GLOSSARY


ACHERON: One of the five rivers of the dead running through Hades. The name means Woe and was often used synonymously for Hades itself. It was across this river that grisly old Charon ferried the dead. The other rivers were: Cocytus (wailing), Lethe (forgetfulness), Phlegathon (fire), Styx (gloom): across which Charon also ferried the souls of the dead. The river of Death began in Thesprotia, Epiros, Greece, and disappeared underground where it led to Hades.
ACHILLES: Son of Peleus and the sea nymph (Nereid) Thetis. He was one of the chief commanders of the Greek forces at Troy and the tragic hero of Homer's Iliad. He slew Hector, champion of the Trojans, in single combat and dragged his body in triumph around the walls of Troy. He was in turn slain by Paris, one of king Priam's fifty sons, and the abductor of Helen (through the machinations of Aphrodite), and the cause of the Trojan War.
ADONIS: A youth famous for his beauty, with whom Aphrodite (Venus) fell in love. Aphrodite's young lover was killed by a wild boar while hunting, or by Ares or Hephaistos (out of jealousy), and Aphrodite, in her grief, caused the scarlet anemone (Anemone pavonina, which grows all over the Greek meadows and hillsides in spring) to sprout from his blood. Once he was in the underworld, Persephone (goddess of the Underworld) fell in love with him and refused to let him come back to earth, even though Aphrodite had persuaded Zeus to allow his return. It was eventually arranged that he would spend part of the year in the underworld (fall and winter), and part of the year on earth (spring and summer). He was allowed to spend six months of each year upon the earth with Aphrodite, the remainder with Persephone in Hades. He was identified with the seeding and harvesting of crops and was worshiped, especially by women, as divinity of vegetation and fertility. His name became associated with seed time and harvest, and his feast was celebrated by maenadic women in Asia Minor and Greece, beginning with lamentation and ending in wild rejoicing. According to Sappho, Adonis spent four months in Hades, four months on earth, and four months alone.
AEGEAN: The sea between Greece and Asia Minor.
AEOLIA: Named after Aeolus, god of winds. It came to comprise much of the western coast of Asia Minor and the Ionian islands of the Aegean, including of course Lesbos.
ALCAEUS: Also ALKAIOS. Born about 620 B.C. in Mytilene, Lesbos, and therefore a contemporary of Sappho. He was her admirer, friend, and possibly her lover. He wrote, like Sappho, in the Aeolian, or Aiolic, (Lesbian) dialect. He wrote lyric poems that deal with politics, battles, love, drinking, the sea. The Alcaic strophe was imitated by Horace.
AMORGINE. Born of Amorgos, an island of the Aigaion Sea, one of the Sporades, known for its Amorgine linen. It was the birthplace of Semonides.
ANACTORIA: Also ANAKTORIA. One of the young women in Sappho's entourage who seems to have left Sappho to get married to a soldier, whom she followed across the mainland of Asia Minor to the city of Sardis.
ANDROMACHE: The wife of Hector, son of Priam and greatest hero of Troy. She was a princess from the ancient city of Thebe in southern Asia Minor.
ANDROMEDA: One of Sappho's rivals on the island of Lesbos and perhaps also a poet. She seems to have attracted Atthis to her circle.
APHRODITE: The Roman Venus. The goddess of love and beauty, sea, flowers, and fertility. She was born out of the seafoam (aphros) off the shore of Paphos in Kypros (Cyprus), and so is called variously Kypris (Cypris), Kyprian (Cyprian), Kypros-born (Cyprus-born), and Paphian (of Paphos). She resisted Zeus's advances, and he in retaliation married her off to his ugly crippled son Hephaestus (Vulcan). She had love affairs with many of the gods, especially Ares (Mars) and spawned some interesting children: Eros (Cupid) by Hermes (Mercury), Priapus (god of the phallus and fertility) by Dionysus (Bacchus), Phobus (god of fear and alarm) by Ares. She also had children by men: a son and a daughter by Adonis, Aeneas by Anchises of Troy. She hated and was hated by Zeus's wife Hera (Juno). She was Sappho's favorite god. As a symbol of passion and romantic love, she is a particular ally to Sappho and is mentioned by Sappho more often than any other deity or person. The only one complete poem attributed to Sappho is addressed to Aphrodite.
APOLLO: The son of Leto (Latona) and Zeus, and the twin brother of Artemis (Diana). Also called Helios (the Sun-god), Hyperion, Phoebus. He was one of the twelve Olympians and the god of light, order, music, medicine, healing, prophecy. He was the symbol of young male beauty. Apollo and Artemis were born in Delos, sacred island of the Greeks. He was the ideal of the civilized Greek man.
ARES: The Roman Mars. The god of war, and personification of warrior type. Son of Zeus and Hera (Juno) and one of the twelve Olympians. He was more popular among the Romans.
ARTEMIS: The Roman Diana. Daughter of Leto and Zeus, twin sister of Apollo. She was the virgin goddess of hunt and forest and wild animals, and also of the moon.
ATHENAEUS: (170-230 A.D.) Greek scholar living in Alexandria. He wrote a famous work in fifteen books called Doctors at Dinner in which learned men of his day talked about the men and women of antiquity.
ATREIDAI: The two sons of Atreus, king of Mycenae--Agamemnon and Menelaus--who became kings respectively of Argos and Sparta. It was Menelaus's wife, Helen, who ran off with Paris and caused the Trojan war. Agamemnon was commander-in-chief of the Greek forces. He was later to be murdered by his wife Clytemnestra. Also all descendants of Atreus, and of Agamemnon and Menelaos.
ATTHIS: A young woman in Sappho's group and one of her favorites, treated with deep affection. Like Anactoria, she left Sappho.
CHARAXUS: One of Sappho's three brothers, who traded in wine between the island of Lesbos and the Greek colony of Naucratis in Egypt. (See note on Nos. 134 & 135.)
CHIOS: An island in the Aegean south of Lesbos. It was famous for its wine and fruit; also for its harbor, which could accomodate eighty ships.
CHIAN. Of the island of Chios, the large island south of Lesbos, near Asia Minor.
CLEANACTIDAE: The Cleanax Clan, a powerful family in Mytilene headed by the tyrant Myrsilus.
CLEIS: Sappho's daughter, and also the name of Sappho's mother.
COLOPHON: A town in Ionia (Asia Minor) famous for its cavalry, which was dispatched toward the end of a battle to finish off the enemy. From that we get the word colophon, which means an inscription or notice put at the end of a book marking its finish, or a publisher's emblem.
CRETE: A large island in the Mediterranean south of the Aegean sea, and a center of the worship of Aphrodite. Also the site of the Minoan civilization, eponymous with King Minos, son of Zeus and Europa. Its capital was Knossos, site of Daedalus' labyrinth and the Minotaur. According to myth, Zeus in the form of a white bull charmed the Princess Europa while she was picking flowers with her maids in the meadows of Phoenicia. She eventually mounted his back and he headed for the sea, swimming off with her to Crete. The civilization was destroyed in 1450BC by a severe earthquake in Thera (Santorini).
CYPRIS: Or KYPRIS. Aphrodite.
CYPRIAN. Or KYPRIAN. One of Cyprus. In this case, Aphrodite.
CYPRUS: One of the largest islands of the Mediterranean, west of southern Turkey, the favorite haunt of Aphrodite.
CYTHERA: An island in the Ionian Sea southwest of the Pelopnonesus that competes with Cyprus as the land onto which Aphrodite stepped when she was born from the foam.
CYTHEREA: Also KYTHEREA. Of the island of Kythera, south east of Lakonia, Peloponnesos, a seat of worship of Aphrodite. So the goddess was called Kythereia. There was also a tradition that Aphrodite rose from the sea near Kythera.
DIKA: The shortened form of Mnasidika, one of Sappho's female companions.
DIONYSOS. The Roman Bacchus. God of vegetation, wine, and spiritual ecstasy, he was worshiped with orgiastic rites and often represents the counterpart of Apollonian moderation. Also called Bakchos (Bacchus).
DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS: A Greek historian of the first century, who left his native Halicarnassus in Asia Minor (now Bodrum) and came to Rome, where he wrote twenty books on the antiquities of Rome.
EOS: The Roman Aurora. Goddess of Dawn.
ERESUS: Also ERESSOS. A town in Lesbos possibly the birthplace of Sappho (The birthplace also in the late fourth century B.C. of Theophrastus, Aristotle's most famous pupil: philosopher, botantist, and author of Characters.)
EROS: The Roman Cupid. The god of being in love: son of Aphrodite and Hermes. Also represented as the attendant of Aphrodite, a robust small boy armed with a bow and quiverful of arrows. Sappho makes Eros the son of Gaia (Earth) and Ouranos (Sky), but the most often uses Eros to mean simply love.
GELLO: The ghost of a woman who died young and preyed upon children. She haunted children, kidnapped them, or caused their deaths. Possibly connected with the Semitic and Sumerian myths of Lilith and Gallu.
GONGYLA: One of Sappho's favorites.
GORGO: Perhaps a poet, and probably a rival of Sappho's.
GRACES: Also CHARITES. The three daughters of Zeus: Aglaia (Sparkle), Euphrosyne (Gaiety), and Thalia (Bloom). They were young, beautiful, and virgins, in constant attendance on Aphrodite. Personifications of grace and beauty, they are friends of the Muses with whom they live on Olympos; their favored art is poetry. Their mission, in association with the Muses, was to generally sweeten the tenor of life. They were generally depicted naked and holding hands to show that kindness should be visible to all and friendship an unbroken chain.
GYARA: One of the Cyclades, islands in the Aegean. Used later by the Romans for prisoners.
GYRINNO: Also GYRINNA: One of Sappho's companions.
HADES: The Roman Pluto. (Aides: the unseen). Son of Kronos, god of the underworld, and Rhea. One of the twelve Olympians. Married to Persephone (the Roman Proserpina) and king of the underworld. Hades also came to mean the netherworld itself.
HECATE: Or HEKATE. A moon goddess identified with Persephone in Hades, Artemis on earth, and Selene in the heavens. She presided over enchantments and magic. An earth goddess associated with sorcery, ghosts, and worshiped at night at crossroads.
HECTOR: Also HEKTOR. Son of Priam and Hecuba, brother of Paris, and the most valiant of the Trojan heroes in the defense of Troy. He was challenged and slain outside the walls of Troy by Achilles, according to Homer's Iliad.
HELEN OF TROY: The most beautiful woman in the world. The daughter of Zeus and Leda. She was married to Menelaus, king of Sparta, by whom she had a daughter, Hermione. Her elopement with the handsome Paris, prince of Troy, was the overt alleged cause of the Trojan War. After the defeat and destruction of Troy she was returned to Sparta.
HELLAS: The ancient Greek name for Greece.
HEPHAESTION: (150 A.D.) Greek scholar of Alexandria, who wrote a book famous in antiquity called Handbook of Meter. He had been tutor to the Emperor Verus.
HEPHAESTUS: The Roman Vulcan. The son of Zeus and Hera. God of fire, metalworking, and all crafts. He was deformed and lame, yet somehow managed to have as wife the beautiful Aphrodite, whom he caught in the act of her adultery with Ares. He threw a net over the guilty pair during their love-making and reported them to the gods.
HERA: The Roman Juno. Wife and sister of Zeus. Queen of the gods. Patron goddess of marriage and childbirth. She was vindictively jealous of all her husband's amours and persecuted his mistresses with a vengeance.
HERMES: The Roman Mercury. Athletic son of Zeus and Maia (one of the seven minor immortals called Pleiades.) He ran messages for gods and mortals and conducted the souls of the dead to Hades. He became god of travelers, trade, nimble speech, and thievery, of commerce, good luck, and was credited with the invention of music, the lyre, numbers, the alphabet, gymnastics, etc.
HERMIONE: Daughter of Menelaus and Helen. According to Sappho, her beauty did not match her mother's.
HERMOGENES: (fl. C. 170 A.D.) Greek authority on rhetoric and style of ancient authors.
HERO: One of Sappho's young women friends and students.
HERODOTUS: (484-c.428 B.C.), "The father of history." He was the most important and enjoyable to read of all the early historians. He used his wide travels to illustrate his nine books of history with every kind of historical, geographical, and literary information.
HESIOD: His dates are uncertain, but lived probably toward the end of the eighth century B.C. With Homer he is one of the first poets of stature in the ancient world. Legend has it that he defeated Homer in a poetic contest. His Works and Days is a long poem describing and extolling the values of diligence on the farm. His Theogeny tells of the origins of the earth and the processions of the gods.
HESPERUS: Vesper. The evening star. Son of Astraios or Kephalos or Atlas and Eos (Dawn). Brother of Atlas. Father, grandfather, of the Hesperides: celebrated nymphs who guarded the golden apples (somewhere beyond the oceans), which Zeus gave to Hera on their wedding day.
HOMER: "The father of poetry." The blind poet whose birthplace and even existence have been disputed. Nevertheless, his two epics The Iliad and The Odyssey are the earliest works of great literature, and they have never been surpassed. They became the "Bible" of the ancient Greeks who knew them by heart. Alexander the Great in all his campaigns kept a copy of The Iliad under his pillow. The conjectured date of his birth was about 900 B.C., but modern scholars have suggested c. 750 B.C.
HORACE: (65-8 B.C.). One of the greatest of the Roman lyric poets and the son of a slave. His father managed to give him an excellent education, first in Rome and then at Athens. Later he came to the notice of Vergil, who befriended him and to whom he became only second in importance among the poets of the Augustan age. Like Vergil, he was patronized by Maecenas, Augustus's chief minister, who gave him a small farm in the Sabine hills not far from Rome. Horace took Sappho and Alcaeus for his models. His principal works are the Satires, the Odes, the Epistles, and the Art of Poetry.
HYMEN, HYMENAIOS: God of marriage, and handsome youth whom it was customary to invoke at Greek weddings by singing Hymen, O Hymen, in the hymneal or bridal song.
IDA. Also IDAEUS. The herald or messenger who is from Ida, a mountain near Troy. In the Iliad, he appears as the chief herald of Troy. The herald who brought the message to Troy of Hector's betrothal to Andromache. The name was traditionally used for Trojan messengers.
ILIAD: Homer's epic poem on the siege of Troy, written probably in the eighth century B.C. The wrath of Achilles is the pivotal point of the story, which ends with his slaying of Hector dragging him around the walls of Troy. The poem covers about fifty days in the ninth year of the war.
ILIOS. Also ILUS.  Son of Tros and founder of Ilium (Troy). Ilium was a city of Ilios but was also called Troy after his father, Tros. Homer's Iliad deals with the siege of Ilium (Troy).
ILIUM: The citadel of Troy, often used to mean the city of Troy itself.
IONIA: A region along the western coast of Asia Minor off the Sea of Ionia (which is part of the Aegean) named after Ion, son of Xuthus and Creusa and grandson of Helen. Not to be confused with another Ionia that is a group of seven islands in the Ionian Sea, (part of the Mediterranean south of the Adriatic), lying between Sicily and Greece. This Ionia is named after lo, who swam this sea after she had been changed into a heifer maddened by gadflies.
IONIAN. Dialect of Greeks living in the land of the west coast of Asia Minor.
IRANA: Possibly a member of Sappho's circle, but in the poem where the word occurs (No. 130) it can also mean peace.
JASON: Leader of the Argonauts who set sail in the Argo to find the Golden Fleece, which he hoped to bring to his uncle Pelias in exchange for his patrimony. He obtained the fleece with the help of Medea, whom he later married. The swashbuckling adventurer didn't respect Medea's power and love, and ten years later she was to murder their two sons and also Creusa, the daughter of Creon, king of Corinth, whom Jason was about to marry, and abandon Medea for her. This is the subject of Euripides' play Medea
KALLIOPE. Muse of heroic poetry. See MUSES.
KLEIS: See CLEIS. Name of Sappho's daughter, also her mother, and perhaps a friend.
KNOSSOS. Ancient capital of the Minoan kingdom and site of the palace of Minos, which has been associated with the labyrinth and the Minotaur (the bull of Minos).
KOIOS. A Titan, mother of Leto and grandmother of Apollo and Artemis.
LEDA: Wife of Tyndareus but seduced by Zeus who came to her in the form of a swan. One is that she laid two eggs from which hatched twins Castor and Pollux, and twin girls Helen and Clytemnestra. Another myth has Nemesis (goddess of vengeance) lay an egg, which Leda found and hatched and from which came Helen. Mother of Helen, the Dioskouroi, and Klytemnestra.
LESBOS: A large island in the northwestern Aegean off the coast of Asia Minor (Turkey). Famous for wine, women, and song, and the home of many poets including Sappho.
LETO: The Roman Latona. Mother of Apollo and Artemis. Jeered at by Niobe for having only two children whereas she had ten sons and ten daughters, she appealed to her children. Apollo shot darts into all the boys, while Artemis dispatched all the girls except one.
LYDIA: A prosperous kingdom in western Asia Minor. Its capital, Sardis, was a center of art and culture. The Lydians are said to be the first to coin gold and silver.
MAXIMUS OF TYRE: (C. 125-185 A.D.) A Greek philosopher and rhetorician who lived in the reign of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, one of his pupils. There are forty-one of his disertations on moral and philosophical subjects.
MELEAGER: A Greek poet of the first century B.C. who was, born at Tyre and died on the island of Cos. His Anthologia (Garland of Flowers) was a collection of epigrams and short verses culled from forty-eight of the most esteemed writers of antiquity.
MENELAUS: One of the sons of Atreus and king of Sparta. The husband of Helen of Troy. After the war with Troy was over, he quarreled with his brother Agamemnon about whether they should leave for Greece or stay on in Troy. On the island of Lesbos they prayed for guidance to Zeus, Hera, and Dionysus, (No. 42).
MENISKOS. Father of Pelagon.
MIDDLE AND NEW COMEDY: These are terms to distinguish the kind of comedy written in the fourth century B.C. onward by Menander and others from the comedies of Aristophanes in the generation before (Old Comedy). Concentrating on plots and types rather than on character and topical satire, Middle and New Comedy, through Menander and later the Roman Plautus, became the prototype of the modern comedy of manners perfected by Molire.
MIKA: A shortened form of Mnasidika, a rival who had gone over to the rival house of Penthilos, ruling nobles of Mytilene.
MNASIDICA: One of Sappho's group of women, who may have deserted her. Also called Dika.
MUSES: The nine Muses, daughters of Zeus and Mnemmosyne (Memory), lived on Mount Helicon, a sacred mountain in Boeotia. Their domain was all arts and sciences. Calliope looked after epic poetry, Erato of lyric poetry, Clio-history, Euterpe-the flute, Melpomene-tragedy, Thalia--comedy, Polymniamime, Terpsichore-dance, Urania-astronomy. They were often depicted as holding hands and dancing in a chorus, symbolizing the fact that all the arts and sciences are related.
MYRSILUS: Or MYRSILOS. Tyrant of Mytilene. A member of the Cleanax clan, one of the powerful rival families of Lesbos. He rose to power in Mytilene early in the sixth century B.C. and may well have been responsible for Sappho's and Alcaeus's exile.
MYTILENE: The ancient and present capital of Lesbos, where Sappho spent much or her life. The dialect of Lesbos was Aiolic, in which Sappho and Alkaios wrote..
NAUCRATIS: A Greco-Egyptian port in the Nile delta: a center of commerce between Greece and Egypt. It was here that Sappho's brother shipped wine from Samos, and where he fell in love with Rhodopis, the famous Courtesan.
NEREIDS: The fifty daughters of Nereus, the old man of the sea. The sea nymphs lived with their father at the bottom of the sea.
NEREUS: Son the Pontos, husband of the Oceanic Doris, and father of the Nereids.
NIOBE: Daughter of Tantalos and wife of Amphion, Niobe boasted to Leto that her family was larger than Leto's, and to avenge this insult Leto's two immortal children, Apollo and Artemis, killed the twelve to twenty children of Niobe. Niobe became a stock figure of bereavement.
OLYMPUS: The highest mountain in Greece (9,794 feet), located in Macedonia, and traditionally the home of the gods.
ORPHEUS: Son of Apollo and Calliope (the Muse of epic poetry). Such was his magical skill on the lyre that rivers stopped, mountains moved, and wild beasts were held still. He even charmed back from the underworld his beloved wife Eurydice, but glanced over his shoulder and lost her.
OVID: (43 B.C.-C.18 A.D.). One of the most important Roman poets of the Augustan age, who however offended the emperor in some way and was banished in mid-career for the rest of his life to the lonely Roman outpost of Tomis on the Black Sea. His Art of Love, Metamorphoses, and Letters from the Black Sea ensured his fame for all time.
PAEAN: Another name for Apollo as healer, derived from the hymn sung to him. In No. 82 fourth line from the end, Sappho uses the word Paean, which I have translated into the more familiar Apollo.
PALATINE ANTHOLOGY: An important source of Greek versified epigrams dating from the seventh century B.C. onward, compiled from earlier collections toward the middle of the tenth century B.C.
PANDION: King of Athens, the victim of a horror story. His daughter Procne married Tereus, king of Thrace. Tereus raped Procne's sister, Philomela, and cut out her tongue. She however got the news across by sending a tapestry to her sister in which she depicted her violation. The sisters revenged themselves on Tereus by killing the five-year old son of Tereus and Procne and serving him up on a dish to his unsuspecting father. During the meal, they threw the boy's head onto the table. The gods changed Tereus into a hoopoe, Philomela into a nightingale, and Procne into a swallow. The name Philomela became a synonym for the nightingale. What is curious is that in a nightingale 's song, two of its most characteristic sounds are those of: Teri Teri Teri Ity Ity ... Itys was the boy's name. (Pandion died of grief.) The presence of a swallow was often the sign of a forthcoming event.
PANORMUS: Or PANORMOS. There were several cities by the name of Panormus, which means "fit for landing." One of them was near Ephesus in the Ionian province of Asia Minor. They all were centers of the worship of Aphrodite. The most famous Panormos is the present Palermo in Sicily, but it acquired the name of Panormos after Sappho's time.
PAPHOS: A town on the southern coast of the island of Cyprus, which claimed the distinction of being near where Aphrodite rose from the sea. It was therefore a center of her worship. Its unmarried girls were allowed a special dowry by the state for prostitution.
PAPHIAN: Of Paphos. It usually refers to Aphrodite.
PARIS: Also called Alexander. Son of Priam and Hecuba of Troy, and brother of Hector. This lively and good-looking prince was brought up as a shepherd on Mount Ida (where he had been exposed as a baby), but when it was discovered who he was and he was accepted into the royal family, the troubles prophesied before his birth began. It was while visiting Sparta and while her husband Menelaus, the king, was away that he persuaded Helen "the most beautiful woman in the world" to elope with him. All Greece mustered to avenge this act, and thus began the Trojan War.
PARNASSUS: A high mountain overlooking Delphi in Greece, named after Parnassus the son of the sea god Poseidon (Neptune). The mountain was sacred to the Muses, Apollo, and Dionysus. It became synonymous with poetry.
PAUSANIAS: An orator, geographer, traveler, who wrote a history of Greece in ten books (in Ionic Greek) and settled in Rome about 170 A.D. where he lived to a great age. Pausanias had an insatiable curiosity and filled his history with precise accounts of the stories and superstitions of the peoples he came across in his travels.
PEITHO: The goddess of persuasion: the attendant and perhaps the daughter of Aphrodite.
PELAGON: There were several Pelagons (PELAGOS means the sea). Sappho's Pelagon was a simple, overworked fisherman.
PENTHILUS: A mythical hero and the ancestor of the powerful family of the Penthilidae in Mytilene during Sappho's lifetime. The Penthilus of her day was the father-in-law of Pittacus, tyrant of Lesbos. A rival family of ruling nobles in Mytilene (see Mika, Mnasidika). Pittakos, Tyrant of Lesbos in Sappho's time, married the sister of Drakon, former ruler, who was the son of Penthilos. The family was not favorable to Sappho and her family.
PERSEPHONE: The Roman Proserpina. Daughter of Zeus and Demeter (The Roman Ceres--goddess of crops). She was abducted by Hades, god of the underworld, who enticed her with pomegranates. She reigned there with him as queen during the winter, but each spring returned to earth and to her mother, causing all nature to blossom.
PHAON: The young boatman who ferried people across from Mytilene to the mainland. His fabulous good looks turned the hearts of many women, among them possibly Sappho's. When he deserted her, according to this story, she committed suicide. The Roman poet Ovid in the second half of the first century B.C. wrote a famous account of the supposed love-match and Sappho's passion. Alexander Pope, in the eighteenth century, made an equally famous translation of it.
If not from Phaon I must hope for ease Ah, let me seek it from the raging seas; To raging seas unpitied I'll remove; And either cases to live or cease to love.
PHOCAEA: A maritime city in the Ionian province of Asia Minor, southeast of Mytilene. In 539 B.C. it sent colonists to found the town of Massilia in the south of France (present-day Marseilles).
PIERIA: A spring in northern Greece on the slopes of Mount Olympus in Macedonia or Thrace and the birthplace of the Muses, where the Muses were first worshiped. PIERIAN became an epithet for poetry.
PINDAR: One of the most important lyric poets of Greece (518-436 B.C.) who came from Thebes. His odes celebrating athletic prowess at Olympia made him famous, and his hymns and paeans were sung in temples throughout Greece. His statue was erected in Thebes and when the city was destroyed by the Spartans, and then again later by Alexander the Great, Pindar's house was spared. He lived well into his eighties, it seems, though his dates are doubtful.
PITTACUS: (c. 650--c. 570 B.C.): one of the seven wise men of Greece. He led the Lesbians to victory against the Athenian colonists at Sigeum (near Troy) and slew their leader in single combat. Then for ten years he governed his fellow citizens with exemplary justice and enlightenment before laying aside the trappings of power and devoting himself to a peaceful life of literary pursuits.
PLACIA: Or PLAKIA. A river and the surrounding plain near the holy city of Thebe near Mount Ida in the region of Troy.
PLATO: (c. 429-347 B.C.): With Aristotle, the greatest of the Greek philosophers. He taught Aristotle and was the student of Socrates. Almost all we know about Socrates comes from his famous dialogues, written in some of the finest prose ever penned by man. His influence as a philosopher reaches down to our own day.
PLAUTUS: (c. 254-184 B.C.), Roman playwright who wrote some 130 comedies, of which twenty-two are extant. Though he took his plots from the Greek New Comedy, he made them his own and is the father of modern comedy.
PLEIDES: Or PLEIADES: Seven stars which are visible from early May to early November and symbolize both the moist fecundity of spring and the fruitfulness of autumn. Daughters of Atlas and virgin companions of Artemis. When pursued by the giant hunter Orion, their prayers were answered when they were changed into doves (peleiades) and placed among the stars.
PLUTARCH: (c. 45 A.D.--C. 120): Philosopher, essayist, biographer. We know more about antiquity from Plutarch than from any other ancient writer. He was born and retired in Chaeronea, a country town in Boeotia, spending some years in between in Rome, where he made use of the libraries to write his two most famous works: Parallel Lives and Moral Essays (Moralia). No Greek writer is more instructive or entertaining. It was from North's translation of Plutarch that Shakespeare took the plot for his Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra, and other of his plays.
POLLUX: (fl. 186 A.D.): A Greek writer and philologist who produced a useful work called Onomasticon (Words and Names). He was born in Naucratis and taught at Athens.
PRAXILLA: Female poet of the early fifth century, who's home was the ancient and sophisticated city of Sicyon in the Peloponnese (southern Greece below the gulf of Corinth). Nothing is known of her work. Sicyonian shoes were once deemed a byword of male effeminacy.
PRAXINOA: One of Sappho's young companions.
PRIAM: King of Troy at the time of the Trojan War. Of his innumerable children the most famous are Hector, Paris, Troilus, Cassandra, and Creusa (who became the wife of Aeneas.) He was married to Hecuba, (powerfully portrayed in Euripides' Hecuba and The Trojan Women.)
PSAPPHO: as Sappho called herself in her native Aeolian Greek.
PYRRHA: A town in the center of Lesbos to which Sappho was once forced to retire.
RHODOPIS: (Rosy Cheeks). The courtesan lover of Charaxus, Sappho's brother. Sappho disliked the liaison.
SAPPHO. Born about 612bc in Eresos or Mytilene, Lesbos. Sappho wrote lyric poems in her own Aiolic dialect, in which she referred to herself as Psappho.
SARDIS: The capital of the prosperous kingdom of Lydia in Western Asia Minor. In 548 B.C. it became a province of the Persian empire under Cyrus. The Lydians enjoyed a high degree of civilization and were not only the first to mint gold and silver but the first to elevate athletics to a spectator sport.
SEMONIDES: Elegiac poet of the mid-seventh century B.C. (Not to be confused with Simonides of Amorgos -one of the Cyclades islands in the Aegean-who lived in the early sixth century B.C. and was a fierce misogynist.)
SIGEUM: A promontory near Troy and the site of many of the battles between Greeks and Trojans during the Trojan War. It was later colonized by the Athenians but disputed by the people of Lesbos between 620 and 570 B.C.
SOCRATES: (469-399 B.C.): the ugliest and most attractive of all the ancient Greeks. He lived in Athens, wrote no books, and drew around him a group of young men (including Plato) who were spellbound by his character and his discourse. We know him mostly through Plato's dialogues. He was put to death by the state for "corrupting the youth."
SOLON: (c. 640-c. 560 B.C.): poet, politician, and statesman. His wise lawmaking and his military sagacity put Athens well on her way to being the most important of the city-states in Hellas. He was one of the seven wisp men of Greece.
SUIDAS: (or Suda): the name of a lexicon or encyclopedia compiled toward the end of the tenth century A.D. It is the source of much useful information about antiquity. Whether Suidas himself ever existed is doubtful.
STOBAEUS: A Greek anthologist of the early fifth century A.D. whose Eclogue and Florilegium preserve many precious relics of ancient literature.
THEBE: Or THEBES. A city of Mysia in southern Asia Minor and the hometown of Hector's wife Andromache. A holy city near Mount Ida in the Troad in which Andromache's father, Etion, was both king and high priest, it was sacked by Achilles during the Trojan War. This Thebe is not to be confused with the more famous Thebes in Boetia, Greece, or the ancient religious and political capital of Upper Egypt on the Nile south of Cairo.
THYONE: Another name for SEMELE, whom Zeus impregnated in a shower of gold, to produce the god Dionysus. Daughter of Kadmos and mother of Dionysos.
TIMAS: One of Sappho's companions, who came from Phocaea in Asia Minor and died young.
TITHONUS: The brother of Priam, king of Troy. Such was his beauty that Eos, goddess of Dawn (Aurora), fell in love with him. He became the lover of Dawn, who left him each morning. Through the prayers of Eos he became immortal, but the pair forgot to ask for eternal youth. He grew old, wrinkled, and bent, and chattered so much that Eos had him changed into a cicada, (also presumably immortal). He became synonymous with a decrepit old man.
TROY: (Also called Ilion and Ilium): the subject of Homer and Vergil's great epics, the Iliad and the Aeneid. For ten years the Greek armies besieged Troy, the capital and jewel of northern Asia Minor. The city was taken in the tenth year only by a trick: the ruse of the Wooden Horse.
ZEUS: Also DIAS. The Father of the gods and the chief of the twelve Olympians. Son of Kronos and Rhea, brother of Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, Demeter, and Hera, who was also his wife. Zeus was father, by one means or another, of innumerable important divine progeny. As the tell- powerful director of thunder and lightning and giver of good and evil, his name was often interchangeable with supreme divinity.