Free Sappho by Nancy Freedman Page A

than Alkaios sprang up with a poem:
    I bid them summon the beautiful Menon,
    if I may have him for an additional joy at my
    drinking party
    It was well known that Menon dispensed his beauty for a price to anyone and that Alkaios, who had taken him up, was mad with jealousy. The applause was mixed with good-natured laughter.
    A stout man guffawing in the front row had a fig thrown at him. It hit its target, entering his mouth and sticking in his throat. He choked. Friends pounded him on the back. His face became purple, his eyes popped forward, and he fell over. They could not revive him.
    â€œFlute and bells, flute and bells.” Sappho listened to the familiar meter and stepped in intricate, sinuous patterns. The chorus followed her fleet feet and when her voice was raised, theirs were silent. She sang the song she had composed in her chamber:
    While the full moon rose, young girls
    took their place around the altar.
    In old days Cretan girls danced
    supplely around an altar of love,
    crushing the soft flowering grass
    The priestesses surged forward, god-intoxicated, to fall upon the knoll. Feeling the entry of the god, divine madness overcame them. They mimed the positions of love, hips raised, thrusting forward.
    Faster. Faster.
    A handheld drum beat the rhythm, urging them on until they sweated at the edges of their hair. Sweat laved their armpits, while between their thighs another moisture washed, mingled with perfumes. Their tormented cries turned the mood to one of ill omen. A god who loves with human passion is subject to the terror of the human soul and body. The women on the ground gasped and collapsed, seemingly lifeless. Hysteria seized the spectators. With aphrodisiac alive in their veins, they broke like a wave upon the prone women.
    The priestesses feigned exhaustion to lure their victims. On their upper legs were phalluses, which they now brandished. Others used pinecones, leaping up and charging like Erinyes after joy and blood. Some employed the thyrsos, a long ornamented rod. They fell upon the girls and sodomized the boy children.
    Men watched the rape and themselves grew rods. But they were immobile as the priestesses rushed past, each swinging her phallus, bringing down and penetrating any they found. Titans had torn Dionysos’s still-living flesh. So they tore flesh. The screaming and the suffering and the blood were his—the lust belonged to the Titans. The priestesses gave chase through the forest and the hunt continued in thickets and behind walls.
    Sappho shuddered, her own body tingling with maddening desire and sick revulsion. She was protected by her high station and the holiness of a participant. However, while the atrocities lasted, she must act. Cautiously she left her place, backing away from the smiling, brilliantly waxed god. Alkaios and Khar waited for her. Together they fled until the cries were faint.
    They did not pause until they were outside the gates of Mitylene. Breathless, they leaned against the whitewashed stones that marked their city.
    â€œHere it is,” Khar said. “This is the place marked.”
    Sappho nodded agreement. It was the place.
    A shovel had been secreted nearby, and the men began to dig, taking turns.
    Sappho paced nervously. Why was it taking so long?
    â€œAh!” Alkaios shouted.
    â€œShhh.” Sappho turned away to study the night.
    â€œCome look.”
    She went to the edge of the grave. Five feet down, a form wrapped in strips of cloth with clods of dirt adhering. “It is Melanchros,” she said. “Bring him up.”
    Khar jumped into the hole and, as though this were a signal, night became day, bright with the light from a dozen torches. Not one of the three moved. It was a tableau. The circle of soldiers narrowed about them—Pittakos’s private guard.
    The captain stepped forward. “What have we here?” he asked almost jovially.
    The white mask of Sappho’s face turned on him. “The