Epilogue

Maternal Environments

My exploration of motherhood within the Heroides ends with the last poem of the collection, Sappho’s letter to Phaon, where, as I argue, the natural world is intertwined with the maternal element. Differently from the other epistles, Heroides 15 does not feature a mythological heroine but a real historical figure, notably the female poet Sappho. While this might seem a remarkable discrepancy, Sappho is not so distant from the other Ovidian heroines. After her death, the Greek female poet underwent a process of mythologization and “literarization,” thus transforming into a quasi-legendary and fictional figure. In particular, the Ovidian epistle may well have been affected by Hellenistic Greek comedy and archaic Latin theater, where Sappho was depicted as a comic character.¹ It seems that it is precisely from these sources that the account of her unhappy relationship with Phaon and her consequent suicide originated, both of which feature prominently as central motifs within Heroides 15. Another important influence on the Ovidian Sappho must have been Catullus’s reception of Sappho and the pivotal role that Sappho played in Catullus’s poetry.² Furthermore, references to Sappho can be found in other Ovidian works, such as the Amores, Ars amatoria, and Tristia. These references to the Greek poet are mostly characterized by the combination of Sappho as a historical figure and her reconstructed narrative as a fictional character, a combination that also features prominently in Heroides 15.³

One of the most famous of the Heroides, Sappho’s letter has given rise (more so than the other epistles) to discussions concerning its authorship, which have occupied a central position in the scholarly debate about Heroides 15 for centuries but are not central to this book.⁴ Since the end of the 1990s, the authorship of Heroides 15 has lost its pivotal role in scholarly discussions, and scholars have accordingly focused on other elements of the epistle, including shifts in gender identities and literary genre, as well as narratology. Concerning gender-based readings, Pamela Gordon argues that Ovid’s Sappho is an embodiment of the Irigarian concept of “hom/m /osexuality” and thus materializes the myth of the “mannish lesbian.”⁵ Through this depiction, Heroides 15 perpetuates the idea of Sappho as “alterity” (namely, a lesbian), as well as a voice of dissent that has to be reconfined to the patriarchal frame.⁶ Similarly, Judith Hallett states that Ovid’s Sappho tries to write as an elegiac male poet, aligning herself with Catullus’s poetry.⁷ As for interpretations that focus on generic dynamics within the epistle, Federica Bessone draws on the idea of Heroides 15 as a programmatic poem, thus interpreting Ovid’s Sappho as the hypostasis of “light” elegy;⁸ Victoria Rimell also notes the centrality of Sappho as a literary figure for Ovid’s poetry.⁹ While building on these and other similar approaches, my interpretation of (Ovid’s) Sappho is consistent with the previous chapters in its reading of Heroides 15 as the result of polyphony, namely, the coexistence of multiple poetic voices and identities.

Like the other epistles, which show a triangular relationship between Ovid, the authorial persona (the heroine), and their main sources (e.g., Homer for Her. 1, Euripides for Her. 4, Vergil for Her. 7), Heroides 15 is also marked by a relationship between the author, Sappho as a fictional persona, and the main sources for Sappho’s representation, which include her own fragments.¹⁰ This triangulation determines the (self-)representation of Sappho, and Sappho’s motherhood, within the Ovidian letter. In the Greek fragments, Sappho’s daughter is mentioned only twice, in frr. 132 and 98b (Voigt = Neri).¹¹ In the former, she is addressed through her given name, Kleis, and qualified as Sappho’s “beautiful child.”

In the latter (fr. 98b), she is discussed in relation to “a headband”: “But for you, Kleis, I have no way of obtaining a decorated headband” (σοὶ δ᾿ ἔγω Κλέι ποικίλαν / οὐκ ἔχω πόθεν ἔσσεται / μιτράν <αν>). Finally, Sappho’s daughter is also mentioned by Maximus of Tyre (18.9; fr. 150 Voigt), who remarks on how “Socrates was angry with Xanthippe for lamenting when he was dying, and Sappho was angry with her daughter” (ἀναίθεται [ὁ Σωκράτης] τῇ Ξανθίππῃ ὀδυρομένῃ ὅτε ἀπέθνῃσκεν, ἡ δὲ [sc. Σαπφὼ] τῇ θυγατρί·). Besides Maximus’s (problematic) mention, there are no further references to Sappho’s alleged anger at her daughter.

Although Sappho clearly refers to Kleis as her child (pais) in fr. 132, the name Kleis has been interpreted either as an allusion to the clitoris (given the similarity between the Greek words κλείς and κλειτορίς) or as Sappho’s covert reference to one of her beloveds.¹³ While these readings are certainly intriguing, Holt Parker argued that the word κλείς has nothing to do with κλειτορίς and the syntax argues against pais as a lover, concluding that “Sappho’s daughter was her daughter, not her clitoris, not her girlfriend.”¹⁴ However, the idea of potential overlap between Sappho’s daughter and her beloved survives in the Ovidian, or pseudo-Ovidian, reception of Sappho’s fragments.

Heroides 15.69–72 contains the only overt reference to Sappho’s daughter within the epistle. While listing her troubles, including her unrequited love for Phaon and her brother’s misfortunes (63–68), Sappho mentions her daughter.¹⁵

Immediately after mentioning her daughter, Sappho indicates Phaon as the ultima … causa (“last reason,” 71) for her complaints, thereby establishing a parallel between the two, that is, her daughter (Kleis) and her beloved. What may seem just casual proximity in a list of troubles becomes a more significant overlap between Phaon and Sappho’s motherhood at 93–96. Phaon is depicted as “neither yet man nor still a boy” (nec adhuc iuvenis, nec iam puer, 93), in a propitious age (93) for his physical development, as Sappho’s subsequent words suggest: o decus atque aevi gloria magna tui (“o ornament and great glory of your time!” 94).¹⁶ By depicting her beloved as a not yet fully grown man, Sappho aligns Phaon with the description of the erōmenos, the younger boy, usually characterized by a gentle and quasi-feminine beauty within Greek homoerotic relationships.¹⁷ In this way, Sappho takes on the role normally played by adult Greek men, and at the same time hints at a homoerotic context, thereby reminding the reader, by analogy, of her own homoerotic relationships with the girls of Lesbos—whom she will mention later on in the epistle (see Her. 15.197–202).¹⁸

Along with this gender role reversal, Ovid has Sappho insist on the erōmenos motif, depicting Phaon as a relatively young boy, who is urged to come back to her embrace (inque sinus, formose, relabere nostros, 95), perhaps as an actual Roman puer, a child, would do with his mother.¹⁹ Moreover, the depiction of Phaon as boyish evokes traditional descriptions of elegiac puellae within (male) Latin poetry, where they are normally characterized as soft and girlish. By representing Phaon as an effeminate boy, Sappho mimics the attitude of other male elegiac poets, but also establishes an overlap between Phaon and a child. The identification of Phaon with a child develops further at lines 113–122, where Sappho connects her romantic troubles to her maternal grief. After losing Phaon, Sappho observes that her pain was so deep that she started beating her breast, rending her hair, and shrieking.

This reaction is compared to the traditional gestures of grieving mothers at the funerals of their dead children (115–116).²⁰ While this parallel aims to emphasize Sappho’s suffering at Phaon’s departure, the depiction of Sappho as a grieving mother enhances the overlap between the sphere of maternal love and sexual desire.²¹ In more contemporary terms, the conflation between Phaon and Sappho’s potential child articulates the notion of maternal attraction toward the male son (the so-called Jocasta complex) to its most extreme extent.²²

This overlap is further articulated by Sappho’s reference to her brother, Charaxos, who appears hostile to her, as he is said to “rejoice” (gaudet, 117) at Sappho’s pain. More details about the relationship between Sappho and Charaxos can be gathered from Herodotus (2.135), who relates that Sappho attacked her brother in one of her poems for his purchase of a Thracian concubine. Moreover, recent discoveries of papyrus fragments (the so-called Brothers Poem) seem to shed new light on Sappho’s two brothers, Larichos and Charaxus, with the latter referred to as a merchant.²³ In order to make the cause of Sappho’s pain (namely, her love for Phaon) appear shameful (see “utque pudenda mei videatur causa doloris”; 119), Charaxus observes that Sappho’s daughter is alive, so there would be no valid reasons for her to lament: “quid dolet haec? certe filia vivit” (Why is she complaining? Surely, her daughter is alive! 120). Through this allegation, Charaxus implies that Sappho’s pain is reproachable, as it derives from her unfortunate erotic relationship.²⁴ While Charaxus’s words confirm his hostility toward Sappho, his reference to Sappho’s daughter materializes the coexistence between erotic and maternal love in her relationship with Phaon. The conflation between Sappho’s quasi-maternal conception of her love for Phaon and her erotic drive toward him is fostered and further articulated by her immersion within the natural world, which allows her to spiritually and materially partake in the surrounding landscape features.

Sappho’s close contact with the natural world is anticipated by the reference to her thoughts, which are entirely focused on Phaon: not only does she think and daydream about her beloved, but Phaon constantly features in her nightly dreams (123–134). Upon arrival of the first light of the dawn, Sappho wakes up and seeks help from the antra and nemus (“caves” and “woods”), as they are witnesses to her “joys” (deliciis, 138), namely, her love encounters with Phaon. Like a Maenad (furialis Enyo, “maddening Enyo,” 139), Sappho runs into the forest, which recasts the settings of her meetings with Phaon. By reproducing Sappho’s memories and nurturing her fantasies, the natural world cooperates with Sappho’s poetic persona in the creation of her narrative.²⁵

In her description of the natural surroundings, Sappho follows a consistent pattern: their subjectivization and resemantization as appropriate places for her love encounters with Phaon. Accordingly, what is rough volcanic rock appears to Sappho as a precious material, that is, Mygdonian marble, in the context of her meetings with Phaon (141–142).²⁶ Similarly, the forest that provided Phaon and Sappho with “beds” (cubilia, 143) for their concealed love has now lost its charm and changed into “cheap soil” (vile solum, 146), as only Phaon made it meaningful and attractive, being its principal feature, its “property” (dos; literally, “dowry”; 146).²⁷ This subjectivization of natural features suggests that their significance for Sappho is dependent on her beloved’s presence within them: without their dominus (145), they lose their value and beauty. As it recalls the elegiac domina, the choice of the word dominus produces another gender role reversal, which is enhanced by the subsequent definition of Phaon as the “dowry” (146) of the scabrous place—insofar as dowries were usually given to men and accompanied women.²⁸ Alongside being subjectivized, the sylvan abode is also personified: Sappho specifies that the “wood” actively offers “beds” to herself and Phaon, covering them with “much leafage” (143–144); the “grass drinks” (conbibit herba, 150) Sappho’s tears; the branches concur in her cry, and the birds do not sing anything joyful, thereby articulating her sorrowful feelings (151–152).²⁹ Both personification and subjectivization of her natural surroundings are part of the process of Sappho’s self-incorporation in the natural world. Concurrently, they hypostasize the idea of poetic creation as a reproduction of spaces, images, and actions.

The natural world, however, not only reflects and is modeled by Sappho’s feelings, but is also materially shaped by Sappho’s (and Phaon’s) concrete presence. That the herba would become wet after drinking Sappho’s tears (150) is left to the reader’s imagination and reconstruction, whereas the grass is more openly said to be “flattened” by the lovers’ weight (148).³⁰ Sappho and Phaon’s “impression” on the grass articulates their incorporation into the natural world, which complements Sappho’s reconceptualization of the landscape as an expression of her feelings and poetry. This blurring of boundaries between human subjects and the natural world can be observed elsewhere within Sappho’s letter. For instance, at line 36, Sappho portrays Andromeda as “dusky” (fusca, 36) with the color of her country, thereby incorporating in her aspect the features of an entire land and population. Furthermore, in the final lines of her epistle, Sappho anticipates her suicidal leap into the waters (217–220), which hypostasizes her final blending with a natural element—as the sea is.³¹ The collapse of distinctions between subject and nature can be further investigated through Donna Haraway’s notion of “natureculture.”³² According to this notion, the divide between natural and cultural features, namely, between human and nonhuman, should be dismantled and replaced by an interspecies dialogue, a “symbiogenetic” relationship between various components of the world.³³ Moreover, natureculture can encompass a coexistence of “flesh and signifier, bodies and words, stories and worlds,” thus representing the conflation of material (or corporeal) reality and the discursive (or cultural) construction of it.³⁴ Similarly, Sappho and Phaon merge with landscape features and animals in Sappho’s letter, while at the same time becoming substantial constituents of the natural world. This blurring of boundaries between humans and nonhuman elements of the landscape is interwoven with a collapse of gender dichotomies, which characterizes the epistle throughout.³⁵

Sappho’s coexistence with, and participation in, the natural world has important consequences for her quasi-maternal relationship with Phaon. After stating that the birds are silent as though they are partaking in her sorrow (152), Sappho mentions one exception, the nightingale. Described as the “Daulian bird,”³⁶ the nightingale is introduced through an erudite reference to the gruesome myth of Procne, Tereus, and Philomela, which famously features in the Metamorphoses (book 6).³⁷ In this passage, Ovid has Procne transform into a nightingale; in the Metamorphoses, the attribution of the animals is more ambiguous, albeit it has been argued convincingly that Procne changes into a swallow and her sister Philomela into a nightingale, respectively (Met. 6.667–774).³⁸ By specifying that Procne transforms into a nightingale, Sappho establishes a comparison between her lament for Phaon’s departure and Procne’s mourning for her son Itys: “The bird sings of Itys, Sappho of loves deserted” (155).³⁹ Sappho’s interplay with the two transformations, along with her choice of a specific version of the narrative, thus strengthens the overlap between herself as a mother (Procne) and Phaon as her child (Itys).

The reference to the silence of all birds, except for the nightingale (156), reveals the presence of nature both as a spectator (or witness) to Sappho’s distress and as a collaborative force that translates her subjective feelings. After merging with landscape features (the rock, the wood, the grass) and incorporating them in her poetic discourse, Sappho has two animals become the proxies of the relationship between herself and Phaon. This transfer further articulates the actualization of Sappho’s (quasi-)maternal relationship with her beloved, which is materialized by her reference to the nightingale, and the myth of Procne and Philomela. Just as poetically merging with natural features causes Sappho and Phaon to become components of the landscape themselves, so having their relationship represented and hypostasized by two birds means becoming those animals, and hence becoming a mother and a son, respectively. Sappho’s contact with, and immersion into, the natural world catalyzes and accomplishes this emergence of the maternal element within her (fictional) poetry.

On a surface-level reading, motherhood does not appear to be a prominent feature in Heroides 15. However, the maternal element flows as a submarine river throughout Sappho’s writing and articulates her resemantization of the natural, nonhuman space. By merging herself (and Phaon) with the surrounding landscape (including animate and inanimate beings), Sappho recasts the natural world, along with her erotic relationship and accordingly her motherhood. Within Sappho’s letter, the “maternal” is fluid and almost imperceptible as her corporeal identity, which fades away and fuses with natural objects and animals.

As we have seen throughout this book, the heroines’ maternal identities emerge as a result of the reconceptualization of their personas. Motherhood makes the rhetoric of the Heroides more effective and powerful, the heroines’ voices louder. Mothers have been elided and obliterated within ancient (and modern) texts, since their potential agency creates male concerns about their reproductive duties, influence over their children, and their status as repositories and treasurers of the human species. The power of “the Mothers” has been seen as something to be controlled and redirected, so as to serve the purposes and the architecture of patriarchal, androcentric societies. However, the Mothers have always found a way, perhaps subtle, ironic, and highly rhetorical (as in the Heroides), to express their independence and power. As a (pro)creative force, the maternal element informs the heroines’ writing, contributing to a resemantization of existing definitions, as well as collapsing gender binarism, challenging sociopolitical categories, and reshaping literary norms. In the Heroides, motherhood articulates the conflation of writing and reality, culture and nature, authorial voices and fictional personas by remodeling and reproducing the poetic discourse.

1. See, e.g., Magno 1980, 81–92; Nagy 1996, 35–57. Sappho’s early reception is thoroughly explored in an insightful monograph by Yatromanolakis (2007); for Sappho’s Roman reception, see the volume by Thorsen and Harrison (2019).

2. See, for instance, Hallett 2005; Thévenaz 2009, 121–142; Gram 2019, 95–118; Thévenaz 2019, 119–136. On Catullus’s poetry (and, in particular, Catull. 51) as a reflection of the reception of Sappho in antiquity, as well as an expression of a gender role reversal, see Greene 1999, 1–18; Holzberg 2000, 28–44.

3. Ingleheart 2019, 205–225.

4. While acknowledging the reasoning of those denying its Ovidian paternity (e.g., Tarrant 1981, 133–153), I side with Rosati (1996, 207–216), who has persuasively argued that Heroides 15 was written by Ovid. For an updated discussion, see Thorsen 2014, 96–122.

5. Gordon 1997, 274–275; De Jean (1989, 21–22 and passim) argues that Sappho’s writing places her beyond genders.

6. Gordon 1997, 288; cf. Lindheim (2003, 136–176), who, by contrast, observes that Sappho conforms to the portrayal of the other Ovidian heroines, and objectifies herself.

7. Hallett 2005.

8. Bessone 2003, 209–243; see also Dangel 2007, 13–35; Dangel 2008, 114–129; Deremetz 2007, 37–52.

9. Rimell 2000, 109–135.

10. Martorana 2020b, 141. For the sources and models of Heroides 15, see Jacobson 1974, 277–299; Thorsen 2014, 47–52; for Heroides 15 as a dialectic between the author (either Ovid or someone else) and Sappho as a poet, see Bessone 2003, 226–227; Deremetz 2007, 50–51.

11. See also the biographical tradition (POxy. 1800, fr. 1); for a list of the testimonia Sapphica, see Thorsen and Berge 2019, 289–402.

12. For the text and translation (with minor changes) of Sappho’s fragments, see Campbell 1982.

13. See, most notably, Winkler 1990, 182; also Instone 1999, 344–345.

14. Parker 2006, 112.

15. For Sappho’s rejection and dismissal of her daughter in Heroides 15, see Jacobson 1974, 296; Rimell 2000, 127–130.

16. In Pont. 2.8.25, a similar expression is used to indicate Augustus: saecli decus indelebile nostri (“imperishable glory of our age”).

17. Similarly, Phaedra depicts Hippolytus as a young and tender boy at Her. 4.71–76. Hallett (2005) links this depiction of Phaon to Catullus 63, which features Attis as an erōmenos, and underlines the overlap between (Ovid’s) Sappho and Catullus as poetic figures. According to Rimell (2000, 121–122), Sappho creates here an unrealistic portrayal of Phaon, which reflects her own idealized image of him: as a result, Sappho aligns herself with the male poet or artist, such as Pygmalion, who shapes his beloved according to his desires; see also Jacobson 1974, 293–295; cf. Lindheim 2003, 162–164, on godlike Phaon as a mirror image of Sappho. For “Greek” love and pederasty in Rome, see Williams 1999, 63–77.

18. According to Gordon (1997, 279–280), Ovid here follows the tradition that sees Lesbos as the symbol of female homoeroticism; for Sappho’s “bisexuality” in the Ovidian letter, see Jacobson 1974, 292.

19. Lipking (1988, 70) observes that Sappho “reminds us that Phaon is young enough to be her son.” Knox (1995, 297) notes the double entendre here of relabor as “to sail back” and sinus as both “breast” and “bay.”

20. For a similar description of a mother mourning the death of her child, see Ov. Tr. 1.3.97–98: nec gemuisse minus, quam si nataeque meumque / vidisset structos corpus habere rogos (“groaning as if she had seen the bodies of her daughter and myself resting on the high-built pyre”). For the verb exululo in the context of ritual cries and ecstatic cults, see Ars am. 1.508; Fast. 4.186; Met. 6.597; Tr. 4.1.42.

21. “She is, after all, a mother; Phaon is a boy. The simile at 115–116 virtually envisages her as his mother” (Jacobson 1974, 296); see also Dörrie 1975, 135–136; Verducci 1985, 158–159.

22. Besdine 1968, 259–277; on the mother’s desire for her son, see also Rich 1977, 186–217.

23. See also POxy. 1800, fr. 1; POxy. 2506, fr. 48; see Obbink 2014, 32–49; Bierl and Lardinois 2016; Bär 2016, 8–54; Mueller 2016, 25–46; Stehle 2016, 266–292.

24. Dörrie 1975, 136.

25. Martorana 2020b, 146–147.

26. The expression Mygdonii marmoris refers to the region of Mygdonia, in Asia Minor, which was famous for its marble; Knox 1995, 303.

27. For the natural world as being empathetic toward the poet’s emotion, see, e.g., Theoc. Id. 1.70–72, 7.74; Bion 1.31; Moschus 3.1; Virgil, Ecl. 10.13–15; also Ov. Met. 11.44–49, with Knox 1995, 304.

28. Martorana 2020b, 147, with bibliography.

30. See Vergil’s depiction of the natural world mourning for Gallus at Ecl. 10.13–15: “illum etiam lauri, etiam flevere myricae, / pinifer illum etiam sola sub rupe iacentem / Maenalus, et gelidi fleverunt saxa Lycaei” (Even the laurel, even the tamarisks mourned him; even the pine-bearing Maenalus and the rocks of the cold Lycaeus mourned him, as he lay under the lonely cliff”); see also the aftermath of Orpheus’s death at Met. 11.44–49. For the parallels between Sappho’s poetic persona and the poet Gallus, see Bessone 2003, 226–229; for this landscape description as a sympathetic reflection of Sappho’s feelings, see Dörrie 1975, 151.

31. Knox 1995, 304.

32. Martorana 2020b, 149–152.

33. See Haraway 2003; also Latour 2017, 16; for the collapse of distinctions between humans and nonhuman elements of the landscape, see Alaimo 2010.

34. Haraway 2003, 16–17

35. Haraway 2003, 20.

36. Martorana 2020b, 135–160.

37. On the adjective “Daulian,” see Catull. 65.13–14, with Knox 1995, 305.

38. For the myth, see Apollod. Bibl. 3.14.8; Ov. Met. 6.424–674; see also Segal 1994, 257–280; Segal 1998, 9–41; Gildenhard and Zissos 2007; Feldherr 2008, 33–47.

39. See Rosati 2009, 350–352.

40. See Aesch. Ag. 1144; Soph. El. 148; Cul. 252–253; Sen. Ag. 671–672.