Anactoria

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This article is about the lover of Sappho. For the country, see Miletus.
A painting showing men and women listening to Sappho singing and playing the lyre
Disciples of Sappho (1896) by Thomas Ralph Spence. Anactoria is generally considered among Sappho's followers, and is cast as the object of her desire in Sappho's poetry.

Anactoria (or Anaktoria) (Ancient Greek: Ἀνακτορία) is a woman mentioned by the Ancient Greek poet Sappho, who wrote in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BCE. Sappho names Anactoria as the object of her desire in a poem known as Fragment 16. Another poem by Sappho, Fragment 31, is traditionally called the "Ode to Anactoria", though no name appears in it. As portrayed in Sappho's work, she is likely to have been a young, aristocratic follower of Sappho's, of marriageable age. It is possible that Fragment 16 was written in connection with her wedding to an unknown man. The name "Anactoria" has also been argued to have been a pseudonym, perhaps of a woman named Anagora from Miletus, or an archetypal creation of Sappho's imagination.

The English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne's "Anactoria" was published in his 1866 collection, Poems and Ballads. In "Anactoria", Sappho addresses the title character in a long monologue written in rhyming couplets of iambic pentameter. The monologue expresses Sappho's lust for Anactoria in sexually explicit terms, and has the poet first reject art and the gods for Anactoria's love before reversing her stance and claiming to reject Anactoria in favour of poetry. Swinburne's poem created a sensation amongst contemporary readers by openly approaching topics such as lesbianism and dystheism. Anactoria also features in an 1896 play by H. V. Sutherland and in the 1961 poetic series "Three Letters to Anaktoria", by the American poet Robert Lowell, in which an unnamed man loves Anaktoria before transferring, unrequitedly, his affections to Sappho.

In Sappho[edit]

He seems like a god to me the man who is near you,
Listening to your sweet voice and exquisite laughter
That makes my heart so wildly beat in my breast.
If I but see you for a moment, then all my words
Leave me, my tongue is broken and a sudden fire
Creeps through my blood. No longer can I see.
My ears are full of noise. In all my body I
Shudder and sweat. I am pale as the sun-scorched
Grass. In my fury I seem like a dead woman,
But I would dare...


— Sappho 31, trans. Edward Storer[1]

Anactoria is named by Sappho, who wrote in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BCE, in Fragment 16: Sappho compares her desire for Anactoria, who is described as being absent, with that of Helen of Troy for Paris.[2][a] Anactoria also appears in Fragment 141, where Sappho writes to another of her female companions, Atthis, saying that Anactoria still "thinks of [Sappho] constantly" despite living away in the city of Sardis.[4] A third poem, Fragment 31, is traditionally called the "Ode to Anactoria", though no name appears in it.[5]

In the phrasing of Garry Wills, Sappho's poem portrays Anactoria as "menacingly desirable".[6] In Fragment 16, she describes her manner of walking as attractive, and her face as having amarychma, a word literally meaning 'flashing' or 'sparkling' and likely also to indicate beauty in movement.[7] Based on its allusions to other literary works, particularly those of Hesiod, the term may also indicate that Anactoria was a young, virgin girl of marriageable age.[8] The Anactoria portrayed in Sappho's work is generally considered to have been a follower of Sappho, who educated aristocratic girls with the partial aim of preparing them for marriage.[9][b]

A reference in the tenth-century Byzantine encyclopaedia known as the Suda to "Anagora" is generally considered to refer to Anactoria;[12] the name "Anagora" has been interpreted as an error in the manuscripts,[9] or alternatively by Denys Page as a pseudonym intended to protect Anactoria's identity and reputation.[13] The Suda names "Anagora" as a native of Miletus, a major Greek city of Ionia.[c] Christopher Brown suggests that Anactoria's absence in Fragment 16 was because she had left Sappho's company to return to Miletus and marry;[9] Eric Dodson-Robinson suggests that Fragment 16 may have been written for performance at Anactoria's wedding, or for a sympotic event shortly after it.[15] However, George Koniaris suggests that Anactoria may equally have left Sappho's company to be with her family or to work as a musician,[16] and Glenn Most points out that the poem gives no indication of the length of Anactoria's absence: he argues that it may only have been a matter of a few days.[17] Martin West has argued that Sappho generally uses the name of the objects of her desire, such as Anactoria, when portraying their relationship with her as finished or her own attitude towards it as hostile.[18]

Sappho's expressed love for Anactoria is one of few examples of a woman expressing same-sex desire to survive from pre-modern literature.[19] Andrew Ford has argued that Sappho's presentation of Anactoria may be archetypal rather than a representation of any specific individual,[13] while Judith Hallett and André Lardinois have suggested that the speaker may not have been intended as an autobiographical portrayal of Sappho herself.[20] The classicist and archaeologist David Moore Robinson called the description of Anactoria in Fragment 16 "the finest lines in all Sappho's poetry".[21]

In other classical literature[edit]

Anactoria is almost unattested in ancient sources outside Sappho's works.[13] She is mentioned, among other pupils of Sappho's, in fragmentary works by Damophyla of Pamphylia, herself a follower of Sappho's who maintained a circle of female companions.[22] Anactoria is also mentioned by the first century BCE Roman poet Ovid, in the fifteenth poem of his Heroides.[d] The poem is imagined as a letter from Sappho to her male lover Phaon, in which Sappho claims that her love for Phaon has made her former, female lovers, including Anactoria, seem worthless to her.[25] In the second century CE, the rhetorician Maximus of Tyre compared the relationship between Sappho and Anactoria with that of the philosopher Socrates and his male acolytes such as Alcibiades.[26] Both Maximus and the Suda list Anactoria as a favourite pupil of Sappho's.[9]

In modern culture[edit]

Painting of a man, Alcaeus, playing the lyre to an enraptured woman, Sappho
Sappho and Alcaeus (1881), painted by Lawrence Alma-Tadema: Anactoria's name is visible near the middle of the painting.[e]

The nineteenth-century English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote a long poem, "Anactoria", published in his 1866 collection Poems and Ballads. In the poem, Sappho addresses Anactoria in a long monologue written in rhyming couplets of iambic pentameter, which incorporates fragments from Sappho's poetry: the poem's first line is "My life is bitter with thy love", translated from Fragment 130.[28] "Anactoria" presents Sappho's love and lust for Anactoria as the source of her poetic inspiration.[29] In the conceit of the poem, Anactoria is about to leave Sappho, and Sappho initially longs for the goddess Aphrodite to return Anactoria to her.[30] By the end, however, Sappho rejects Anactoria and the gods in favour of poetry, which she had initially proclaimed herself willing to sacrifice for Anactoria's love.[31] Catherine Maxwell has described both Anactoria and Sappho as poetic representations of Swinburne himself.[32]

The poem was both sensational and controversial for its treatment of hitherto taboo topics such as lesbianism and dystheism.[33] Its content is sexually explicit and sadomasochistic; it was termed "frankly pornographic" in a 1971 article by David Cook.[34] Swinburne's publication of "Anactoria", along with that of his "Sapphics", led to what Lawrence Lipking has termed his "ostracism".[35] Catherine Maxwell and Stefano Evangelista have described "Anactoria" as both among Swinburne's most famous poems and as being "infamous".[36]

While a student at Harvard University, H. V. Sutherland wrote a verse drama, Sappho, or Archilochus and Hipponax, which was performed by Harvard and Wellesley students in January 1896. In the play, Anactoria is initially loved by the poet Alcaeus, who leaves her for Sappho.[37] In his 1961 collection Imitations, the American poet Robert Lowell wrote "Three Letters to Anaktoria", a series of poems including an adaptation of Sappho's Fragment 31 as its first. In Lowell's poems, the unnamed, hypothetical man alluded to in Fragment 31 becomes the main subject of the series: he loves Anaktoria, transfers his affections to Sappho, and later, in Lowell's words, "withdraws or dies".[38] In painting, Anactoria's name is inscribed on one of the seats of the theatre depicted in the 1881 work Sappho and Alcaeus by Lawrence Alma-Tadema.[39]

Footnotes[edit]

Explanatory notes[edit]

  1. ^ Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer argues that Sappho also implicitly compares Anactoria with Helen, both emphasising her beauty and associating Sappho with Helen's rightful husband, Menelaus.[3]
  2. ^ An interpretation popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, that Sappho held a formal post as a teacher or "schoolmistress", is generally considered anachronistic and unsupported by the available evidence.[10] Holt Parker argues that the distinction between Sappho's "companions" and "pupils", established in the Suda, is in his words "illusory", and that those identified there as her pupils were instead additional lovers.[11]
  3. ^ Anaktoria was an alternative name for Miletus: various traditions linked the name to a mythical king named Anax.[14]
  4. ^ The authorship of the poem is unclear: several scholars dispute the traditional identification of Ovid as the author.[23] Charles E. Murgia has suggested that it may have been written by an unknown poet around a generation later than Ovid.[24]
  5. ^ The digamma (Ϝ) written at the start of Anactoria's name, with a sound value similar to the English w, is unlikely to have been pronounced in Sappho's dialect.[27]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Aldington & Storer 1919, p. 15.
  2. ^ Purves 2021, p. 176. For a translation of the poem, see Spraggs 2006a. For Sappho's dates, see Kivilo 2010, p. 198, n. 174
  3. ^ Pfeijffer 2000, p. 6.
  4. ^ Greenberg 1991, pp. 80–81.
  5. ^ Wharton 1908, p. 25, 35–36; Prins 2020, p. 66 (for the name and its traditional nature); Spraggs 2006b (for the poem's text).
  6. ^ Wills 1967, p. 442.
  7. ^ Brown 1989, pp. 7–9.
  8. ^ Brown 1989, pp. 13–14.
  9. ^ a b c d Brown 1989, p. 14.
  10. ^ Campbell 1967, p. 261; Parker 1993, pp. 312–314; Rayor & Lardinois 2014, p. 15.
  11. ^ Parker 1993, pp. 318–321.
  12. ^ Rayor & Lardinois 2014, p. 5.
  13. ^ a b c Ford 2011, p. 120.
  14. ^ Schmitz 1870, p. 162.
  15. ^ Dodson-Robinson 2010, pp. 15–17.
  16. ^ Koniaris 1967, p. 266.
  17. ^ Most 1981, p. 12.
  18. ^ West 1970, pp. 318–320; Most 1996, p. 35.
  19. ^ Rupp 2012, pp. 853–854.
  20. ^ Hallett 1979, p. 463; Lardinois 2021, p. 170.
  21. ^ Robinson 1963, p. 242.
  22. ^ Robinson 1963, p. 31.
  23. ^ Rosati 1996, p. 207; Rimell 1999, pp. 110–111.
  24. ^ Murgia 1985, p. 472.
  25. ^ Ford 2011, p. 203.
  26. ^ Parker 1993, pp. 317–318.
  27. ^ Prins 1996, p. 44.
  28. ^ Parker 2013, p. 202.
  29. ^ Zonana 1990, pp. 42–43.
  30. ^ Cook 1971, p. 87; Greenberg 1991, p. 80.
  31. ^ Cook 1971, p. 90.
  32. ^ Maxwell 2001, p. 40.
  33. ^ Chrystal 2017.
  34. ^ Cook 1971, p. 77; Dellamora 1990, p. 78.
  35. ^ Lipking 1988, p. 2.
  36. ^ Maxwell & Evangelista 2013, p. 6.
  37. ^ Robinson 1963, pp. 219–220.
  38. ^ Lipking 1988, pp. 118–119.
  39. ^ Robinson 1963, p. 32.

Works cited[edit]

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  • Campbell, D. A. (1967). Greek Lyric Poetry: A Selection of Early Greek Lyric, Elegiac and Iambic Poetry. London: Macmillan. OCLC 867865631.
  • Chrystal, Paul (2017). Women in Ancient Greece. Oxford: Fonthill Media. ISBN 9781781555620.
  • Cook, David A. (1971). "The Content and Meaning of Swinburne's 'Anactoria'". Victorian Poetry. 9 (1/2): 77–93. JSTOR 40001590.
  • Dellamora, Richard (1990). Masculine Desire: The Sexual Politics of Victorian Aestheticism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9780807842676.
  • Dodson-Robinson, Eric (2010). "Helen's 'Judgement of Paris' and Greek Marriage Ritual in Sappho 16". Arethusa. 43 (1): 1–20. JSTOR 44578316.
  • Ford, Andrew L. (2011). Aristotle as Poet: The Song for Hermias and Its Contexts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199733293.
  • Greenberg, Robert A. (1991). "'Erotion', 'Anactoria', and the Sapphic Passion". Victorian Poetry. 29 (1): 79–87. JSTOR 40002057.
  • Hallett, Judith (1979). "Sappho and Her Social Context: Sense and Sensuality". Signs. 4 (3): 447–464. JSTOR 3173393.
  • Kivilo, Maarit (2010). Early Greek Poets' Lives: The Shaping of the Tradition. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 9789004193284.
  • Koniaris, George L. (1967). "On Sappho, Fr. 16 (L. P.)". Hermes. 95 (3): 257–268. JSTOR 4475462.
  • Lardinois, André (2021). "Sappho's Personal Poetry". In Finglass, P. J.; Kelly, Adrian (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Sappho. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 163–174. doi:10.1017/9781316986974. ISBN 9781316986974.
  • Lipking, Lawrence I. (1988). Abandoned Women and Poetic Tradition. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226484521. Retrieved 2007-08-17.
  • Maxwell, Catherine (2001). The Female Sublime from Milton to Swinburne: Bearing Blindness. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 9780719057526.
  • Maxwell, Catherine; Evangelista, Stefano (2013). "Introduction". In Maxwell, Catherine; Evangelista, Stefano (eds.). Algernon Charles Swinburne: Unofficial Laureate. Manchester: University of Manchester Press. pp. 1–12. ISBN 9781526130488.
  • Most, Glenn (1981). "Sappho Fr. 16. 6-7L-P". The Classical Quarterly. 31 (1): 1–17. JSTOR 638456. Retrieved 2024-03-19 – via Academia.edu.
  • Most, Glenn (1996). "Reflecting Sappho". In Greene, Ellen (ed.). Re-Reading Sappho: Reception and Transmission. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 11–35. ISBN 9780520206038.
  • Murgia, Charles E. (1985). "Imitation and Authenticity in Ovid: Metamorphoses 1.477 and Heroides 15". The American Journal of Philology. 106 (4): 456–474. JSTOR 295197.
  • Parker, Holt (1993). "Sappho Schoolmistress". Transactions of the American Philological Association. 173: 309–351. JSTOR 284334.
  • Parker, Sarah (2013). "Whose Muse? Sappho, Swinburne, and Amy Lowell". In Maxwell, Catherine; Evangelista, Stefano (eds.). Algernon Charles Swinburne: Unofficial Laureate. Manchester: University of Manchester Press. pp. 193–212. ISBN 9781526130488.
  • Pfeijffer, Ilja Leonard (2000). "Shifting Helen: An Interpretation of Sappho, Fragment 16 (Voigt)". The Classical Quarterly. 50 (1): 1–6. JSTOR 1558930.
  • The Poems of Anyte of Tegea with Poems and Fragments of Sappho. Translated by Aldington, Richard; Storer, Edward. London: The Egoist. 1919. OCLC 556498375.
  • Prins, Yopie (1996). "Sappho's Afterlife in Translation". In Greene, Ellen (ed.). Re-Reading Sappho: Reception and Transmission. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 36–67. ISBN 9780520206038.
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