vessels, the numbers and skill of Ionian triremes (353 in all) which appear in 499 BC cannot have emerged from only a few decades’ experience.
Off the battlefield, eastern Greeks lived elegantly too, unless they were at the bottom of the social pyramid. Their luxury was famous and their scent and finely woven robes were so fine that they were said to have ‘softened’ their morals. In some of their cities (we know specifically about Colophon, on the Asian coast), a thousand or more male Ionians would go to their public meeting place, dressed in long, sumptuous purple robes. Men did their hair up into a topknot and used golden brooches on their dress; among women it is probably no accident that the most famous courtesans of the era were eastern Greeks. Even their food was more interesting. The climate, so hot to us, was envied, and after contact with the nearby kingdom of Lydia they had figs worth exporting, chestnuts worth boiling and a much whiter variety of onion. Through Near Eastern contact they developed their own elegantly decorated ‘Ionic’ order of architecture with prettily rounded capitals. They also developed coinage, initially a Lydian invention. Destined for a long future, coinage was not initially a mind-changing and economically transforming invention. Previously, Greek city-states had been using measured quantities of metal as a standard of value. Coinage merely cut them down into more convenient shapes, and at first it was struck not as everyday small change but from a precious mixture of gold and silver (known as electrum). City-states had their own varying weight-standards which inhibited coinage’s prompt adoption as an inter-state money supply. It developed into a convenience, but it did not single-handedly change Greek economic horizons or the Greek mentality or account for a sudden new burst of east Greek ‘growth’.
In the early sixth century BC the most remarkable east Greek voice was not a trireme-rower or a coin-striker: it was Sappho’s. She is the one female in the archaic Greek world whom we can still read in her own words, unrivalled until the poetess Erinna in the fourth century BC , who is also known only through fragments. Sappho is the uniqueearly Greek witness to love and desire between women, the namesake of modern lesbians (she lived on the island of Lesbos). Only fragments of her poetry survive, although another one, lamenting old age, was discovered and published from papyrus as recently as 2004. More may reappear, but what we have implies a fascinating context. Women come and go from Sappho’s presence, while Sappho expresses love for them and intense regret at their departure, especially for Anactoria who has left Lesbos to ‘shine’ among the Lydians. What social context is Sappho assuming? Ancient sources, and many moderns, made her into a schoolmistress with female pupils. It is more likely that she was a poetess in a well-connected household (she is credited with a daughter) who shared songs, dances and poetry with other young ladies and female visitors to Lesbos. Some of her poetry might be for formal choral performance; some of it, certainly, was for weddings; the ‘lesbian’ part of it was surely performed for women, not necessarily at a religious festival. As the poems show, one or other lady would then leave Sappho’s company, for marriage or perhaps to follow a husband. But Sappho is the great poetess of desire, of the ‘fluttering heart’ and its physical symptoms and the bitter-sweetness of love. There is more to this language than close friendship; she really desires these ladies, Anactoria or Gongyla or Atthis, and she expresses desire with fine analogies from the natural world. Sappho is the most sharp-eyed poetess of flowers: she describes a young bride as having ‘a bosom like a violet’, not a bruised purple violet but the milky-white violet which is native to her island, a ‘Lesbian pansy’ with petals the colour of fine female skin.
Off the battlefield, eastern Greeks lived elegantly too, unless they were at the bottom of the social pyramid. Their luxury was famous and their scent and finely woven robes were so fine that they were said to have ‘softened’ their morals. In some of their cities (we know specifically about Colophon, on the Asian coast), a thousand or more male Ionians would go to their public meeting place, dressed in long, sumptuous purple robes. Men did their hair up into a topknot and used golden brooches on their dress; among women it is probably no accident that the most famous courtesans of the era were eastern Greeks. Even their food was more interesting. The climate, so hot to us, was envied, and after contact with the nearby kingdom of Lydia they had figs worth exporting, chestnuts worth boiling and a much whiter variety of onion. Through Near Eastern contact they developed their own elegantly decorated ‘Ionic’ order of architecture with prettily rounded capitals. They also developed coinage, initially a Lydian invention. Destined for a long future, coinage was not initially a mind-changing and economically transforming invention. Previously, Greek city-states had been using measured quantities of metal as a standard of value. Coinage merely cut them down into more convenient shapes, and at first it was struck not as everyday small change but from a precious mixture of gold and silver (known as electrum). City-states had their own varying weight-standards which inhibited coinage’s prompt adoption as an inter-state money supply. It developed into a convenience, but it did not single-handedly change Greek economic horizons or the Greek mentality or account for a sudden new burst of east Greek ‘growth’.
In the early sixth century BC the most remarkable east Greek voice was not a trireme-rower or a coin-striker: it was Sappho’s. She is the one female in the archaic Greek world whom we can still read in her own words, unrivalled until the poetess Erinna in the fourth century BC , who is also known only through fragments. Sappho is the uniqueearly Greek witness to love and desire between women, the namesake of modern lesbians (she lived on the island of Lesbos). Only fragments of her poetry survive, although another one, lamenting old age, was discovered and published from papyrus as recently as 2004. More may reappear, but what we have implies a fascinating context. Women come and go from Sappho’s presence, while Sappho expresses love for them and intense regret at their departure, especially for Anactoria who has left Lesbos to ‘shine’ among the Lydians. What social context is Sappho assuming? Ancient sources, and many moderns, made her into a schoolmistress with female pupils. It is more likely that she was a poetess in a well-connected household (she is credited with a daughter) who shared songs, dances and poetry with other young ladies and female visitors to Lesbos. Some of her poetry might be for formal choral performance; some of it, certainly, was for weddings; the ‘lesbian’ part of it was surely performed for women, not necessarily at a religious festival. As the poems show, one or other lady would then leave Sappho’s company, for marriage or perhaps to follow a husband. But Sappho is the great poetess of desire, of the ‘fluttering heart’ and its physical symptoms and the bitter-sweetness of love. There is more to this language than close friendship; she really desires these ladies, Anactoria or Gongyla or Atthis, and she expresses desire with fine analogies from the natural world. Sappho is the most sharp-eyed poetess of flowers: she describes a young bride as having ‘a bosom like a violet’, not a bruised purple violet but the milky-white violet which is native to her island, a ‘Lesbian pansy’ with petals the colour of fine female skin.
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