Abstract:

This paper considers a remarkable epithet in a lacunose fragment of Archaic Lesbian poetry that some have assigned to Sappho, others to Alcaeus (Sappho F 99 L-P = Alcaeus F 303A V). The epithet, olisbodokos, which a majority of scholars understand to mean ‘dildo receiving’, is applied by the poet to the chordai ‘strings’ of a lyre (or a lyre-like instrument). It is no doubt intended as invective abuse, presumably directed against a member or members of the Polyanaktidai, an aristocratic family of Lesbian Mytilene, who are also mentioned in the fragment. This paper offers a new appraisal of the invective poetics of olisbodokos by taking a musicological and sociological approach, that is, by attending to the musical as well as the sexual dimensions of the epithet, and by reading it within the socio-musical context of Archaic Mytilene and Archaic and Classical Greece more widely. It is argued that the motivation and impact of the “dildo-receiving strings” evoked in the fragment are best appreciated in terms of the prestige of musical culture in Archaic Mytilene, a prestige in which both Sappho and Alcaeus, and presumably also the Polyanaktidai, were invested. In this society, sexually framed musical invective would have had a powerful effect, with political, social, and moral implications that went beyond the musical and the sexual. The paper concludes with a hypothesis about the origin of the tradition, reported in the Suda, that Sappho invented the plectrum.

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