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SAPPHO IN JULIUS POLLUX’S ONOMASTICON: A MATERIAL GIRL IN A MATERIAL WORLD

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 August 2025

Naomi Scott
Naomi Scott*
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
*
naomi.scott@bristol.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article examines the reception of Sappho in Julius Pollux’s Onomasticon. The article shows that Pollux primarily quotes Sappho as an authoritative source on clothing and textiles. This presentation of Sappho is unusual, given that other ancient sources largely locate her poetry within an erotic, and sometimes sympotic, framework; and it is particularly notable for the way in which it emphasizes Sappho’s status as a specifically female poet with special insight into, and expertise in, the feminine domestic world. The article argues that this domestication of Sappho’s verses is not (primarily) an act of sexist belittlement, but rather demonstrates how Pollux reimagines Sappho in his own image. In the material world of the Onomasticon, Sappho becomes in turn an emblem of (feminine) materiality, whose apparent preoccupation with the fabric of everyday life productively mirrors the encyclopaedia’s own. As a whole, the article argues that Pollux’s creative engagement with Sappho’s poetry is both an important constituent part of, and a foil to, her wider reception in both antiquity and modernity.

Keywords

SapphoJulius Polluxancient encyclopaediaslexicographytextilesmateriality

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Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 75 , Issue 1 , May 2025 , pp. 428 - 443
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© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

To readers more accustomed to the orderliness of modern dictionaries, Julius Pollux’s Onomasticon seems an unusual beast.Footnote 1 Written in the second century a.d. and dedicated to the Emperor Commodus, Pollux’s ten-book work sits halfway between an encyclopaedia and a lexicon: words are organized by topic, rather than alphabetically,Footnote 2 as Pollux catalogues the world beginning from the gods (Onom. 1.25–49) and going right down in to the minutiae of the equipment in an ancient bakery (10.112–14) or the objects one might find on top of a table (10.80–94).Footnote 3 Rather than being focussed primarily on Pollux’s contemporary imperial context the Onomasticon is broadly classicizing in outlook.Footnote 4 The Greek it documents is largely that of the sixth to fourth centuries b.c., and is predominantly but not exclusively Attic.Footnote 5 To this end, Pollux quotes a wide range of texts and authors from the Archaic and Classical periods to demonstrate proper word usage and vocabulary, and the Onomasticon is accordingly a rich source of fragments and an important player in the textual transmission of otherwise lost works. The Onomasticon is not, however, a disorganized heap of other people’s thoughts. As studies by Tosi and König have shown, the organization and presentation of information in the Onomasticon reveal Pollux’s cultural and intellectual priorities, his understanding of the relationships between different categories of existence, and the hierarchies of value which structure his practices of citation.Footnote 6

This article examines Pollux’s references to Sappho, which are nine in number and range across Books 3 to 10 of the Onomasticon. Pollux is a significant contributor to Sappho’s secondary transmission; his citations are fewer than Athenaeus’ (who mentions Sappho more than twenty times in the Deipnosophistae), and his quotations are often rather shorter by comparison,Footnote 7 but it is nevertheless important to understand how the Onomasticon contributed to the formation of Sappho’s canon and image in the Imperial period and beyond.Footnote 8 By recognizing the highly unusual way in which Pollux deploys Sappho’s text, we can learn much not only about the Onomasticon but also about the various ways in which Sappho’s corpus has been deconstructed and reconstructed through the interventions of the scholarly tradition before reaching us in its present fragmentary form.Footnote 9

Of Pollux’s nine mentions of Sappho, eight quote her text directly: a critical discussion of a term for ‘husband’ used by Sappho appears at Poll. 3.32 (= fr. 116); fragments of Sappho then appear at 6.98 (= fr. 192), 6.107 (= fr. 81), 7.49 (= fr. 177), 7.73 (= fr. 100), 7.93 (= fr. 39), 10.40 (= fr. 46) and 10.124 (= fr. 54). Sappho is also mentioned at 9.84, where Pollux reports that the people of Mytilene honoured the poet by featuring her on their coins,Footnote 10 a fact which is borne out by archaeological evidence.Footnote 11 A full table of quotations of Sappho in the Onomasticon can be found below at fig. 1. The apparent primary purpose of these citations usually pertains to dialect: Pollux was by no means an inflexible Atticist, and he often quotes Sappho to demonstrate Aeolic vocabulary.Footnote 12

Fig. 1.

Sappho fragments in Pollux’s Onomasticon

Some examples in the Onomasticon present a version of Sappho that feels broadly conventional. In Book 3, Pollux quotes her usage of the term γαμβρόν (‘husband’), which fits comfortably with Sappho’s reputation as a composer of wedding songs.Footnote 13 Book 6 sees her in a sympotic context, cited on the topics of drinking cups (6.98) and garlands (6.107), the latter in the company of other authors of sympotic lyric, and therefore accords largely with the image, familiar from Athenaeus, of Sappho as a poet characterized by her ‘privileged expertise in erotic poetry, luxury, and sympotic practices’.Footnote 17 However, when all the citations of the Onomasticon are taken together, a distinct and unusual picture of the poet emerges. Of Pollux’s eight quotations from Sappho’s poems, no fewer than five refer to clothing and textiles: this is a striking preponderance for a poet who despite her gender was more usually associated with the (male) world of the symposium than with (female) interiority and domesticity.Footnote 18

POLLUX, SAPPHO AND THE LEXICOGRAPHICAL TRADITION

Pollux’s presentation of Sappho in this regard does not appear to be the product of a prior source. It does seem likely that Pollux’s knowledge of Sappho came through an intermediary source (or sources) rather than from access to a complete edition of her works. Unlike Athenaeus, who cites Sappho extensively and often at length, and whose protagonists ‘betray by their quotations a deep knowledge of her poetry’,Footnote 19 Pollux’s quotation is more limited, both in the relatively smaller number of his quotations and in the fact that only three of these quote more than a single word (see fig. 1). Moreover, a high proportion of Pollux’s quotations overlap with other sources. In the case of fragments 39, 46, 84, 116 and 192, Pollux quotes a text which is also preserved elsewhere in the secondary tradition; and in all these cases except fr. 192, a longer version is preserved by another author (see fig. 1). On balance, the extent of the overlap between Pollux’s Sappho and other quoting authors makes some form of common source a strong possibility.

The picture for Alcaeus is very similar: Pollux cites him only four times, twice simply reporting the same fact about Alcaeus’ use of metre (4.169, 10.112) and twice quoting text which is also found at greater length in other roughly contemporary authors (2.175 = Diog. Laert. 1.81, 6.107 = Ath. 15.674e; see fig. 1 above), reinforcing the impression that Pollux’s knowledge of Lesbian lyric (unlike, for example, his knowledge of Attic tragedy) is patchy and either the result of secondary sources or otherwise limited only to quite widely known poems.Footnote 20 However, while the evidence suggests that Pollux’s knowledge of Sappho in particular and of Lesbian lyric in general was likely second-hand, the focus on textiles in Sappho appears to be Pollux’s own. While some thematic lexica did exist, most specialized lexica were organized by author or genre.Footnote 21 Moreover, if Pollux had drawn his Sappho quotations from a lexicon or other technical treatise focussed on textiles, we would expect this emphasis to filter into other lexicographical works, which it resolutely does not. Herodian, whose lexical treatise On Anomalous Words is roughly contemporary with Pollux’s work, presents a much more typical picture of Sappho’s poetry, as does Hesychius,Footnote 22 despite the evidence suggesting that Pollux, Herodian and Hesychius may well have drawn on at least one common source.Footnote 23 In sum, all the evidence points to Pollux’s emphasis on textiles in Sappho’s verses being his own.

What, then, is the reason for Pollux’s peculiar construction of Sappho as a poet of the loom? As this article will argue, reading Sappho’s fragments in context within the Onomasticon suggests that, for Pollux, Sappho has a unique value as a witness to the interior world of women. This has the potential to be seen as a reductive portrayal of a female poet, one which puts her back in her place by quite literally domesticating her poetry. However, Pollux’s interest in material reality and in the objects which make up everyday life and experience suggests that, within the context of the Onomasticon, Sappho’s expertise—at least in Pollux’s eyes—in specifically feminine materiality lends her voice a distinctive authority as a source whenever the author seeks to catalogue the female world. In this regard, Pollux is unusual among his imperial contemporaries, for whom Sappho’s femaleness seems much less pertinent in their citations of her poetry.Footnote 24 While the description of her poetry by imperial critics and grammarians as ‘sweet’ and ‘charming’ may have gendered overtones, these descriptors were also applied to male authors,Footnote 25 and neither Plutarch nor Athenaeus treats Sappho in a manner markedly different from other lyric poets such as Alcaeus or Anacreon, who are often cited alongside her.Footnote 26

SAPPHO AND TEXTILES IN THE ONOMASTICON

Pollux’s first citation of Sappho on the subject of clothing appears in Book 7 of the Onomasticon. This book has a focus on trades and crafts, covering topics such as fishmongers (7.26–7), bakeries (7.21–4), leatherworking (7.82–4), metalworking (7.97–100) and woodcutting (7.109–10). A substantial chunk of Book 7 is dedicated to clothing and textiles, from wool-working (7.29–36) and clothes-washing (7.37–41), through to an extensive discussion of the parts of clothing (7.62–9). The first quotation of Sappho in Book 7 occurs in a section concerning the appearance of clothing (7.46.1 ϵἴδη δὲ ἐσθήτων); Sappho is referenced within this context of form and beauty, and the section is packed with poetic quotations.

The discussion is divided rigidly by gender. Pollux begins at 7.46 with ‘the form of masculine clothing’ (7.46.1 ϵἴδη δ’ ἐσθήτων ἀνδρικῶν), quickly citing Homer four times in close succession (Od. 14.154, 7.338; Il. 24.430, 10.134) on the topic of different types of cloak and tunic, epic presumably being a suitably manly source for this manly subject. At 7.48.6, Pollux pivots to unisex clothing (κοινὰ δὲ ἀνδρῶν καὶ γυναικῶν), before offering a deep-dive into women’s smalls (7.49.2 χιτωνίσκους, 7.49.5 μικρόν) and other kinds of fine and diaphanous clothing (7.49.3 ξυστόν, 7.49.5 διαϕανής τις χιτωνίσκος) worn in intimate settings within the home and specifically by women (7.49.5 ἴδια δὲ γυναικῶν). The discussion on this topic is backed up with two literary citations. The first is taken from the opening of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata where a character describes the fine garments worn inside the women’s quarters (43–5 αἳ καθήμϵθ᾿ ἐξηνθισμέναι, | κροκωτοϕοροῦσαι καὶ κϵκαλλωπισμέναι | καὶ κιμβϵρίκ᾿ ὀρθοστάδια καὶ πϵριβαρίδας ‘we ladies who sit around all dolled up in our saffron slips and make-up and Kimberic shifts and boat shoes’). While Pollux cites Aristophanes here for his use of the word ὀρθοστάδια, meaning a straight gown or shift, the chapter also covers ‘Kimberic’ dresses a few lines later; these appear like the krokotos to be thin, see-through garments (7.49.5 διαϕανής), and just the kind of thing that Lysistrata and her companions will use to titillate their menfolk in service of stopping the war with Sparta. It is in this discussion of ‘Kimberic’ dresses that Pollux deploys a single word of Sappho (7.49.4 βϵῦδος, ὡς Σαπϕώ),Footnote 27 which evidently describes an item similar in type to these diaphanous garments. Like the characters of Lysistrata, therefore, Sappho is here used as a testament to those objects which belong to the private, interior world of women.

Sappho’s next appearance in Book 7 is in a more technical context. From 7.71–4, Pollux discusses clothing and fabrics woven from plant fibres, such as linen and flax; and section 7.72 specifically discusses its manufacture (7.72.5 λινουργόν).Footnote 28 Again, this is a chapter implicitly but intrinsically focussed on the women’s quarters; most weaving in the Greek world was part of the domestic economy, and the production of cloth was highly gendered in the ancient imagination.Footnote 29 As in her previous appearance in Book 7, Sappho appears alongside comic poets, who similarly seem, in Pollux’s view, to provide a window on to the interior domestic realm populated by women. Alexis appears as a source of technical professional vocabulary, and is quoted employing the term ‘female linen-maker’ (7.72.5 γυνὴ λινουργός = Alexis fr. 36).Footnote 30 Pollux also cites Theopompus (7.74) and Aristophanes (7.71) on the topic of different types of, and associated names for, finely woven flaxen textiles. Directly before Pollux quotes Sappho, there is a detailed discussion of the parts of the loom on which such fabrics were woven, and a fragment from Pherecrates’ play Antmen is employed to attest to the fact that the central staff which held the fibres was known as the ‘old man’ (7.73.4–5, Pherecrates fr. 119).Footnote 31

Uniquely amongst Pollux’s citations of Sappho, the quotation here locates her line within a book (7.73.6 ἐν δὲ τῷ πέμπτῳ τῶν Σαπϕοῦς μϵλῶν). The quotation (cf. Sappho fr. 100) is unfortunately badly mangled in the extant manuscripts of Pollux, and reads as ἀμϕὶ λάβροις λασίοις ϵὖ ἐπύκασσϵν (‘completely covered round with furious piled linen’). Editors of Sappho have quite reasonably posited that, since ‘furious’ is a peculiar and unlikely description for textiles, λάβροις should be emended to δ᾽ ἄβροισ᾽ (‘delicate’);Footnote 32 this would in fact fit more comfortably within Pollux’s discussion, focussing as it does on the various weaves and textures which can be produced from linen fibres.Footnote 33

In the shadow of the textual issue regarding the adjective (λ)ἄβρος, little attention has been paid to the noun λάσιον, derived from λάσιος (‘shaggy, woolly’), and therefore highly baffling when read in the context of Pollux’s discussion. Linen and hempen fabrics are usually smooth in texture, and, while they may feel coarse if they are not finely woven, shagginess or woolliness seems a peculiar term for a fabric of any kind of vegetable origin. However, if we understand the term λάσιον to mean a weft-looped linen, this enables us to make better sense both of Sappho’s text in fr. 100 and of Pollux’s citation of it. Material evidence suggests that weft-looped linen fabrics were imported into Greece from the Bronze Age onwards; this technique produces a shaggy texture, and was characteristic of Egyptian linen production methods;Footnote 34 when thickly piled, a weft-looped fabric may indeed feel not like woollen fabric but rather like raw fleece, which would explain how it came to be associated with woolliness despite its vegetal origins. Both the quantity of thread and the skill required to produce this kind of fabric would make it a luxury product even when produced locally according to Egyptian techniques, let alone when actually imported.Footnote 35

Understanding λάσιον as a weft-looped linen would accord with Pollux’s other descriptions of this fabric as coarse and hairy (cf. 7.74.4 τῆς δασύτητος) and woolly (cf. 7.74.3 μαλλούς). This would also fit with Sappho’s description in fr. 100 of the cloth as a fine, luxurious product; its rarity is underscored by the fact that λάσιον is only twice attested as a noun.Footnote 36 Moreover, since towelling is similarly made from a looped pile for absorbency, Pollux’s assertion in the lines that follow that a thicker version of this fabric was used for handtowels (7.74.3–4 οὕτω δὲ καὶ νῦν καλοῦσι τὰ μαλλοὺς ἔχοντα χϵιρόμακτρα ὡς ἀπὸ τῆς δασύτητος) again supports an interpretation of λάσιον as a weft-looped linen. Appreciating the particular nature of this fabric allows us to understand better how Pollux positions Sappho with this quotation. This is, in sum, not a word used to describe any generically woolly-textured fabric but a highly specialized technical term for an unusual luxury good whose production demanded enormous skill of its (female) manufacturers. Embedded within a discussion which emphasizes not only the potentially varied material qualities of linen fabrics but also the process of their production (cf. 7.72–3), Sappho’s use of this rare term for a rare fabric underscores her command within the Onomasticon of feminine technical expertise; her verses have unique value for Pollux owing to their detailed attestation of the complex material realities of women’s lives.

Sappho’s final appearance in Book 7 occurs in a lengthy discussion of the form of footwear (7.85 ὑποδημάτων δὲ ϵἴδη). Like the section on the parts of clothing (7.62–9), Pollux’s treatment of shoes is gendered; and as with the citation of Sappho on diaphanous clothing at 7.49.4, again we find the poet confined to the women’s quarters and in the company of the comedians. The discussion begins with men’s footwear, including soldiers’ boots (7.85.2 τὸ μὲν ϕόρημα στρατιωτικόν), before moving to those items worn by both sexes alike (7.90.6 κοινὸν ἀνδράσι πρὸς γυναῖκας) and then finally to those specific to women alone (7.92.3–4 ἴδια δὲ γυναικῶν ὑποδήματα). It is here that Sappho fr. 39 appears as follows:

τὰ μέντοι Τυρρηνικὰ ϵἴη ἂν ὁ Σαπϕοῦς μάσλης

“ποικίλος μάσλης Λύδιον καλὸν ἔργον”.

Sappho’s leather shoe would be Tyrrhenian:

‘An intricately coloured leather shoe, fine Lydian work’.

In addition to its quotation here in the Onomasticon, the fragment is cited in a scholium to Aristophanes’ Peace, which gives a longer version of the quotation. In Pollux’s chapter, this verse of Sappho’s is sandwiched between references to the shoes worn by two goddesses, Artemis and (Phidias’ famous statue of) Athena (7.93.1 ὑπέδησϵ δ’ αὐτὸ Φϵιδίας τὴν Ἀθηνᾶν, 7.93.5 αἱ δὲ ἐνδρομίδϵς, ἴδιον τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος τὸ ὑπόδημα); and it is followed by a series of references to comic poets; the chapter also name-checks two shoes, Persian (7.92.4) and ‘little boats’ (7.93.6 τὰ δὲ πλοιάρια) which are mentioned in the Lysistrata as items specifically put on for the purposes of seduction (Ar. Lys. 229; Lys. 43 discussed above). The section is finished up with a long fragment from Aristophanes’ lost Thesmophoriazusae (Ar. fr. 332), which consists of a list of women’s accoutrements including both clothing and cosmetics. Again, in other words, we find Sappho cited as a source on the subject of female beautification and on items specifically worn by women in a private, intimate setting.

The final two quotations from Sappho in the Onomasticon occur in Book 10 and, though they are still on the topic of textiles, relate not to clothing but to bedding. Book 10 is themed around σκϵύη (‘stuff’) and covers everything from equestrian equipment (10.55–6) and the accoutrements of the bathhouse (10.63–4) and gymnasium (10.62) to writing tools (10.57–60), farming tools (10.128–31) and the various names given to woven baskets (10.179–80). Sappho’s first occurrence in this book at 10.40 is in a discussion of cushions; again, Pollux seems to be working from a secondary source, since his citation of fr. 46 here overlaps with a (longer) quotation from the grammarian Herodian.Footnote 37 Like the discussions of clothing in Book 7 in which Sappho was featured, this section of the Onomasticon is markedly focussed on the interior, domestic realm. Chapter 10.32 sees a discussion of equipment suitable for bedrooms, whose nuptial tone is reinforced through a reference to Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (10.32.7) and through several references to brides (10.33); chapter 10.38 concerns things put on top of couches; chapters 10.44–7 consider chamber-pots and washbasins; and chapters 10.47–50 list the items of furniture one might find next to a bed. In this context, Sappho fr. 46 is quoted primarily as evidence for Attic vs non-Attic terms for cushions. The dialectal variations in cushion terminology seem to have been something of a vexed topic amongst Atticist lexicographers and grammarians, who debated whether the (apparently primarily Ionic) word τύλη could or indeed should be found in Attic prose, as opposed to the (apparently more appropriate) κνέϕαλλον.Footnote 38 In addition to Sappho’s own presence, the gendered associations of cushions are again reinforced through reference to Old Comedy. Aristophanes’ Amphiarus, Antiphanes’ Phaon, Cratinus’ Seasons and Eupolis’ Kolakes are all cited on this topic, and the Eupolis fragment notably sees its cushion in the company of hairnets (fr. 170 κϵκρύϕαλοί τϵ καὶ τύλη), which are a typically feminine accoutrement in comedy.Footnote 39 While Pollux here cites Sappho primarily as an example of Aeolic dialect, the wider context simultaneously attests to her parallel authority within the Onomasticon as a witness to the materiality of the domestic, interior world.

Pollux’s second quotation of Sappho on the topic of bedding occurs some chapters later, at 10.124. The quotation occurs in a section outlining things which are spread on top of couches or beds (10.123.1 πρὸς κοίτην … τὰ μὲν στρώματα), and it is clear from the discussion of cloaks (variously ἱμάτια, χλαῖναι and χλανίδα/χλαμύδα) that follows that these items of dress did double duty as bedclothes. We start in decidedly masculine territory with Homer, specifically with the thick cloak given to Odysseus by Eumaeus, a cloak on which the swineherd usually sleeps (10.123.3 ἐνϵύναιον = Od. 14.51); the chapter then turns to military attire, specifically to the shorter cloaks worn by horsemen (10.124.5 τὸ λϵπτὸν χλανίδα, καὶ τὸ ἱππικὸν χλαμύδα). The discussion then takes an unexpected turn towards women’s articles and those items which populate the women’s quarters (10.125.1 γυναικωνίτιδος), specifically wool baskets (10.125.1 ταλάρους καὶ καλάθους) and other wool-working equipment such as carding combs (10.126.7 ξάνιον), scissors (10.126.8 ψαλίς) and weights (10.126.3 σταθμά); the link is presumably that these are the tools used in the manufacture of the thick woollen cloaks which have been discussed in this section, which are suitable both as clothing and as bedding (and were presumably used as both of these things by soldiers on campaign).

It is at the point of this pivot from the male world of campaigning to the female world of wool manufacture that Sappho appears. Her vocabulary is contrasted with Attic usage (cf. 10.124.4 οἱ μέντοι Ἀττικοί), and Pollux claims that she is the first to use the word χλαμύς, quoting as evidence the following line: ἐλθόντ’ ἐξ ὀρανῶ πορϕυρίαν ἔχοντα προιέμϵνον χλαμύν (10.124.7 = Sappho fr. 54), ‘coming from on high with his purple cloak he let it fall’; Pollux informs us that the line described Eros.Footnote 40 The garment here is of a type with the military cloaks discussed directly before it, and perhaps fits Eros’ role as messenger dispatched from the heavens.Footnote 41 As befitting the god of love, however, the item is considerably more luxurious than the thick woollen cloaks worn by mortal soldiers, and is coloured using expensive porphyry dye. Unlike the other cloaks described in this section, which are merely thick (10.123.8 τὰ παχέα ἱμάτια) for warmth or short (10.124.5 τὸ λϵπτὸν χλανίδα) for horse-riding, the emphasis here is on the appearance of the fabric, not just on its functionality, with a nod to the process of dying which would produce the purple colour. The fragment therefore provides an appropriate pivot into the discussion of wool working which follows immediately after it, just as Sappho’s name signifies a turn away from the masculine world of soldiering and into the private world of women. Like the poet herself in other words—defined by her status as a female writer yet at home in the literary world usually dominated by men—this citation sits suspended in-between.

CONCLUSIONS: A MATERIAL GIRL IN A MATERIAL WORLD

When read in isolation, each instance of Sappho’s verses within the Onomasticon might not strike us as strongly feminized. However, when read as a group, Pollux’s citations of Sappho combine to present an unexpected image of a poet whose authority is not only dialectal, as a source of non-Attic forms, but also material, as a witness to the tangible objects which make up the literal fabric of women’s lives. The focus on objects is not surprising given the catalogue form of the Onomasticon, and Pollux likewise mines Aeschylus’ tragedies for words concerning berries (6.46) and storage chests (10.10), Demosthenes’ speeches for coins (9.63), and Thucydides’ history for roof-tiles (7.161). However, Pollux’s markedly gendered reception of Sappho is unusual both within the Onomasticon itself and in the context of her reception by other contemporary authors. Unlike Pollux’s quotations of male poets of monodic lyric such as Anacreon—cited on topics such as wine (6.22–3, 10.70), garlands (5.96, 6.107), perfume (7.177) and music (4.61)Footnote 42 —or Alcaeus, found in discussions of wreaths (6.107) and cup measurements (4.169), Sappho’s appearances are not predominantly sympotic in tone or content, but are conspicuously centred on textiles, their production and their role in the markedly gendered space of the domestic interior.

Pollux’s quotations of Sappho are often found alongside comic plays focussed on female characters, such as Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, which similarly give the impression (albeit a problematic one, given their male authorship) of offering a clandestine glimpse into the otherwise hidden world of women’s private space. Given the dynamics of this act of male spectatorship, we might expect Pollux’s vantage point as he discusses these topics to have at the very least a sexual undercurrent and for his quotations from Sappho to have some erotic qualities. However, what we find instead is that Pollux’s emphasis on everyday materiality makes his Sappho almost mundane, as her fabrics are stripped of any sensuous potentiality or association with the eroticized body, appearing instead in catalogue form. This is not the only aspect unexpectedly absent from Pollux’s quotations. The language of weaving is regularly deployed by poets as a metaphor for their own artistic production,Footnote 43 and the fragments of Sappho do indeed provide two instances where weaving is given a metapoetic charge (cf. frr. 1 and 102).Footnote 44 While we can imagine that Sappho’s poetry may well have tapped into the suggestive network of associations between women, weaving, guile and song, Pollux leaves us none the wiser on this front.

Detached from both erotic and metapoetic resonances, and confined to the women’s quarters, it is possible to read Pollux’s version of Sapphic materiality as almost an act of belittlement, and this element of chauvinism may well be present in such an overtly gendered reception of a female poet. However, Pollux’s Sappho is also a poet remade in his own image. In the material world of the Onomasticon, Sappho becomes in turn an emblem of (feminine) materiality, whose apparent preoccupation with the fabric of everyday life productively mirrors the encyclopaedia’s own. This refashioning is made possible precisely by Sappho’s status as a poet who is already to Pollux in the second century a.d. something of a lacuna. In contrast to his contemporary Athenaeus, whose extensive and wide-ranging citations of Sappho’s poetry suggest familiarity with her wider corpus, Pollux’s knowledge of Sappho seems to have been more limited. Unlike poets such as Homer or the three canonical tragedians, whose works were evidently well known both to Pollux and to his readership, the paucity of Sappho’s verses in the Onomasticon provides a gap into which Pollux can project his own (mis)representation of a poet characterized more by who she was than what she wrote. In the Onomasticon, therefore, Sappho’s distinctive and unusual identity as a female poet eclipses her actual verses, whose remnants in turn assume the characteristics of the text in which they are newly embedded. As such, while every author quoted within the Onomasticon of course to some degree assumes the materialist qualities of the catalogue, I would argue that it is precisely the fact that Pollux has so little knowledge of Sappho that allows him to read those verses he does possess so emphatically against the grain of her wider reception in the Imperial period. Moreover, the distinctiveness of Pollux’s reception suggests an author (indeed, a scholar) actively intervening as a reader of Sappho’s fragments, rather than a compiler who simply reproduces prior sources within the narrow confines of his lexicographical project and whose characterization of Sappho’s work is an incidental product of that act of compilation.

As a reader whose relationship to Sappho is shaped by fragmentariness, Pollux’s engagement with Sappho’s verses in many ways resembles our own, and the Onomasticon’s version of Sappho is accordingly both a constituent part of, and a foil to, her wider reception. Sappho’s identity and the biographical tradition associated with her seem to have become detached from her poetry at quite an early stage, and yet this semi-autonomous figure of ‘Sappho’ in turn came to shape her corpus as it was fragmented and reconstructed by the secondary tradition.Footnote 45 This feedback loop and the resulting unrecoverability of both the poet and her voice within it have generated a productive space for receptions both ancient and modern.Footnote 46 Pollux’s version of Sappho as a poet of feminine materiality should be firmly located within this (re)creative hermeneutic tradition.

Both Sappho and her corpus are defined by, and a product of, fragmentation. As DuBois has argued, Sappho ‘exemplifies lack’,Footnote 47 and stands in awkward opposition to ‘our need to constitute antiquity as a whole and the “Greeks” in particular as coherent objects’.Footnote 48 However, her fragmentariness also offers interpretative possibility. Sappho’s poetry is often about lack and longing;Footnote 49 and this is paralleled in our own impossible desire for her wholeness as a poet, so that fragmentation in fact amplifies these poetic topoi of desire unfulfilled and unfulfillable by writing them into the very form of her text. Similarly, the enigmatic quality of the absent lovers in Sappho’s remaining verses, described memorably by Peponi as ‘half-palpable in [their] specific traits and half-evanescent’,Footnote 50 is only increased by a process of fragmentation which places them even further from our view.

What, then, does Pollux’s specific fragmentation of Sappho in the Onomasticon offer us interpretatively? At a more prosaic level, Pollux’s peculiar version of Sappho should alert us to just how vulnerable the poet and her work have been to the agendas of her transmitters. Pollux is surely not unique in reshaping Sappho to fit his own ends, and, while his version of Sappho is indeed an unusual outlier, the norm of Sappho as a poet of exquisite longing—both at home in, and somehow alien to, the male sympotic world—is also the product of an exiguous secondary tradition (one in which Athenaeus, as so often, looms large, bringing his own framework and agenda).Footnote 51 Pollux’s Sappho offers us one concrete example of how Sappho’s status as a specifically female poet determined her transmission. More than this, however, Pollux’s reception of Sappho can spur us to appreciate a materiality in her poetry with fresh eyes, and to reflect on how the offcuts of her verses found in the Onomasticon render her as a poet caught between yearning absence and tangible quotidian presence—a quality only intensified by the fragmentary state in which we encounter her both in Pollux and elsewhere.

Footnotes

*

I am grateful to the A.G. Leventis Foundation for funding my research on Julius Pollux. Thanks also to my colleague Patrick Finglass for giving me a preview of his forthcoming work on Sappho, and for his notes on an earlier version of this paper. All remaining errors and infelicities are, of course, my own.

References

1 Works frequently cited in this article: E. Bethe (ed.), Pollucis Onomasticon, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1900–37); S. Caciagli, ‘Sympotic Sappho? The recontextualization of Sappho’s verses in Athenaeus’, in B. Currie and I. Rutherford (edd.), The Reception of Greek Lyric Poetry in the Ancient World: Transmission, Canonization and Paratext (Leiden, 2021), 321–41; D.E. Campbell, Greek Lyric. Volume I: Sappho and Alcaeus (Cambridge, MA, 1982); M. De Kreij, ‘Οὔκ ἐστι Σαπφοῦς τοῦτο τὸ ᾆσμα: variants of Sappho’s songs in Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistae’, JHS 136 (2016), 59–72; E. Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship: A Guide to Finding, Reading, and Understanding Scholia, Commentaries, Lexica, and Grammatical Treatises, from their Beginnings to the Byzantine Period (Oxford, 2007); P.J. Finglass, Sappho and Alcaeus. The Corpus of Lesbian Poetry (Cambridge, forthcoming); E. Lobel and D. Page, Poetarum Lesbiorum fragmenta (Oxford, 1955); C. Neri, Saffo, testimonianze e frammenti: introduzione, testo critico, traduzione e commento (Berlin, 2021); R. Schlesier, ‘A sophisticated hetaira at table: Athenaeus’ Sappho’, in B. Currie and I. Rutherford (edd.), The Reception of Greek Lyric Poetry in the Ancient World: Transmission, Canonization and Paratext (Leiden, 2021), 342–72; E.-M. Voigt, Sappho et Alcaeus: Fragmenta (Amsterdam, 1971); D. Yatromanolakis, Sappho in the Making: The Early Reception (Cambridge, MA, 2007).

2 On the history of alphabetization as a mode of organizing information, see J. Flanders, A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order (London, 2020), who notes that alphabetical ordering was not always widespread in antiquity. However, Atticist lexicographers contemporary with Pollux, including Moeris, Philemon and Aelius Dionysius, employed alphabetical organization in their works; and Phrynichus used some degree of alphabetical organization in the Preparation Sophistica, whose entries are alphabetized by first letter only. See Dickey (n. 1), 96–9 and S. Matthaios, ‘Greek scholarship in the Imperial era and Late Antiquity’, in F. Montanari, S. Matthaios and A. Rengakos (edd.), Brill’s Companion to Ancient Greek Scholarship, 2 vols. (Leiden, 2015), 1.184–296, especially 285–90 on alphabetic and non-alphabetic lexicography in the Imperial and Byzantine periods.

3 On the structure and organization of the Onomasticon, see R. Tosi, ‘Polluce: struttura onomastica e tradizione lessicografica’, in C. Bearzot, F. Landucci Gattinoni and G. Zecchini (edd.), L’Onomasticon di Giulio Polluce: tra lessicografia e antiquaria. Contributi di storia antica (Milan, 2007), 3–16; and J. König, ‘Re-reading Pollux: encyclopaedic structure and athletic culture in Onomasticon Book 3’, CQ 66 (2016), 298–315. Dickey (n. 1), 87–106 gives a detailed overview of the ancient lexicographical tradition and sets Pollux’s work in context. For an introduction to ancient encyclopaedias and their organization, see T. Whitmarsh and J. König, ‘Ordering knowledge’, in T. Whitmarsh and J. König (edd.), Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 2007), 3–42.

4 On the topic of Classicism in Roman imperial scholarship and literature, see S. Swain, Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World, ad 50–250 (Oxford, 1996); N.G. Wilson, Scholars of Byzantium (London, 19962), 1–8. Using athletics as a case study, König (n. 3), 315 argues that in its cultural as well as linguistic values the Onomasticon ‘offers a classicizing vision, but it is not uncompromisingly classicizing’.

5 The extent of Pollux’s Atticism is debated. Tosi (n. 3) and G. Zecchini, ‘Polluce la politica culturale di Commodo’, in C. Bearzot, F. Landucci Gattinoni and G. Zecchini (edd.), L’Onomasticon di Giulio Polluce: tra lessicografia e antiquaria. Contributi di storia antica (Milan, 2007), 17–26 argue that Pollux’s Atticism is more relaxed in comparison to the hyper-Atticist Phrynichus; and S. Valente, The Antiatticist: Introduction and Critical Edition (Berlin, 2015), 57–8 suggests that there are overlaps between Pollux and the so-called Antiatticist, perhaps owing to both drawing on a common source. S. Valente, ‘Beobachtungen zur Rezeption des Euripides bei den Lexicographen’, in M. Schramm (ed.), Euripides-Rezeption in Kaiserzeit und Spätantike (Berlin, 2020), 135–49 also demonstrates, using Euripides as a case study, that an author’s Attic credentials were not always enough to win the approval of Atticizing lexicographers, including Pollux. Similarly, R. Tosi, ‘Alcune osservazioni sull’ Onomasticon di Polluce’, in V. Casadio (ed.), Digitalizzazione e lessicografia greca antica (Teramo, 2021), 159–72 shows that Pollux and Phrynichus differ substantially in their receptions of Menander: despite the author’s impeccable Attic credentials, he is not accepted by Phrynichus as a positive model. Matthaios (n. 2), 290–6 argues that Pollux is in practice no less Atticist than his contemporaries; and R. Tosi, ‘Onomastique et lexicographie: Pollux et Phrynichus’, in C. Mauduit (ed.), L’Onomasticon de Pollux: aspects culturels, rhétoriques et lexicographiques (Paris, 2013), 141–6 shows that Pollux is often more descriptive than prescriptive in his approach to language. Even where Pollux does admit non-Attic authors into his cannon (e.g. Homer, who is cited extensively), these are never post-classical, and so, regardless of Pollux’s potentially greater dialectal flexibility, his version of the Greek language is a historical one rooted in the pre-Imperial era.

6 Tosi (n. 3); König (n. 3). See also L.C. Young, List Cultures: Knowledge and Poetics from Mesopotamia to Buzzfeed (Amsterdam, 2020), 26, who argues that ‘the putting of words and things in relation to one another in a list allows for connections to be made that did not exist prior to the act of listing. The upshot is … that lists simultaneously challenge extant knowledge formations, but also create new ones by inscribing certain modes of organization and classification (which amount to new ways of seeing and doing).’ The epistemological and poetic qualities of ancient lists are further examined in R. Lämmle, C. Scheidegger-Lämmle and K. Wesselmann (edd.), Lists and Catalogues in Ancient Literature and Beyond. Towards a Poetics of Enumeration (Berlin, 2021).

7 For a brief overview of Sappho’s reception in texts of the Imperial period, see E. Bowie, ‘Sappho in imperial Greek literature’, in P.J. Finglass and A. Kelly (edd.), The Cambridge Companion to Sappho (Cambridge, 2021), 303–19. More in-depth studies of Sappho and Athenaeus can be found in Caciagli (n. 1) and Schlesier (n. 1).

8 From an early stage, Sappho’s text and her persona appear to have been subject to two quite separate and at times contradictory receptions; and some sources from the Hellenistic period onwards even suggest that there were two different figures by the name of Sappho. See Yatromanolakis (n. 1), 1–49 on the complex relationship between Sappho’s poems and the biographical tradition associated with her. On the ancient biographical tradition(s) associated with Sappho, see G. Most, ‘Reflecting Sappho’, BICS 40 (1995), 15–38; M. Kilvilo, ‘Sappho’s lives’, in P.J. Finglass and A. Kelly (edd.), The Cambridge Companion to Sappho (Cambridge, 2021), 11–21; Neri (n. 1), 47–95.

9 For Sappho’s textual history and transmission, see G. Liberman, ‘L’édition alexandrine de Sappho’, in G. Bastianini and A. Casanova (edd.), Atti del convegno internazionale di studi: I papiri di Saffo e Alceo: Firenze, 8–9 giugno 2006 (Florence, 2007), 41–65; L. Prauscello, ‘The Alexandrian edition of Sappho’, in P.J. Finglass and A. Kelly (edd.), The Cambridge Companion to Sappho (Cambridge, 2021), 219–31; P.J. Finglass, ‘Editions of Sappho since the Renaissance’, in P.J. Finglass and A. Kelly (edd.), The Cambridge Companion to Sappho (Cambridge, 2021), 247–60.

10 Cf. Aelius Aristides 85.29, where a similar claim is made about Sappho’s honoured status among the Mytileneans.

11 Cf. e.g. a coin held by the British Museum (BNK.G.510), minted in Mytilene in the second century a.d ., whose obverse shows a bust of Sappho and the inscription ΨAΠΦΩ.

12 Cf. n. 5 above on Atticism and the Onomasticon. On dialectal variation, in particular Lesbian dialect, in ancient lexicography, see also W. Sowa, ‘Griechische Dialekte, dialektale Glossen und die antike lexikographische Tradition’, Glotta 87 (2011), 159–83.

13 On the performance of Sappho’s nuptial poetry, see J.P. Hallett, ‘Sappho and her social context: sense and sensuality’, in E. Greene (ed.), Reading Sappho: Contemporary Approaches (Berkeley, 1996), 125–42; A. Lardinois, ‘Keening Sappho: female speech genres in Sappho’s poetry’, in A. Lardinois and L. McClure (edd.), Making Silence Speak: Women’s Voices in Greek Literature (Princeton, 2001), 75–92; F. Ferrari, ‘Performing Sappho’, in P.J. Finglass and A. Kelly (edd.), The Cambridge Companion to Sappho (Cambridge, 2021), 107–20.

14 Translations of Greek passages are my own unless otherwise indicated.

15 Lines 1–5 are also found in P.Oxy. 1787 fr. 33. Since the focus of this article is book fragments rather than papyrus fragments, I give only the section of the fragment transmitted via the indirect tradition.

16 The word here literally means ‘flashing’, presumably a reference to the way in which the colours of the fabric shone in the light. Greek words for colour often focussed less on hue than on luminosity; see M. Bradley, Colour and Meaning in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, 2009), 14–18 for a brief overview of scholarly approaches to understanding Greek colour terminology.

17 Schlesier (n. 1), 366. On Sappho in Athenaeus, see De Kreij (n. 1), who argues that Athenaeus probably had access to a complete edition; and Caciagli (n. 1) and Schlesier (n. 1), each of whom shows how Sappho’s verses are manipulated by Athenaeus to suit his deipnological frame. On Athenaeus’ library in general, see C. Jacob, ‘Athenaeus the librarian’, in D. Braund and J. Wilkins (edd.), Athenaeus and his World (Exeter, 2000), 85–110.

18 On the role of the symposium in Sappho’s transmission and reception, and on her subsequent ‘assimilation’ into the sympotic tradition, see Caciagli (n. 1).

19 Schlesier (n. 1), 343.

20 Pollux’s knowledge of Anacreon seems somewhat better. Of twelve quotations (2.103, 3.50, 3.98, 4.61, 5.76, 5.96, 6.22, 6.23, 6.107–8, 7.172, 7.177), seven are found only in Pollux, though in the majority of such cases (2.103 = fr. 480, 3.50 = fr. 484, 3.98 = fr. 476, 5.96 = fr. 479, 6.22 = fr. 455) Pollux quotes only a single word. By contrast, Pollux demonstrates extensive knowledge of tragedy and satyr drama. For example, of seventy quotations of Sophocles in the Onomasticon, only ten are from plays that survived antiquity in full; and of the remaining sixty fragments quoted by Pollux, he is our sole source in fifty-one cases, including for a number of quite lengthy fragments, e.g. 367 TrGF (Poll. 9.49), 475 TrGF (Poll. 10.55) and 606 TrGF (Poll. 6.65). The comparative paucity of citations of Lesbian lyric should not be ascribed to any reluctance in citing non-Attic authors. Pollux cites Herodotus seventy-nine times in the Onomasticon, clearly demonstrating that dialect alone is not reason for Pollux to limit his citations of an author.

21 There were some lexica organized by topic, but these usually concerned sciences such as geography or medicine. There is no evidence for any lexical work on textiles, and the fact that textile production was manual work performed by women makes it unlikely that it would draw the attention of the elite male writers of technical treatises. For an overview, see R. Tosi, ‘Typology of lexicographical works’, in F. Montanari, S. Matthaios and A. Rengakos (edd.), Brill’s Companion to Ancient Greek Scholarship, 2 vols. (Leiden, 2015), 1.622–36. Thematic lexica are also discussed by K. Alpers, ‘Griechische Lexikographie in Antike und Mittelalter. Dargestellt an ausgewählten Beispielen’, in H.-A. Koch (ed.), Welt der Information: Wissen und Wissensvermittlung in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Stuttgart, 1990), 14–38; M. Hatzimichali, ‘Circulation of lexica in the Hellenistic and Early Imperial period’, in S.A. Adams (ed.), Scholastic Culture in the Hellenistic and Roman Eras: Greek, Latin, and Jewish (Berlin, 2019), 35–6.

22 Herodian and Hesychius cite Sappho fragments on erotic (e.g. fr. 1, the Ode to Aphrodite = Hdn. GG III/2 948, 2–6, Hesychius ω 112; fr. 126 = Hdn. GG III/1 453, 16–18) and sympotic themes (fr. 173 = Hdn. GG III/2 762, 6–8), as well as on nature imagery (fr. 52 = Hdn. GG III/2 912, 16–20; fr. 2 = Hesychius υ 822) and emotions (fr. 37 = Hdn. GG III/2 929, 15–22; fr. 120 = Hesychius α 51). See Neri (n. 1), ad loc. for further details on each. The scholia to Aristophanes present a similarly conventional Sappho, citing her on erotic and sympotic themes (cf. frr. 119, 125).

23 All three cite fr. 46 in different forms; Herodian is our source for the full fragment, while Hesychius (like Pollux) cites only one word which is notably not the word cushion (τύλη, cf. Poll. 10.40) but rather κασπολέω (Hesychius κ 983). This suggests that for this fragment at least there may have been a common source used by Pollux, Herodian and Hesychius. While Hesychius’ lexicon postdates that of Pollux by some centuries, he clearly did not use Pollux as a source on Sappho, since, while both of them cite fr. 46 and fr. 39, there are fragments in Pollux not found in Hesychius and likewise many fragments in Hesychius not found in Pollux. If Herodian’s and Hesychius’ rather richer citations of Sappho drew on a source also used by Pollux, this raises the possibility that Pollux specifically omitted more typically Sapphic material which was nevertheless available to him. The Onomasticon’s omission of any reference to fr. 1 (the Ode to Aphrodite), which was widely known in antiquity (see Neri [n. 1], ad loc.) and cited by both Herodian and Hesychius, is certainly noteworthy.

24 While the biographical tradition of Sappho early on highlighted her status as a specifically female poet (and her reception in Old and Middle Comedy especially took aim in this regard), receptions of Sappho’s poetry itself were not so markedly gendered in antiquity. See Most (n. 8) and Yatromanolakis (n. 1) for the gap between the reception of ‘Sappho’ and the reception of her poetry. Yatromanolakis argues for Sappho’s absorption into the male space of the symposium, alongside male lyric poets, as early as the Classical period. See also Caciagli (n. 1) on this point. The Hellenistic reception of lyric poets, including Sappho, is treated by S. Barbantani, ‘Lyric in the Hellenistic period and beyond’, in F. Budelmann (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Lyric (Cambridge, 2009), 297–318.

25 See Bowie (n. 7) on Sappho’s treatment in Imperial texts, and specifically 303–4 on this terminology of ‘sweetness’. On how perceptions of the Aeolic dialect influenced ancient characterizations of Sappho’s poetry and how, in turn, Sappho’s poetry (along with that of Alcaeus) influenced ancient perceptions of the Aeolic dialect, see O. Tribulato, ‘Lingue letterarie e dialetti nella esegesi antica’, in A. Willi (ed.), Formes et fonctions des langues littéraires en Grèce ancienne (Geneva, 2019), 359–87.

26 Schlesier (n. 1) argues that the placement of Athenaeus’ citations of Sappho nods to a gendered reception of the poet; however, the sympotic content of the majority of Athenaeus’ citations is not so strikingly different from those of male monodic lyric poets.

27 All quotations from Sappho here give the text as per the edition of Pollux of Bethe (n. 1), since my interest is not in the original Sappho verse but in Pollux’s version of it. For Voigt’s (n. 1) corrected version of each fragment (where applicable), see fig. 1 above; any further editorial interventions which postdate Voigt’s edition will be discussed below where relevant.

28 On flaxen clothing, see L. Cleland, ‘The semiosis of description: some reflections on fabric and colour in the Brauron inventories’, in L. Cleland, M. Harlow and L. Llewellyn-Jones (edd.), The Clothed Body in the Ancient World (Oxford, 2005), 87–95. Cleland’s analysis of both linguistic and material evidence suggests that Greek fabric terminology primarily distinguished between woollen and vegetable fibres, hence the grouping of linen and flax together, and the frequent slippage between the terminologies used for these fabrics. See also D.J. Georgacas, ‘Greek terms for “flax,” “linen,” and their derivatives; and the problem of native Egyptian phonological influence on the Greek of Egypt’, DOP 13 (1959), 253–69. Georgacas discusses Greek terms for linen and flax from a purely linguistic perspective, and again shows the overlap in terms for these two fibres.

29 See, for example, Xen. Oec. 7.6, where Ischomachus explains that his wife entered his household aged not quite fifteen, and trained in only the most basic feminine tasks, namely weaving and supervising female slaves in wool working. For detailed and technical discussions of fabric production in the ancient Greek world, see A. Pekridou-Gorecki, Mode im antiken Griechenland: Textile Fertigung und Kleidung (Munich, 1989), especially 38–9 on the role of home textile production in Greece and the importance of weaving to the image of the ideal wife in the Greek imagination. A more recent and theoretically contextualized discussion can be found in M. Lee, Body, Dress, and Identity in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 2015), who notes (at 91) that not only did women working in a domestic setting produce the vast majority of textiles in antiquity, but also ‘[s]pinning and weaving are exclusively feminine activities in the iconography’.

30 See W.G. Arnott, Alexis: The Fragments (Cambridge, 1996), ad loc., who suggests that the woman in question would probably have been a slave. Textile manufacture crossed all social strata in antiquity, but Arnott is surely correct in claiming that a wife working wool would not be identified as a professional worker in these terms.

31 On this fragment, see E. Franchini, Ferecrate: Krapataloi – Pseudherakles (frr. 85–163): Introduzione, traduzione, commento (Göttingen, 2020).

32 See Lobel and Page (n. 1), Voigt (n. 1), Neri (n. 1) and Finglass (n. 1), ad loc. for further details on the emendation, which is made on grounds of metre as well as sense.

33 While Bethe (n. 1), on account of the consistency between the manuscripts of Pollux at this point, keeps λάβροις, it seems to me unlikely that the mistake in the transmission of Sappho’s text was Pollux’s own. Given Pollux’s emphasis in this section on the various textures, weaves and thicknesses of the linen fabrics under discussion, the designation of the fabric in Sappho’s fragment as ἄβροισ’ (‘delicate’) would seem to be integral to his citation. Following directly from his quotation of Sappho, Pollux goes on to discuss the texture of the linen weave which makes up the λάσιον cloth named by Sappho, which he describes as woolly and thick in texture, and says may be used for handtowels. If he quoted Sappho’s text correctly, Pollux’s passage would make a contrast between fine λάσιον used in clothing and a thicker type used as towels or napkins (albeit luxurious ones). If the error was indeed not Pollux’s own, it must have been introduced into the text very early, given the agreement of all the manuscripts in transmitting the error.

34 A weft-looped linen tunic, likely to have originated in Egypt, was found in Lefkandi. On the weft-looping of this fabric, see I.D. Jenkins, ‘The ambiguity of Greek textiles’, Arethusa 18 (1985), 109–32; E.J.W. Barber, Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean (Princeton, 1991), 197.

35 For an overview of the burial site at Lefkandi where weft-looped fabric was discovered, see M. Popham, E. Touloupa and L. Sackett, ‘The hero of Lefkandi’, Antiquity 56:218 (1982), 169–74. The tomb contained a number of luxury objects and clearly belonged to a high-status individual. The word λάσιον is attested only once in the inventories of clothing dedicated at Brauron (Brauron cat. MR/C 105), a critical source of information about ancient Greek fabrics, again suggesting that this was a rare luxury product. On the catalogue of clothing at Brauron, see L. Cleland, The Brauron Clothing Catalogues: Text, Analysis, Glossary and Translation (Oxford, 2005).

36 See Neri (n. 1), ad loc. for this observation. This passage of Pollux is responsible for the transmission of both attestations.

37 See Voigt (n. 1), ad loc.

38 On Pollux’s discussion of the word τύλη in fr. 170 of Eupolis here at Poll. 10.40, and how this intersects with other, more staunchly, Atticist lexicography by e.g. Phrynichus who contends that, even if there are examples of τύλη to be found in some otherwise good Attic authors, the word should nevertheless be avoided, see M. Napolitano, I Kolakes di Eupoli: Introduzione, traduzione, commento (Göttingen, 2012), 117–21; S.D. Olson, Eupolis: Heilotes—Chrysoun genos (frr. 147–325). Translation and Commentary (Heidelberg, 2016), 79–80.

39 Cf. Onom. 7.192, where Pollux gives Eupolis fr. 170 in full. Agathon’s feminized costume in the Women at the Thesmophoria includes a hairnet (Ar. Thesm. 138). Eupolis’ use of the originally Ionic form τύλη in fr. 170 may also have effeminizing overtones; see A.C. Cassio, ‘Attico “volgare” e Ioni in Atene alla fine del 5. secolo a.C.’, AION(ling) 3 (1981), 79–94, though (as Cassio argues) the line between Ionic borrowings and Attic is not always clear-cut.

40 Lobel and Page (n. 1), Voigt (n. 1), Neri (n. 1) and Finglass (n. 1) emend this quotation substantially, since the text given by Pollux is unmetrical and insufficiently Lesbian in some of its forms. See fig. 1 above for Voigt’s emendation.

41 For the suggestion that Eros here was performing the role of messenger, see A. Aloni, Saffo: Frammenti (Florence, 1997), 99.

42 For a full list of Pollux’s citations of Anacreon, see n. 20 above.

43 The most iconic treatment of the metapoetics of weaving is J.P. Klindienst, ‘The voice of the shuttle is ours’, Stanford Literature Review 1 (1984), 25–53. Further discussion of the network of association between women, weaving, poetry and deception may be found in Jenkins (n. 34); J. Scheid and J. Svenbro (transl. C. Volk), The Craft of Zeus: Myths of Weaving and Fabric (Cambridge, MA, 1996), 111–30; M. Nosch, ‘Voicing the loom: women, weaving, and plotting’, in D. Nakassis, J. Gulizio and S. James (edd.), KE-RA-ME-JA: Studies Presented to Cynthia W. Shelmerdine (Philadelphia, 2014), 91–102. On this imagery in (choral) lyric especially, see G. Fanfani, ‘Craftsmanship and technology as chorality: the case of weaving imagery in archaic and classical choral lyric’, Dionysus ex Machina 9 (2018), 6–40.

44 Cf. fr. 1.2 δολόπλοκϵ (‘guile-weaving’). G. Hutchinson, Greek Lyric Poetry: A Commentary on Selected Larger Passages (Oxford, 2001), ad loc. suggests that Aphrodite is given an ‘artful power’ by this epithet, a wording which helpfully conveys the metapoetic potentiality of the Greek. F. Budelmann, Greek Lyric: A Selection (Cambridge, 2018), ad loc. argues that ‘[a] guilefully weaving Aphrodite also suits this guilefully woven poem and its composer’. The relationship between love, weaving and poetry in fr. 102, and its relationship to the metapoetic resonances of the κϵρκίς (‘shuttle’) in Greek poetry are explored in depth by G. Fanfani, ‘Weaving a song: convergences in Greek poetic imagery between textile and musical terminology: an overview on archaic and classical literature’, in S. Gaspa, C. Michel and M.-L. Nosch (edd.), Textile Terminologies from the Orient to the Mediterranean and Europe, 1000 BC to 1000 AD (Lincoln, NE, 2017), 421–36.

45 See Yatromanolakis (n. 1), 197–8, who argues that Sappho’s reception as a figure conditioned the selection and preservation of her corpus, with the result that poetic quotations which accorded with the broader cultural idea of Sappho were more likely to be transmitted.

46 There is a vast bibliography on Sappho’s reception in both antiquity and modernity. See Yatromanolakis (n. 1) for Sappho’s ancient reception; and on her ancient and modern reception, E. Greene (ed.), Re-Reading Sappho: Reception and Transmission (Berkeley, 1996); P.J. Finglass and A. Kelly (edd.), The Cambridge Companion to Sappho (Cambridge, 2021). On Sappho’s reception in modernist poetry and the critical role of her fragmentariness in those receptions, see N. Goldschmidt, Fragmentary Modernism: The Classical Fragment in Literary and Visual Cultures, c.1896–c.1936 (Oxford, 2023).

47 P. DuBois, Sappho is Burning (Chicago, 1995), 27.

48 DuBois (n. 47), 20.

49 The bibliography on Sappho’s poetic language is extensive, but see G. Lanata (transl. W. Robins), ‘Sappho’s amatory language’, in E. Greene (ed.), Reading Sappho: Contemporary Approaches (Berkeley, 1996), 11–25; DuBois (n. 47); P. DuBois, Sappho (London and New York, 2015), 5–33; Hutchinson (n. 44); Budelmann (n. 44); V. Cazzato, ‘Sappho’s poetic language’, in P.J. Finglass and A. Kelly (edd.), The Cambridge Companion to Sappho (Cambridge, 2021), 147–62. Cazzato argues that Sappho’s poetics are characterized by the tension between the elusive feeling of longing and the precise language with which this elusive feeling is captured. The role of desire in Sappho’s poetry is subject to lengthy treatment by J. Snyder, Lesbian Desire in the Lyrics of Sappho (New York, 1997).

50 A.E. Peponi, ‘Sappho and the mythopoetics of the domestic’, in A. Bierl and A. Lardinois (edd.), The Newest Sappho: P. Sapph. Obbink and P. GC Inv. 105, Frs. 1–4 (Leiden and Boston, 2016), 229.

51 See n. 17 above.

Figure 0

Fig. 1. Sappho fragments in Pollux’s Onomasticon