Sapphic Love‏

Sappho was a poet from the island of Lesbos who lived between 630 and 612 BCE. She wrote many love poems addressed to women and girls. The love in these poems is sometimes requited, sometimes not.

Orlai Petrics Soma’s Sappho

Sappho is thought to have written close to 12,000 lines of poetry on her love for other women. Of these poems, only about 600 lines have survived. As a result of her fame in antiquity, she and her native island have become emblematic of love between women.

The term Sapphic love‏, therefore, has become synonymous with lesbian love.

On a related note, the great philosopher Plato mentions lesbianism in his Symposium; he discusses women who “do not care for men, but have female attachments.”

Lesbianism in Ancient Greece

Women in Ancient Greece were sequestered with each other, and men with men. In this homosocial environment erotic and sexual relationships between males were common and recorded in literature, art, and philosophy. Hardly anything is recorded about homosexual activity between women. Nevertheless, there is some speculation that similar relationships existed between women and girls.

Aphrodite on a swan, in Kameiros, Rhodes.

Much of the daily lives of women in ancient Greece is unknown, specifically their expressions of sexuality. Although men participated in pederastic relationships outside of marriage, there is no clear evidence that women were allowed or encouraged to have same-sex relationships before or during marriage as long as their marital obligations were met.

Women who appear on Greek pottery are depicted with affection, and in instances where women appear only with other women, their images are eroticized: bathing, touching one another, with dildos placed in and around such scenes, and sometimes with imagery also seen in depictions of heterosexual marriage or pederastic seduction. Whether this eroticism represents an accurate representation of life in ancient Greece is unknown.

There are a few sources available to us however, here is an excerpt of a play by the poet Lucian of Samosata (CE 125 – after CE 180) which illustrates a view on lesbianism in ancient Greece:

Leaena
I love you as much as I love any woman, but she’s terribly like a man.

Clonarium
I don’t understand what you mean, unless she’s a sort of woman for the ladies. They say there are women like that in Lesbos, with faces like men, and unwilling to consort with men, but only with women, as though they themselves were men.

Leaena
It’s something like that.

Clonarium
Well, tell me all about it; tell me how she made her first advances to you. How you were persuaded, and what followed?

Leaena
She herself and another rich woman, with the same accomplishments, Demonassa from Corinth were organising a drinking party, and had taken me along to provide them with music. But, when I had finished playing, and it was late and time to turn inand they were drunk, Megilla said, “Come along Leaena, it’s high time we were in bed; you sleep here between us.”

Clonarium
And did you? What happened after that?

Leaena
At first they kissed me like men, not simply bringing their lips to mine, but opening their mouths a little, embracing me, and squeezing my breasts. Demonassa even bit me as she kissed, and I didn’t know what to make of it. […] “And do you find these desires enough?” said I. “If you don’t believe me Leaena,” said she, ” just give me a chance, and you’ll find I’m as good as any man; I have a substitute of my own. Only give me a chance, and you’ll see.”

Well I did, my dear, because she begged so hard and presented me with a costly necklace, and a very fine linen dress. Then I threw my arms around her as though she were a man, and she went to work, kissing me, and panting, and apparently enjoying herself immensely.

Clonarium
What did she do? How? That’s what I’m most interested to hear.

Leaena
Don’t enquire too closely into the details; they’re not very nice; so, by Aphrodite in heaven, I won’t tell you!

– Lucian of Samosata, Dialogues of the Courtesans (Section 5; Leaena and Clonarium)

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Sappho

One of the great Greek lyrists and few known female poets of the ancient world, Sappho was born some time between 630 and 612 BC. She was an aristocrat who married a prosperous merchant, and she had a daughter named Cleis. Her wealth afforded her with the opportunity to live her life as she chose, and she chose to spend it studying the arts on the isle of Lesbos.

Alcaeus and Sappho

In the seventh century BC, Lesbos was a cultural centre. Sappho spent most her time on the island, though she also travelled widely throughout Greece. She was exiled for a time because of political activities in her family, and she spent this time in Sicily. By this time she was known as a poet, and the residents of Syracuse were so honoured by her visit that they erected a statue to her.

Sappho was called a lyrist because, as was the custom of the time, she wrote her poems to be performed with the accompaniment of a lyre. Sappho composed her own music and refined the prevailing lyric meter to a point that it is now known as sapphic meter. She innovated lyric poetry both in technique and style, becoming part of a new wave of Greek lyrists who moved from writing poetry from the point of view of gods and muses to the personal vantage point of the individual. She was one of the first poets to write from the first person, describing love and loss as it affected her personally.

Her style was sensual and melodic; primarily songs of love, yearning, and reflection. Most commonly the target of her affections was female, often one of the many women sent to her for education in the arts. She nurtured these women, wrote poems of love and adoration to them, and when they eventually left the island to be married, she composed their wedding songs. That Sappho’s poetry was not condemned in her time for its homoerotic content – though it was disparaged by scholars in later centuries – suggests that perhaps love between women was not persecuted then as it has been in more recent times. Especially in the last century, Sappho has become so synonymous with woman-love that two of the most popular words to describe female homosexuality – lesbian and sapphic have derived from her.

How well was Sappho honoured in ancient times? Plato elevated her from the status of great lyric poet to one of the muses. Upon hearing one of her songs, Solon, an Athenian ruler, lawyer, and a poet himself, asked that he be taught the song ‘Because I want to learn it and die.’

Given the fame that her work has enjoyed, it is somewhat surprising to learn that only one of Sappho’s poems is available in its entirety – all of the rest exist as fragments of her original work. At one time, there were perhaps nine complete volumes of her poetry, but over the centuries, from neglect, natural disasters, and possibly some censorship by close-minded scholars, her work was lost. Late in the 19th century, however, manuscripts dating back to the eighth century AD were discovered in the Nile Valley, and some of these manuscripts proved to contained Sappho’s work. Excavations that followed in ancient Egyptian refuse heaps unearthed a quantity of papyruses from the first century BC to the 10th century AD. Here, strips of papyrus–some containing her poetry–were found in number. These strips had been used to wrap mummies, stuff sacred animals, and wrap coffins. The work to piece these together and identify them has continued into the twentieth century.

Many translations of these fragments are available today, with each of these translations offering a different approach to her work. Translating Sappho’s poetry is challenging, partly because of the fragmented nature of the material. In reconstructing a poem, the translator must either trail off into oblivion periodically, or speculate on the missing pieces and take the risk – for the sake of lyric flow – of introducing elements that Sappho did not intend. Breaks in the poem can affect the intact lines, as well, robbing them of critical context. Even with the complication of fragments aside, a translator still has to decide how to translate the ancient Greek text, where to insert line breaks, how to stress each word, and any number of technical details that affect the meaning and the lyricism of the resulting poem. It makes sense, then, for those who are interested in Sappho’s work – and not fluent in ancient Greek – to read multiple translations to obtain several viewpoints.

From ancient times to today, Sappho has remained an important literary and cultural figure. Her works continued to be studied and translated, new poets are inspired by her constantly, and speculation on her life remains popular in the form of fictionalized tales and ardent research. For a woman who has been dead for over two thousand years, this is quite an achievement.

Fellatio

Fellatio is oral sex performed upon the penis. It may be performed to induce male orgasm and ejaculation of semen, or it may be used as foreplay prior to sexual intercourse.

Related to fellatio, Deep-throating is an act in which a man’s entire erect penis is inserted deep into the mouth of a partner, in such a way as to enter the receiving partner’s throat. It may be difficult for some people to perform, due to the requirement of suppressing the natural gag reflex.

In ancient Greece and modern Japan, fellatio has been referred to as ‘playing the flute’. Also, the Kama Sutra has a chapter on auparishtaka or ‘mouth congress’. The first known use of the term ‘fellatio’ is around 1893. Further English words have been created based on the same Latin root. A person who performs fellatio upon another may be termed a fellator. Because of Latin’s gender based declension, this word may be restricted by some English speakers to describing a male. The equivalent female term is fellatrix.

The receiver of oral sex is in a position of psychological if not physical vulnerability, and thus is potentially weaker. Bringing a person to climax is a form of exerting control over that person’s physiology and emotions.

The third-century Roman emperor Galienus called fellatio ‘lesbiari’ since women of the island of Lesbos were supposed to have been the introducer of the practice to use one’s lips to give sexual pleasure.

The Ancient Indian Kama Sutra, dating from the first century AD, describes oral sex, discussing fellatio in great detail and only briefly mentioning cunnilingus. However, according to the Kama Sutra, fellatio is above all a characteristic of eunuchs – or, according to other translations, of effeminate homosexuals or transwomen similar to the modern Hijra of India – who use their mouths as a substitute for female genitalia.

Kama Sutra Illustration

The Kama Sutra’s author states that it is also practised by so-called unchaste women but mentions widespread traditional concerns about this being a degrading or unclean practice, with known practitioners being evaded as love partners in large parts of the country. He seems to agree with these attitudes to some extent, claiming that a wise man should not engage in that form of intercourse while acknowledging that it can be appropriate in some unspecified cases.

In Tantric yoga, the same emphasis is placed on the retention and absorption of vital liquids and Sanskrit texts describe how semen must not be emitted if the yogi is to avoid falling under the law of time and death.

In Islamic literature, the only form of sex that is always explicitly prohibited within marriage is sex during menstrual cycles. But the exact attitude towards oral sex is a subject of disagreements between modern scholars of Islam. Authorities considering it objectionable do so because of the contact between the supposedly impure fluids emitted during intercourse and the mouth. Others emphasize there is no decisive evidence to forbid it.

As late as 1976, some doctors were advising women in the eighth and ninth months of pregnancy not to swallow semen lest it induce premature labour, even though it is now known to be safe. Fellatio is sometimes practised during pregnancy as a replacement for vaginal sex by couples looking to engage in a sexually pleasurable activity while avoiding the difficulty of vaginal intercourse during the later stages of pregnancy.

Semen ingestion has also had central importance in some cultures around the world. In the Papua New Guinean Baruya culture, there is a secret ritual in which boys give fellatio to young males and drink their semen, in order to re-engender themselves prior to marriage.

Among the Sambia people of Papua New Guinea, beginning at age seven all males regularly submit to oral penetration by adolescents in a six-stage initiation process, as the Sambia believe that regular ingestion of an older boy’s semen is necessary for a prepubescent youth to achieve sexual maturity and masculinity. By the time he enters mid-puberty he in turn participates in passing his semen on to younger males.

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