Plato quotes the name of Sappho, along with Anacreon’s one, in a well-known passage from Phaedrus (235c = Sapph. test. 250d Neri). I studied this text for my research project about the reception of Sappho’s figure in the Greek literature, especially in the part of my Master’s degree thesis dedicated to the Third Sophistic. I also included it in the proposal for the DAAD project in Köln, that is part of my main studies.
I would like to divide my contribution for the conference into three short sections. First of all, I would like to present the passage in the economy of the Platonic work. I would prefer not to concentrate on that because it is a well-known topic.
Subsequently, I will focus on the “fortune” of the Platonic sentence, in particular on the expression Σαπφὼ ἡ καλή “Sappho the beautiful”, that is a Leitmotiv in several passages from Sapphic testimonia, particularly the Third Sophistic.
In the last section I would try to analyse the problem behind this expression, that is the modern querelle about the beauty or ugliness of Sappho, including the very controversial frg. 384 ascribed (wrongly?) to Alcaeus.
I hope that my research will help to better clarify these long-lasting and interesting problems of the ancient and modern studies on Sappho.
Emanuele Vuono
Lyceum Classics Community Seminar 