growing under Aphrodite's ‘slender feet’, as she steps out of the sea onto land (Theog. 194–5):
Theognis speaks of the ‘slender hands’ of a pretty Spartan slave-girl bringing garlands to symposiasts (1001W): εὐειδὴς ῥαδιναῖς χερσὶ Λάκαινα κόρη. And Sappho herself uses the word elsewhere in her corpus to describe Aphrodite (fr. 102V):
We may want to ask ourselves how significant it is that all the applications of (b)rhadinos to the limbs or body thus far involve women or female divinities. Should we read Sappho's use of (b)rhadinos for the bridegroom in fr. 115V against a conventional association with femininity? In contrast, a century later Anacreon uses the term with reference to the beautiful thighs of boys, the objects of his desire (fr. 407P: ἀλλὰ πρόπινε ῥαδινοὺς ὦ φίλε μηρούς), and the agile limbs of speedy young (male) colts (fr. 456P: ῥαδινοὺς πώλους).Footnote 42 However, even in Anacreon's verses, rhadinos is applied to the objects of desire or visual fascination; thus, in relation to Sappho, fr. 115V, Anacreon's beloved boy with delicate thighs fills a position more closely analogous to that of the bride than the bridegroom.Footnote 43 So it seems safe to say that Sappho's use of (b)rhadinos for the bridegroom goes against the grain of archaic poetry's more customary application of the adjective to objects, rather than subjects, of desire.Footnote 44 At the same time, its connection with supple and slender plants fits well into the conventional eikasia environment.
‘A BRIDEGROOM EQUAL TO ARES’
Now that we have identified Sappho's diction in fr. 115V as a challenge to the traditionally gendered terms of praise for the groom, we can widen our lens to observe other gendered descriptions of both bride and groom in Sappho's poetry. Himerius, the Greek rhetorician active in Athens in the fourth century a.d., preserves excerpts from the archaic lyric poets, and provides a useful overview of the conventional image of the bridegroom in Sappho. He remarks on a very young groom, who ‘just got his first beard, before his peers’ (ὑπηνήτης ἔτι πρωΐτερον τῆς ἡλικίας), and on a bride, who ‘is in full bloom for marriage’ (ἀκμάζει πρὸς γάμον) (Or. 9.15–16). He then continues:Footnote 45
Σαπφοῦς ἦν ἄρα μήλῳ μὲν εἰκάσαι τὴν κόρην, τοσοῦτον χαρισαμένην τοῖς πρὸ ὥρας δρέψασθαι σπεύδουσιν, ὅσον <οὐδ’> ἄκρῳ τοῦ δακτύλου γεύσασθαι, τῷ <δὲ> καθ’ ὥραν τρυγᾶν τὸ μῆλον μέλλοντι τηρῆσαι τὴν χάριν ἀκμάζουσαν· τὸν νυμφίον τε Ἀχιλλεῖ παρομοιῶσαι καὶ εἰς ταὐτὸν ἀγαγεῖν τῷ ἥρωι τὸν νεανίσκον ταῖς πράξεσι.
It was Sappho, really, who compared the girl to an apple [fr. 105aV]; those who hasten to pluck it before the proper season do <not > get a taste of her (even) with the tips of their fingers, as she gracefully guards her beauty in full bloom for the man who intends to harvest the apple in due time. And she [Sappho] compared the bridegroom to Achilles, and put the young man on par with the hero in his achievements.
Following Himerius, we interpret the lovely fruit (glukumalon) in Sappho's fragment 105aV (already mentioned at the beginning of this essay), ripening on the top branch of a high tree, as an image of a desirable young woman almost ready for marriage; to fill out the picture, the desirous young men are compared to apple-pickers who are unable, for whatever reason, to reach the prize. But we do not have preserved in Sappho's corpus the direct comparison of the bridegroom to Achilles alluded to by Himerius. If, however, we accept Himerius’ statement that Sappho ‘put the young man on par with the hero in his achievements’, and assume that the specific fragment has been lost over time, then we can posit here a conventional model of a groom as a larger-than-life hero, and marriage as a conquest comparable to a military or heroic exploit.Footnote 46
Other fragments of Sappho (and contemporary scholarly commentaries) support this interpretation. In fr. 111V, for example, preserved by Hephaistion (Poem. 7.1, p. 70 Consbruch) for its ‘central refrain’ (mesumnion), the groom is compared not to Achilles but, in an escalation of terms, to the god Ares himself (Sappho, fr. 111V):
‘Demetrius’ noted Sappho's use of hyperbole here, followed by an adjustment or recantation (Eloc. 148):
ἔστι δέ τις ἰδίως χάρις Σαπφικὴ ἐκ μεταβολῆς, ὅταν τι εἰποῦσα μεταβάλληται καὶ ὥσπερ μετανοήσῃ, οἷον ἴψωFootnote 47 δή, φησί, τὸ μέλαθρον ἀέρατε τέκτονες· γαμβρὸς εἰσέρχεται ἴσος Ἄρηϊ, ἀνδρὸς μεγάλου πολλῷ μείζων, ὥσπερ ἐπιλαμβανομένη ἑαυτῆς, ὅτι ἀδυνάτῳ ἐχρήσατο ὑπερβολῇ, καὶ ὅτι οὐδεὶς τῷ Ἄρηϊ ἴσος ἐστίν.
There is a distinctively Sapphic (stylistic) grace based on recantation, whenever she recants a thing she has said and regrets it; for example when she says ‘Up high with the roof, raise it high indeed, you carpenters! The bridegroom arrives, equal to Ares, far bigger than a big man’, she then checks herself, because she has used an impossible hyperbole, and because nobody is as tall as Ares.
More recently, Harold Zellner quotes this same fragment to explore the device of ‘supra-superlatives’; he argues that it is impossible for a mortal to be above the human scale, as in the case of a man ‘equal to Ares’, so the poet immediately recants, rephrasing her praise of the groom more realistically.Footnote 48 But here Sappho has again given us a picture of a groom who is heroic, whether in behaviour or stature, and both Ares and Achilles are shown to be solidly masculine military comparanda.Footnote 49
A final example, fr. 110aV, adds to our understanding of this (hyper)masculine model of the bridegroom; our source is once again Hephaistion, but this time with reference to Sappho's use of the Aeolic dactylic tetrameter catalectic (Ench. 7.6, p. 23 Consbruch):
Writing about this fragment, ‘Demetrius’ compares it to Sappho's more typical celebration of beauty and love, in which ‘every lovely word is interwoven with the texture of her poetry’; here, in contrast (Eloc. 167):
ἄλλως δὲ σκώπτει τὸν ἄγροικον νυμφίον καὶ τὸν θυρωρὸν τὸν ἐν τοῖς γάμοις, εὐτελέστατα καὶ ἐν πεζοῖς ὀνόμασι μᾶλλον ἢ ἐν ποιητικοῖς, ὥστε αὐτῆς μᾶλλόν ἐστι τὰ ποιήματα ταῦτα διαλέγεσθαι ἢ ᾄδειν, οὐδ’ ἂν ἁρμόσαι πρὸς τὸν χορὸν ἢ πρὸς τὴν λύραν, εἰ μή τις εἴη χορὸς διαλεκτικός.
In a different tone, she mocks the rustic bridegroom and the doorkeeper at the wedding, using a very ordinary style, with prosaic rather than poetic diction. Thus, her poems are better-suited for conversation than for singing, and inappropriate for the chorus or the lyre, unless there is such a thing as a conversational chorus.
While we have no specific reference to a groom alongside the doorkeeper, ‘Demetrius’’ comments seem to support the idea of a groom who is also clumsy, unusually large and possibly in some way rustic or uncivilized.
In all three fragments discussed above, Sappho uses conventionally gendered language and imagery, offering a model of a big, awkward, markedly masculine groom, who is best compared to a warrior (Achilles, Ares), a large and formidable doorkeeper or someone very big and tall. If Sappho actively criticizes rusticity, masculinity and excessive size, even in the context of ritualized erotic humour, we can imagine that she might in turn praise sophistication, delicacy ([h]abrosunē) and elegance, as she does in a different context in fr. 55V, asserting that an uneducated or rustic woman will have ‘no share in the roses of Pieria’ once she is dead.Footnote 50 We have seen that Ferrari argues that Sappho's epithalamia ‘exhibited … a precise pragmatic function by articulating [the wedding rite's] phases and highlighting its main features’,Footnote 51 and that, as ‘sophisticated as Sappho's art may have been, our poet refashioned traditional motifs according to performative needs of the various phases of the festival’.Footnote 52 But we propose that Sappho did find a way to innovate, and that was to imagine, if only here in fr. 115V, a delicate bridegroom, marked by (h)abrosunē and beauty.
There is, however, one other possible example of a delicate male beloved in Sappho's corpus. In fr. 102V, quoted earlier, a young woman complains to her mother that she can no longer perform her household duty of weaving cloth, because she has been overcome (dameisa) by desire (pothos) for another young person (pais), through the power of slender (bradine) Aphrodite.
While these two lines are not specifically epithalamic,Footnote 53 the epithet used for Aphrodite suggests that we are in the sphere of a ‘delicate’ erōs. The girl is physically overcome: dameisa is a strong word in the traditional erotic language of Greek poetry, implying violence, taming or mastering by desire. Yet, the ultimate source of her passion is represented as ‘delicate’ or ‘slender’ (bradinē). An Aphrodite who is ‘delicate’ could also suggest a beloved who reflects that delicacy by his youth (pais). The gender ambiguity in the word pais—girl or boy—adds to the picture of youth and delicacy; perhaps the beloved is a young man just on the cusp of manhood, with only the beginnings of a beard. Or we could go one step further and accept the alternative reading in line two suggested by Bergk (2 βραδίνω ci. Bergk), pairing the adjective (Lesbian genitive singular in –ω) with the genitive noun παιδός.Footnote 54 In this case, reading ‘overcome with desire for a delicate youth because of Aphrodite’, we would have another example from Sappho's verses of a beloved young man characterized as βραδίνος.
CONCLUSIONS
We began this article with two questions about Sappho, fr. 115V: was it unusual for a bridegroom to be compared to a ‘delicate branch’ in the context of an epithalamic eikasia, and would the audience have understood it as a compliment or an insult? By surveying contrasting imagery in other Sapphic epithalamia in which the groom is emphatically virile—an Ares (fr. 111V) or an Achilles (fr. 105aV, test. Himerius 9.16; fr. 218V, test.)—and by considering other uses of the words (h)orpax and (b)rhadinos in archaic epic and melic, we can now conclude that the image in fr. 115V is both unconventional and complimentary. Sappho offers us an alternative masculine model for the bridegroom in fr. 115V (and possibly also in fr. 102V), one that better fits the positive comparison to a ‘delicate branch’: not Ares but a man defined as (h)abros. While the idea of an equally matched pair of heterosexual lovers, both young and delicate, does not fully come into its own until the later Greek novel, Sappho imagines the possibility as she invites (h)abrosunē, in the form of a delicate bridegroom and his equally delicate bride, into the wedding song and into the marriage bed.
