¹ Text from Voigt, E.-M. (ed.), Sappho et Alcaeus: Fragmenta (Amsterdam, 1971)Google Scholar; it was preserved for its metre by Hephaistion, Ench. 7.6 (p. 23 Consbruch): πεντάμετρα δὲ [sc. Αἰολικὰ δακτυλικὰ] καταληκτικὰ εἰς δισύλλαβον.

² Sappho's epithalamia have been preserved (including frr. 104V–117V) by ancient commentators such as Syrianus, Apollonius Dyscolus, Hephaistion, Dionysus of Halicarnassus, Choricius of Gaza and Servius, as well as by Himerius (Or. 9.7 = fr. 194V; Or. 1.4), ‘Demetrius’ (Eloc. 132), Dioscorides (Anth. Pal. 7.407) and Michael of Italy (fr. 194AV). See also the impact of Sappho's wedding-songs on Theocritus’ Idyll 8 (Epithalamion for Helen) and Catullus’ epithalamian poetry. For further discussion of Sappho's nuptial songs and/or epithalamia, see Bowra, C.M., Greek Lyric Poetry: From Alcman to Simonides (Oxford, 1961 ²), 217–23Google Scholar; Page, D.L., Sappho and Alcaeus: An Introduction to the Study of Ancient Lesbian Poetry (Oxford, 2001, 1955¹), 121–2Google Scholar; and Kirkwood, G.M., Early Greek Monody. The History of a Poetic Type (Ithaca, 1974), 141–2Google Scholar; and more recently in McEvilley, T., Sappho (Putnam, 2008), 186–92, at 191–2Google Scholar; and Ferrari, F. (transl. Acosta-Hughes, B. and Prauscello, L.), Sappho's Gift: The Poet and her Community (Ann Arbor, 2010), 117–33Google Scholar.

³ Lardinois, A., ‘Keening Sappho: female speech genres in Sappho's poetry’, in Lardinois, A. and McClure, L. (edd.), Making Silence Speak: Women's Voices in Greek Literature and Society (Princeton, 2001), 75–92, at 89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Page (n. 2), 225–6; Bowra (n. 2), 214.

⁵ Wilson, L.H., Sappho's Sweetbitter Songs: Configurations of Female and Male in Ancient Greek Lyric (London, 1996), 143Google Scholar.

⁶ See also the references to the organization of Sappho's poems in Pardini, A., ‘La ripartizione in libri dell'opera di Alceo. Per un riesame della questione’, RFIC 119 (1991), 257–84Google Scholar. For more recent discussions of Sappho's wedding songs, see e.g. Lyghounis, M.G., ‘Elementi tradizionali nella poesia nuziale greca’, MD 27 (1991), 159–98Google Scholar; Wilson (n. 5), 142–57; Pernigotti, C., ‘Tempi del canto e pluralità di prospettive in Saffo, fr. 44V’, ZPE 135 (2001), 11–20Google Scholar; Dodson-Robinson, E., ‘Helen's “Judgment of Paris” and Greek marriage ritual in Sappho 16’, Arethusa 43 (2010), 1–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Dale, A., ‘Sapphica’, HSPh 106 (2011), 47–74, at 55–67Google Scholar.

⁷ Ferrari (n. 2), 117–33.

⁸ In his commentary, Page (n. 2), 119–20 and 123–5 twice remarks on this distinction between the epithalamia and the other Sapphic fragments, and details the metres of those songs.

⁹ Ferrari (n. 2), 119.

¹⁰ Ferrari (n. 2), 120–8.

¹¹ Ferrari (n. 2), 128.

¹² See Dale (n. 6), 54 n. 26, who notes that the eikasia game was ‘played at symposia and elsewhere, where participants are subjected to ridicule through absurd comparisons, as at Birds 804–805’.

¹³ See Hague, R.H., ‘Ancient Greek wedding songs: the tradition of praise’, Journal of Folklore Research 20 (1983), 131–43, at 132Google Scholar on Xen. Symp. 6.8–10 as an example of a mocking comparison in a sympotic context; and Dunbar, N., Aristophanes Birds (Oxford, 1995), 487–8Google Scholar, who casts the net widely, defining eikasia as ‘a common form of Greek wit, practised at festive gatherings (e.g. Ar. V. 1308–14, Pl. Symp. 215 A) including weddings (Sappho 115 …) and general conversation (V. 1170–72)’.

¹⁴ Fraenkel, E., Plautine Elements in Plautus, transl. Muecke, F. and Drevikovsky, T. (Oxford, 2007), 115–19Google Scholar compares fr. 115V to passages in Aristophanes and Menander.

¹⁵ De Martino, F. and Vox, O. (comm.), Lirica Greca III. Tomo Terzo: Lirica Eolica e Complementi (Bari, 1996), 1093Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Dale (n. 6), 51–4, at 54.

¹⁷ Griffith, R. Drew, ‘In praise of the bride: Sappho fr. 105(a) L–P, Voigt’, TAPhA 119 (1989), 55–61, at 57Google Scholar. See also Hague (n. 13), 133, who sees the eikasia being used ‘in a complimentary rather than derisive vein’ for weddings.

¹⁸ Swift, L., The Hidden Chorus: Echoes of Genre in Tragic Lyric (Oxford, 2010), 245CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹ Swift (n. 18), 245.

²⁰ On this topic, see Ferrari (n. 2), 127–8; Hague (n. 13), 133; and Lyghounis (n. 6), 168–72.

²¹ On this topic in general, see Motte, A., Prairies et jardins de la Grèce antique. De la religion à la philosophie (Brussels, 1963), 208–12Google Scholar; Calame, C. (transl. Lloyd, J.), The Poetics of Eros in Ancient Greece (Princeton, 1999), 153–7Google Scholar; Rosenmeyer, P.A., ‘Girls at play in early Greek poetry’, AJPh 125 (2004), 163–78Google Scholar; and Deacy, S., ‘From “flowery tales” to “heroic rapes”: virginal subjectivity in the mythological meadow’, Arethusa 46 (2013), 395–413CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²² See the discussion of thalos in this passage in Garvie, A.F., Homer Odyssey Books VI–VIII (Cambridge, 1994), 122–4Google Scholar, where he says that ‘the sing. is always used metaphorically of a child’ (at 122).

²³ Hague (n. 13), 137.

²⁴ See the discussion of ernos in this passage in Harder, R., ‘Nausikaa und die Palme von Delos’, Gymnasium 95 (1988), 505–14Google Scholar.

²⁵ Hague (n. 13), 138.

²⁶ See Aubriot, D., ‘L'homme-végétal: métamorphose, symbole, métaphore’, in Delruelle, É. and Pirenne-Delforge, V. (edd.), Kêpoi. De la religion à la philosophie (Liège, 2001), 53–62Google Scholar.

²⁷ Snyder, J.M., Lesbian Desire in the Lyrics of Sappho (New York, 1997), 103Google Scholar.

²⁸ On Sappho, fr. 115V, see Wilson (n. 5), 146.

²⁹ For a phallic interpretation of Sappho, fr. 111V, see Kirk, G.S., ‘A fragment of Sappho reinterpreted’, CQ 13 (1963), 51–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁰ For conventional gendered values, see Lyghounis (n. 6), 170–1: the groom is marked by ‘vigore fisico, valore in guerra, nobiltà di natali, potere e ricchezza’.

³¹ See e.g. Aesch. Ag. 1525: Clytemnestra praises Iphigenia as a shoot sprung from Agamemnon (ἐκ τοῦδ’ ἔρνος ἀερθέν); Eum. 661 and 666: Apollo describes an infant as a fragile young shoot (ἔρνος); Soph. OC 1108: Oedipus addresses Antigone as his beloved shoot (ὦ φίλτατ’ ἔρνη); and Eur. Bacch. 1306: Kadmos calls Pentheus the shoot of Agave's womb (τῆς σῆς τόδ’ ἔρνος, ὦ τάλαινα, νηδύος). Euripides also uses ἔρνος in a literal sense: Med. 1213–14: Creon clasps dead Glauce and sticks to her poisoned robe as ivy clings to shoots of laurel (ὥστε κισσὸς ἔρνεσιν δάφνης λεπτοῖσι πέπλοις); and Hel. 183: the chorus dries laundry near young reed shoots (ἀμφὶ δόνακος ἔρνεσιν) at the water's edge.

³² Examples of ἔρνος: Od. 14.175 (the gods nourished young Telemachus like a sapling); Alcman 3.68 Davies (Astymeloisa is compared to a ‘golden sapling’, χρύσιον ἔρνος); Ibycus 286 Davies (shady branches—real or metaphorical—growing in the garden of the Parthenoi). Later poets continue the convention: Meleager is nourished like a sapling in Bacchyl. Ep. 5.87 (Maehler); in Pind. Nem. 6.37 (Snell), the sons of Leto are like saplings; and Heracles is imagined as a sapling in Theoc. Id. 2.121: Ἡρακλέος ἱερὸν ἔρνος. Examples of θάλος: Hom. Il. 22.57 (Hector was nourished by his mother like a beloved shoot); Hymn. Hom. Dem. 66, 187 (Persephone is imagined as a sweet shoot, γλυκερὸν θάλος, and Metaneira's baby-boy as a young shoot, νέον θάλος); Ibycus 288 Davies (Euryalus is the θάλος of the Graces, whom Persuasion and Aphrodite herself nourished); Pind. Ol. 2.45, 6.68 Snell-Maehler (Thersander and Heracles are described as shoots of their respective family trees).

³³ Later authors also tend to use (h)orpax non-metaphorically: this is the case in Eur. Hipp. 221, where it is used of Phaedra's wooden hunting-spear, where it must refer to something reasonably thick and rigid; Theoc. Id. 7.146, where the spring landscape is described as full of fruit-laden branches (ὄρπακες … καταβρίθοντες); Callim. Ia. 4.194, of the competition between the laurel and the olive tree; and Ap. Rhod. Argon. 4.1424–6, with reference to the gifts of the Hesperides to Orpheus, as he desperately seeks water (note that here orpax and ernos appear in the same passage: ποίης γε μὲν ὑψόθι μακροί βλάστεον ὅρπηκες, μετὰ δ’ ἔρνεα τηλεθάοντα πολλὸν ὑπὲρ γαίης ὀρθοσταδὸν ἠέξοντο).

³⁴ The interpretation of the Homeric and Hesiodic passages depends on whether one emphasizes the flexibility or the strength of the branch; in the latter case, as suggested by the anonymous reader, the (h)orpax would be a strong stick with which the ploughman would beat his oxen. See the images in Gow, A.S.F., ‘The ancient plough’, JHS 34 (1914), 249–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁵ Ath. Deipn. 16.674e.

³⁶ Bartol, K., ‘Saffo e Dika (Sapph. 81 V.)’, QUCC 56 (1997), 75–80Google Scholar. Flower garlands also make an appearance in Sappho, frr. 98V and 125V.

³⁷ For a discussion of the Aeolic doublet form βραδ-/ῥαδ-, see Hooker, T.J., ‘Sappho's βροδοδάκτυλος und verwandtes’, GB 1 (1973), 165–9Google Scholar.

³⁸ We note that the scholiast who preserves this passage interprets the adjective as meaning ‘of great size’ (εὐμεγέθεις) rather than ‘slender’: Schol. Ap. Rhod. 3.106 (p. 220 Wendel) ῥαδινῆς· … Ἴβυκος δὲ [sc. ἔταξε τὸ ῥαδινὸν] ἐπὶ τῶν τὸν οὐρανὸν βασταζόντων κιόνων, εὐμεγέθεις λέγων. The scholiast may be seeking a more functional definition: the columns hold up the heavens in spite of their slender appearance, not because of it.

³⁹ The same scholiast quoted above (n. 38) also struggles with the use of rhadinos in Stesichorus: Schol. Ap. Rhod. 3.106 (p. 220 Wendel) ῥαδινῆς· … Στησίχορος [sc. ἔταξε τὸ ῥαδινὸν] ἐπὶ τοῦ εὐτόνου· ῥαδινοὺς δ᾿ ἐπέπεμπον ἄκοντας. See the cautious comments of Davies, M. and Finglass, P.J. (edd.), Stesichorus: The Poems (Cambridge, 2014), 585Google Scholar on this passage: ‘Acording to the scholium, Stesichorus uses the word to mean “vigorous” (εὔτονος) … but it is not the most natural interpretation, and it seems unlikely that the context provided support for such a meaning; “slender” is more likely.’

⁴⁰ Ath. Deipn. 682a Kaibel: τῶν δὲ καλχῶν μέμνηται καὶ Ἀλκμὰν ἐν τούτοις· χρύσιον ὅρμον ἔχων ῥαδινᾶν πετάλοις ἴσα καλχᾶν.

⁴¹ On an alternative reading for this fragment, see further below.

⁴² The same scholiast quoted above reads rhadinos as ‘swift’ in this context: Schol. Ap. Rhod. 3.106 (p. 220 Wendel) Ἀνακρέων δὲ ἐπὶ τάχους ἔταξε τὸ ῥαδινόν· ῥαδινοὺς πώλους.

⁴³ Theocritus also uses the adjective for a beloved, but in this case the object of desire is a young woman named Bombyca (Id. 10.24–5: Μοῖσαι Πιερίδες, συναείσατε τὰν ῥαδινάν μοι | παῖδ’· ὧν γάρ χ’ ἅψησθε, θεαί, καλὰ πάντα ποεῖτε).

⁴⁴ We can certainly imagine that the groom might also be the object of envy or desire among the onlookers, both female and male; but in the context of epithalamia he is usually marked as hyper-masculine and in the subject, rather than the object, position.

⁴⁵ For Himerius’ text, see the edition by Colonna, A., Himerii declamationes et orationes cum deperditarum fragmentis (Rome, 1951), 82Google Scholar. The source for the fragment referred to (Sappho, fr. 105aV) is Syrianus (1.15 Rabe) on Hermogenes, Peri Ideon (Rhetores Graeci 6.219 Rabe); see further Griffith (n. 17), 55–61.

⁴⁶ Cf. the Cypria (arg. lines 157–8 Severyns: see Currie, B., ‘Cypria’, in Fantuzzi, M. and Tsagalis, C. [edd.], The Epic Cycle and its Reception [Cambridge, 2015], 281–305, at 292–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar) for evidence of a tradition of Achilles falling in love with Helen; for Achilles as lover, see also Fantuzzi, M., Achilles in Love (Oxford, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. But Himerius here seems to use Achilles as shorthand for ‘the hero’ in war.

⁴⁷ The text of ‘Demetrius’ is from Chiron, P. (ed. and transl.), Démétrios, Du style (Paris, 1993), 49Google Scholar; at line 3, Chiron accepts Radermacher's ἴψω vs Voigt's ἴψοι.

⁴⁸ Zellner, H., ‘Sappho's supra-superlatives’, CQ 56 (2006), 292–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁹ Zellner (n. 48) includes a reference to Kirk's (n. 29) interpretation of the line as phallic humour. Sappho is so attuned to Homeric intertexts that we might be tempted to connect her references to Ares-as-bridegroom with Demodocus’ narrative of Ares and Aphrodite, which, being both somewhat ridiculous and specifically about marital infidelity, is not a happy comparison.

⁵⁰ Stobaeus (3.4.12) cites this fragment as ‘from Sappho to an uneducated (apaideuton) woman’, and Plutarch (Quaest. conv. 646E–F) labels the addressee ‘uncultured’ (amouson) and ‘ignorant’ (amathon); see Campbell, D.A. (ed. and transl.), Greek Lyric I. Sappho and Alcaeus (Cambridge, MA, 1982), 98–9Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Ferrari (n. 2), 119.

⁵² Ferrari (n. 2), 128; he argues the same for Catullus, remembering the Latin poet many times in the course of his discussion of Sappho's epithalamia.

⁵³ Hephaistion (Ench. 10.5, p. 34 Consbruch) places them in Sappho's seventh book according to the chosen metre (‘antispastic tetrameter catalectic’).

⁵⁴ See Hamm, E.-M., Grammatik zu Sappho und Alkaios (Berlin, 1957), 148Google Scholar, section 234 on Lesbian genitive singular in –ω for the -ο- declension. Note that the gracilis puer in Hor. Carm. 1.5.1 may be seen as an adaptation of the Sappho passage, and a confirmation of the latter reading; see Nisbet, R.G.M. and Hubbard, M., A Commentary on Horace Odes Book 1 (Oxford, 1970), ad locGoogle Scholar.