Sappho’s Trajectory: The Construction of an Eschatological Experience

Abstract Building upon recent research on the motif of Sappho’s leap from the Rock of Leucas in ancient iconography and texts, this article explores its background in greater depth, raising new issues and proposing new solutions. The first section locates the iconographic project of the so-called Porta Maggiore ‘Basilica’ in its historical context, through the comparison with another coeval and contiguous building in Rome. The second section focuses on the issue of the relationship between the story of Sappho’s unhappy love for Phaon and the corpus of Sapphic poems, arguing that the theme is unlikely to have been represented in the standard edition of the poetess and offering an explanation for the origin of the tradition of alternative Sapphos. The third section identifies the third text of the famous Sappho’s Cologne papyrus as a post-classical poem in the voice of Sappho, where the poetess takes leave from Phaon and faces a journey toward the Underworld while holding in her hand Orpheus’ lyre. Finally, I argue that this poem provides an important missing link that can help understanding the background of the representation of the poetess in the Porta Maggiore ‘Basilica’.