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γᾶν μέλαι[ν]αν (2) perhaps copying the Homeric formulae πέζοι θ’ ἱππῆές τε (3x) and γαῖα μέλαινα (8x). But the second of these is also a topos in lyric poetry (e.g., Sappho frr. 1.10, 20.6, Alcaeus fr. 283.13–14 [below]), so that we have to reckon also with the shaping of a lyric tradition.

      Sappho’s invocation of Helen’s story here is introduced (once again) swiftly, though this time to justify the primacy of “whatever one loves” (3–4) over the material of war (1–3), and this opposition has been held by some scholars, too readily, as straightforwardly programmatic of a lyric versus an epic sensibility.³¹ As Helen becomes the model for the principle, however, the poem begins to cast doubt on whether love is so separate from the military items in the priamel, and when Sappho relates the absence of Helen to that of her beloved Anactoria (15–16), the reader realizes with a shock that she is now comparing herself to Menelaus, a man prepared to bring war to the entire Greek world to recover his lost wife. The clever play on our expectations puts the surface aim of the poem in a discernible tension with its paradigmatic myth: love and war—perhaps lyric and epic as well—are not so mutually exclusive or antagonistic, after all.³² Thus, the poem meditates on the nature of modal relationships, or rather their interrelationship.

Sappho’s treatment of Helen is certainly more subtle, even sympathetic, than Alcaeus’ ringing damnation of the same figure in fr. 42, which seems to lack any explicit connection to the poet’s world, and simply to compare her (1–4, 15–16) to the goddess Thetis, whose love with Peleus brought into the world something great and good in the form of Achilles (5–13).³³ Alcaeus mentions Thetis also in fr. 44, where he may invoke and crystallize the same story as the Iliad, though the poem’s fragmentary state makes it very hard to say anything at all about the way in which this epic treatment is invoked and recreated—beyond the fact that it is very short indeed.³⁴ At slightly more length, Alcaeus returns to Helen again in fr. 283.3–18 (1–2 cannot be reconstructed), where the evaluative coloring of the myth is clear throughout:³⁵ Helen’s heart has been made to flutter (3), the liaison’s inappropriateness is made clear by the juxtaposition of Ἀργείας, Τροΐ̣ω (4), she is maddened (5), she abandons her child (7) under the influence of Zeus’ child (10, possibly Aphrodite), she remains responsible in the adonean (ἔν]νεκα κήνας 14), and the anaphora of πολλ- (15, 16), together with the shift into past tenses and the application to the chariots of the usually personal epic verb ἤριπεν (16), underlines the disastrous results of her action. We have no way of knowing how long this poem was, but Alcaeus’ negative judgment of Helen dominates the selection and sequencing of the story, i.e., from her following Paris (3–6), abandoning her home (7–10), and then causing destruction (11–16f.). Similarly evaluative coloring is of course found in epic poetry, but the narrative in the latter is typically more full, more clearly progressive and sequential. Consider, for example, Agamemnon in the Underworld when relating (through Odysseus) his death (Od. 11.409–26), which is told both to answer Odysseus’ query about what had happened (397–403) and, more explicitly, to illustrate the treachery of womankind (427–434): though the behavior of Clytemnestra is clearly negatively formed, the story is given in full, and includes Aigisthos’ behavior, the death of his comrades, of Cassandra, and Clytemnestra’s poor treatment of her husband. The wider narrative context, once more, sits together with epic’s ability or tendency toward more capacious and progressive storytelling.

      VII Ibycus’ Epic Lesson: Flattering Polycrates

      So far we have seen a variety of lengths, details, and approaches to heroic myth, but the longest extant example of a mythical narrative before Stesichorus (see below) comes in the so-called “Polycrates Ode” by the mid-sixth-century BC poet Ibycus of Rhegium (in Italy) (fr. S 151 PMGF).³⁶ This composition was written to praise Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, and did so by associating him with the great heroes of the Trojan War. Here the assertion of lyric dialect and language combines a clear appropriation and recreation of epic norms: for instance, the expression Δαρδανίδα Πριάμοιο (“of Dardanus’ son Priam” 1) combines the standard epic form of Priam’s name with a patronymic showing a non-epic, Doric inflection (Δαρδανίδα ~ Δαρδανιδάο).³⁷ Moreover, lines 20–22 (τῶν] μὲν κρείων Ἀγαμέ̣[μνων / ἆ̣ρ̣χε Πλεισθ[ενί]δας βασιλ̣[εὺ]ς̣ ἀγὸς ἀνδρῶν / Ἀτρέος ἐσ[θλὸς π]άις ἔκγ̣[ο]νος “their leader was powerful Agamemnon/the Pleisthenid, king, leader of men/noble trueborn son of Atreus”) obviously allude to an entry in the Iliad’s Catalogue of Ships with the typical epic formula κρείων Ἀγαμέμνων “powerful Agamemnon” (41x Il., 1x Od., 1x Little Iliad), though the entry is also “lyricized” by the non-epic vocalism for the patronymic Πλεισθ[ενί]δας (~ Πλεισθενίδης). Incidentally, the genealogy given here combines the Homeric tradition that Agamemnon was the son of Atreus with the Hesiodic conception that he was Pleisthenes’ son (Hes. frr. 194–195 M–W): Ibycus sides with Homer,³⁸ but includes Hesiod’s tale. Finally, the expression κλέος ἄφθιτον “glory imperishable” reiterates the creation of a mixed lyric/epic tradition, since this epic phrase (Il. 9.413, Hes. fr. 70.5 M–W) had already been appropriated by Sappho (fr. 44.4 [below]).³⁹

This reproduction and reworking of epic language is obviously aided by the dactylic rhythm of the triad (i.e., strophe/antistrophe/epode) which, as with the stanzaic constructions examined earlier, affords the poet semantic opportunities of a sort denied to epic: note, e.g., the considerable syntactical continuity within the units of each triad (e.g., 4–5, 13–14, etc.), but the strong pause between them (9–10, 22–23, etc.). Moreover, the enclosed two triads have the same structure—refusal to sing about the Trojan War in the usual way (10–12 f., 23–6 f.), then the Greek ships coming to Troy (14–19, 27–31), followed by entries which allude to the Catalogue of Ships (20–22, 32–35)—which helps to underline the self-consciously novel nature of the final comparison (see below), but which also focuses on Ibycus’ advertisement of his decision not to give a standard treatment of the material, most notably perhaps in his refusal to invoke the Muses, that standard source of epic inspiration and authority, rather than merely noting where their narrative preference would otherwise take him (23–24).

      Indeed, the poem self-consciously manipulates, recreates, and refuses epic norms throughout. Ibycus reframes the war and its epic treatment through the decidedly un-epic erotic theme with which the text closes, as Polycrates is praised by being set among a series of impressive male figures specifically for his looks (“for these men there will always be a share of beauty;/so you too, Polycrates, will have glory imperishable/as can be in song and my fame” 46–48).⁴⁰ The very structure of the myth seems to highlight this eroticism in moving from female to male beauty: the war is thematized in the first triad in terms of the female, as a contest for Helen’s physical form (5) and a result of Aphrodite’s deceptive doom (9).⁴¹

      VIII Love and War 2: Sappho fr. 44

      But perhaps the most well-known reframing of an apparently epic story in lyric modality comes in Sappho fr. 44, which tells the story of the wedding of Hector and Andromache. The extant portion of the text opens with Idaios apparently announcing the imminent arrival of Andromache, and is then concerned with the preparations to receive her and the following celebrations in Troy.⁴² Once typically classed as one of Sappho’s epithalamia (“wedding-songs”) though it refers to no contemporary wedding, this poem exploits both that convention and its dactylic rhythm to produce the most recognizably “epic” of archaic lyric poems before Stesichorus. A stichic poem adding to the epic resonance, each of its verses contains an invariable number of syllables (fourteen) with a strong dactylic rhythm (× × ‒ ˘ ˘ ‒ ˘ ˘ ‒ ˘ ˘ ‒ ˘ ‒). This allows many epic features, on the level of meter (e.g., line 5, where

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