by Suha Choi, Michael Ferlisi, Riley Jahnle, Liam Mulvihill, Lauren Tran, Arden Williams, and Arjun Yerabothu

Women in Ancient Greek Literature

Instructor’s Note: During the second and third windows in Greek II, students read two ancient texts that offer a window into the lives of ancient Greek women of the Archaic period: the Hymn to Demeter and fragments of verses by the female poet Sappho. For the assignment on Sappho, students were asked to read, scan, and recite a fragment of Sappho’s poetry and then to imagine the complete poem this fragment might have once lived in, and compose a poem in five Sapphic stanzas in English. For the Hymn to Demeter students were asked to translate and analyze a portion of the hymn and, in a close reading of the text, to show how it contrasted with themes of heroism and masculine forms of agency found in Homer’s Iliad.

Part I: Sapphic Stanzas

Fragment 34
ἄστερες μὲν ἀμφὶ κάλαν σελάνναν
ἂψ ἀπυκρύπτοισι φάεννον εἶδος
ὄπποτα πλήθοισα μάλιστα λάμπη
Γᾶν