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CLASSICS 9
Gender Ambiguity and Erotic Fluidity in
Sappho’s Fragments.
Isha Elahi, U4N
As part of International Women’s Week, a
presentation on gender ambiguity and erotic fluidity
within Sappho’s fragments was held on 7 March.
Rioghnach Sachs (OB), a PhD student in Classics at
King’s College London, delivered the interesting and
detailed lecture. It regarded Sappho, a poet from the
Island of Lesbos, whose poetry would be sung and
accompanied by music from a lyre. Her work was
popular and appreciated. Typically, her poetry would
be performed by men to men, with the theme of her
poetry being love. They discuss passion and romance
with men and significantly women, causing Sappho to
become a symbol of female homosexuality.
Sappho’s poetry was written in the first person, using ‘I’ so providing
an even more intimate depiction of love. She used neuter nouns
which would not disclose the gender of the voice, however towards
the end of her poems she might transition the nouns to feminine.
This provided a ‘reveal’, entertaining the audience to whom the
poems were performed.
Despite, the loss of approximately 9,350 lines of Sappho’s work, in her
fragments we can still appreciate the deep and introspections of love.
Her work had a simple construction, which lends itself to enabling the
listener to focus on the sensations discussed; this is one reason why
we can still engage with it and appreciate its messages more than two
thousand five hundred years after it was written.
Sorrento 2019
Mr Anthony Smethurst
In the first week of the Easter holiday, a group of
forty Removes and L4ths descended on Sorrento for
the Classics tour of the Bay of Naples area. All went
smoothly on the day of departure and, aside from a few
showers on Capri and in Paestum, we had the benefit of
superb weather for the duration of the trip.
The first day of the trip saw excursions to the amphitheatre at
Pozzuoli (the third largest in Italy), and the house of Poppaea at
Oplontis. We also paid our first ever visit to the delightful port
of Pozzuoli. The following day was spent in Pompeii, where
the pupils were able to see the pictures in their Latin textbooks
brought to life. We visited the amphitheatre, theatres, forum, and
various shops and houses. More ruins of houses were explored
in Herculaneum, and a clear view across the bay of Naples was
enjoyed from the peak of Vesuvius. The temple ruins and museum
at Paestum, and the sibyl’s cave at Cumae were also on the
itinerary, and the group recovered from the hike up to the natural
arch with some window shopping on Capri.
The evenings also brought entertainment, in the form of a scavenger
hunt, talent show (won by a glorious sendup of the hotel staff), a
fiendish quiz, and the obligatory excursion to a local pizza restaurant.
A fantastic time was had by all!