SAPPHO’S EPITHALAMIA AND THE LESBIAN ADONIA

Abstract This article concerns the paradoxical state of Sappho’s wedding poems: while her epithalamia are exceptional when set alongside the remainder of her work and her transgressive persona, several songs became identified with the genre. This article distinguishes between wedding songs, songs sung at weddings, and songs about weddings, to explore how public performance is easily mistaken for wedding performance. By discussing the tenuous grounds behind the theory that epithalamia closed her metrical books, I read frr. 27 and 30 as being connected to the Lesbian Adonia. These poems were concerned with the divine wedding of Aphrodite and Adonis, rather than with wedding rites.