Keep Lesbos for the Lesbians

A tricky issue has just hit the Greek courts. Some residents of the island of  Lesbos have just decided to resort to the law to prevent the "Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece" from using the word Lesbian in its title.

The idea is that the heterosexual female denizens of the island don’t much like the idea that when they claim they are Lesbian everyone assumes that they are gay. (It’s a claim that might be stronger, I think, if the appellants in this case were women, not men representing their sisters. .) But if they are successful in their suit against the Greek organisation, the plan is to try to outlaw “Lesbians" (as a word) worldwide.

The problem here is the sixth-century BCE Greek poetess Sappho (on the right): born and bred in Lesbos, she addressed some of the most passionate erotic poetry the world has known to fellow women. An achievement which in the ancient world  earned her the title “10th Muse”. Almost ever since Lesbos has been synonymous with Lesbianism (in fact since the 18th century in British English).

This idea of decoupling Sappho, female homoeroticism and the island of Lesbos seems to me about as mad as trying to white out William Shakespeare from Stratford on Avon.

In fact, Sappho is the sexiest thing to have come from the island in 3000 years. Why on earth jack in the commercial possibilities?

The competition for most famous islander is not great. Alcaeus was also a Lesbian, another early poet, who famously claimed to throw away his shield on the battlefield and walk (?run) away – so giving rise to a whole tradition of ancient poetic military refuseniks.

You might also think of Theophrastus, fourth-third century BCE scientist, who wrote a wonderful analysis of different character types called “The Characters”. Read my colleague Paul Millett on this.

In the modern world you might go for the poet Odysseas Elytis who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1979. But that’s not quite the 10th Muse and, though his family came from Lesbos, he was actually born in Crete anyway.

So why on earth aren’t the Lesbians (islanders that is) celebrating Sappho and doing all they can to resurrect her poetry. Out of 9 volumes, only a handful of stuff survives. But more may be found. Only a few years ago another poem was discovered on an Egyptian papyrus. A nice middle-aged lyric about not having the knees to dance any more. A translation was published in the TLS.

Why don't the islanders buy into this, instead of complaining about the supposed sexual "insult"?

Comments

[Peter Taylor]

The easiest way to post Greek text is probably to install a Greek keyboard layout. Windows allows switching between installed layouts with Left Alt-Left Shift or via a flag icon in the system tray. You can find images of keyboard layouts with Google image search or tables showing the layouts on Wikipedia.

[Nick]

It is pure publicity seeking on the order of Victoria Beckham's ludicrous attempt to prevent Peterborough United from continuing to use their 100 year old nickname "the Posh".

[klimt]

'Gay' is a charming surname, inviting many a witty riposte to impertinent inquiries.

No, it's the Butts and Ramsbottoms of this world I pity - what on earth can one do with that!? :)

[StB]

Well, some words are like that. Take
for instance Vengerka in Russian, see

http://www.proz.com/forum/lighter_side_of_trans_interp/9722-how_do_the_dutch_say_%5Cdouble_dutch%5C_or_the_russians_%5Crussian_roulette%5C_more.html?start=30

[Nemo]

Actually, the people I feel sorry for aren't the Lesbians (as in Island of Lesbos), but the Gays (as in people who have the not terribly uncommon surname Gay or women who have the given name Gay). Some years ago there was a letter in the local newspaper from a man named Gay whose children were begging him to change the family name because of what they were experiencing at school. He didn't feel comfortable changing the family's surname -how many people would, really, but said he thought it likely his children would change their names on reaching adulthood. It sounds funny, but the letter was actually rather moving. I used to have a slight acquaintance with a woman whose middle name was Gay. I didn't know her well enough to ask how she felt about her name. She was born in the late 1950s so the "new" meaning of her middle name would have hit when she was about 10 or so. I suppose very few baby girls are given the Gay as a first or middle name these days.

[Lucy]

Richard: I think Ransome uses 'he' as a pronoun ... my memory is hazy, but I certainly remember thinking, 'hmm, I was sure Sappho was female'. Anyone have a copy we can check?

[Lucy]

Oh, Jane, hi! I think I've got a mental crossover with the retro-books thread on Alpha Mummy. I have a feeling (not read the books for some while!) that there were originally three or four pigeons used for messages, and that one at least was taken by a hawk. I don't think they suggested Sophocles was female - the strong impression I got was that the Noble Greek Poets were all, of course, scholarly men.

Sophocles goes on? No! I love Sophocles - comp. with Aeschylus and Euripides he was a positive blessing.

I was wondering, though - what do we know about the Greeks' ideas of gender and sexuality? (Big question, oops.) There was a Peter Hall production of the Bacchae a bit ago with the brilliant Will Houston as both Pentheus and Agave - no problem with male actors playing female roles. Did the Greeks think of gender and speaking voice in the same way that we do? Or would it be quite conventional for someone to speak as a lesbian despite being a man?

[Richard]

NB also that the first of the two links Tony Francis put up (the one for the picture of the new papyrus) has itself a further link to a text with extensive linguistic help from those selfless grammarians at www.aoidoi.org. This is a very useful site for linguistic help with Greek poetry. Here's a link for their text of the new Sappho (a pdf):
http://www.aoidoi.org/poets/sappho/sappho-58.pdf
Very handy for those who are not natural Lesbians (dialect-wise).
Aeolic metres into Latin: good luck! (Notice that I'm not getting inveigled into having a go myself!).
I need a look at a copy of Pigeon Post. Are we really sure that Sappho the Pigeon was male? I don't understand about Page thinking that Sappho 1 (poikilothron' athanat' Aphrodita...) was addressed to a man - it's addressed to Aphrodite! But he did say some quite odd things about Sappho (they look odd now...), and the bit of his book which treats the "was she/ wasn't she" (or "did she/ didn't she") question looks very dated now (he didn't come down on either side of the question). But then, since it was written in 1955, I suppose it would seem dated.
All best,
Richard

[Jane]

Lucy
Fascinating about the pigeons. Especially as they belonged to the Amazon party, not the Swallow party.
But why one of each, if not a definite conviction that Sappho was a male? Unless Ransome thought Sophocles was female; well, Sophocles did talk an awful lot, and going on and on is generally seen as an irritating female trait.

[Tony Francis]

The image of the Sappho-mummy wrapping is found:
http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/sappho.new.html

Another Greek poem found in the chest cavity of a mummy appears to be different, and unrelated:
http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/geowissenshaften/bericht-13869.html

[Tania Winter]

People who write poetry are lible to have other nasty habits...

[rodm]

I seem to recall that one of Mary's predecessors at Cambridge, Denys Page, attempts in one of his books to prove that 'Poikilothron' Aphrodita' is actually addressed to a man - the thought that S was a Lesbian in anything but the geographical sense seemed to be too much for him!

[Michael Bulley]

To Richard: sorry I didn't spot your link to the poem the first time. I think I suffer from link-clicking phobia. But, if it's got people reading the poem and then maybe reading, or reading again, other poems of Sappho (can you say "others of Sappho's poems"?), that's all to the good. It's almost got me thinking of trying again to put "deduke men a selana" into any other language, particularly Latin, in the same metre. If Catullus could do it with "phainetai moi", why can't I? OK, I know why.

[Xjy]

Any chance of posting an image of the papyrus/papyri here for us??

[Mary]

It refers to Archilochus AS WELL. Both are part of the shield-throwing away tradition (..trope).

[Robert Ulery]

Surely your comment about Alcaeus refers to Archilochus instead!

[Michael Bulley]

Anthony Alcock is right. I'm good at proofreading, but not if I've typed the text myself. In line 4 there is an N missing: it should be "egenonto". In line 8, the third letter should be eta, not upsilon; the word is "agêraon". So, those of you who want to can copy it out and make the necessary corrections. In line 10, I've left the dots indicating uncertain text.

[Richard]

The poem really is printed in Greek on the website I posted a link to before.

Once more for luck:
http://www1.union.edu/wareht/story.html

In lower case, with accents, and without mistakes... And you can see which words have been supplemented to fill the missing bits of the papyri. Just one click away.

All best,
Richard

[Michael Bulley]

Thanks for managing to get the poem in Greek on the site. Hope Christopher Kelk, who asked for it, has returned to the site to find it. It looks OK, except for the very first letter, where the error is certainly my fault: it should be an upsilon, not a psi.

[anthony alcock]

Mary, the first letter has to be an "upsilon". Words in lines 4 and 8 (2 words) could do with improvement.

[Mary]

Here is M Bulley's Greek version -- in capitals, just as an archaic Greek might have seen it:

ΨΜΜΕΣ ΠΕΔΑ ΜΟΙΣΑΝ ΙΟΚΟΛΠΩΝ ΚΑΛΑ ΔΩΡΑ ΠΑΙΔΕΣ
ΣΠΟΥΔΑΣΔΕΤΕ ΚΑΙ ΤΑΝ ΦΙΛΑΟΙΔΟΝ ΛΙΓΥΡΑΝ ΧΕΛΥΝΝΑΝ.
ΕΜΟΙ Δ'ΑΠΑΛΟΝ ΠΡΙΝ ΠΟΤ' ΕΟΝΤΑ ΧΡΟΑ ΓΗΡΑΣ ΗΔΗ
ΕΠΕΛΛΑΒΕ ΛΕΥΚΑΙ Δ'ΕΓΕΟΝΤΟ ΤΡΙΧΕΣ ΕΚ ΜΕΛΑΙΝΑΝ.
ΒΑΡΥΣ ΔΕ Μ'ΟΘΥΜΟΣ ΠΕΠΟΗΤΑΙ ΓΟΝΑ Δ'ΟΥ ΦΕΡΟΙΣΙ
ΤΑ ΔΗ ΠΟΤΑ ΛΑΙΨΗΡ' ΕΟΝ ΟΡΧΗΣΘ' ΙΣΑ ΝΕΒΡΙΟΙΣΙ.
ΤΑ ΜΕΝ ΣΤΕΝΑΧΙΣΔΩ ΘΑΜΕΩΣ. ΑΛΛΑ ΤΙ ΚΕΝ ΠΟΕΙΗΝ;
ΑΓΥΡΑΟΝ ΑΝΘΡΩΠΟΝ ΕΟΝΤ' ΟΥ ΔΥΝΑΤΟΝ ΓΕΝΕΣΤΗΑΙ.
ΚΑΙ ΓΑΡ ΠΟΤΑ ΤΙΘΩΝΟΝ ΕΦΑΝΤΟ ΒΡΟΔΟΠΑΧΥΝ ΑΥΩΝ
ΕΡΩΙ Φ .... ΑΘΕΙΣΑΝ ΒΑΜΕΝ' ΕΙΣ ΕΣΧΑΤΑ ΓΑΣ ΦΕΡΟΙΣΑΙΝ
ΕΟΝΤΑ ΚΑΛΟΝ ΚΑΙ ΝΕΟΝ ΑΛΛΑ ΑΥΤΟΝ ΥΜΩΣ ΕΜΑΡΨΕ
ΧΡΟΝΩΙ ΠΟΛΙΟΝ ΓΗΡΑΣ ΕΧΟΝΤ' ΑΘΑΝΑΤΑΝ ΑΚΟΙΤΙΝ.

[anthony alcock]

Has Mytilene really become a name for the island ? Perhaps it comes under the category of "ethnoslander", whatever that's supposed to mean.
There is really not much doubt that poem is by Sappho, having already been identified by Grenfell and Hunt in their edition of the Oxyrhynchus fragments as belonging to Book 4. The metre is a strong indication and the use of the phrase "chroa gêras êdê" at the end of line 3 of the poem translated by West, which appears in a fragment published by Grenfell and Hunt no.1231 fr. 10, line 6, also identified as the work of Sappho. In fact, the Oxyrhynchus fragment continues for another 7 lines, but the Cologne fragment seems to indicate fairly clearly that the last word of the poem is "akoitin".
A comment about West's translation.
l.3 "chroa" is tanslated as "body" ([my once tender body] old age now [has seized], but I think "skin" would be much more effective: it is the soft skin that has become the victim of old age, as all of us beyond a certain age can see when we take small children for a walk and they give us their hand.
There is a slightly poignant irony about the place of discovery of the Cologne fragment: in the cartonnage of a mummy.
Finally, G. Greer: her best performances, in my view, were as the handmaiden to the magnificently lugubrious Jonathan Routh in Candid Camera in the early 1960s.

[SW Foska]

Paul: Romanian 'pasarica' = little bird = vagina.

[PL]

Apropos Greek characters, I see Gilles managed to display "ouzo" in that form (third post from bottom), so it evidently can be done. Please explain how.

Also please consider displaying the rest of the body-text in this blog in an ordinary body-text font with serifs (e.g. Georgia), instead of the hard-on-the-eyes sans-serif typeface you currently use. There is a widespread delusion that sans-serif characters, because they are simpler in form, are therefore easier on the eyes than characters with serifs. Except in very short texts of a line or two, the opposite is true. Anyone who doubts this should try reading a few paragraphs of this blog and then a few paragraphs of anything posted on, for example, www.newyorker.com. The sense of relief to the eyes will, I promise, be palpable.

[Lucy]

Jane, re. Sappho being a man - I have used Greek textbooks old enough to still suggest this. It used I believe to be commonplace to teach the young and innocent that she was a he, and there is therefore a rather nice touch in the Arthur Ransome books that had me puzzled as a child: I knew Sappho was a female poet (though I didn't know what she wrote), so why were Nancy and Peggy's male pigeons called Sappho and Sophocles?

Nice article Mary, as always.

[Michael Bulley]

I've just had a look at the Times article of April 30 and it doesn't get off to a very good start. The title has the poor English "fed up of" and the first sentence says "Lesvos - Lesbos according to the classical spelling". The modern Greek spelling is the same as the classical one and has the letter beta as its fourth letter, which is pronounced in Modern Greek like the English v. The spelling Lesvos is the transliteration into Roman letters of the Modern Greek pronunciation and is used for road signs, in international travel information etc. So, on the road to Delphi, you will see signs for "Delfi" in Roman characters, as an approximation to the modern pronunciation, but that isn't how you should spell it in an article in English about Greek sanctuaries.

[Xjy]

This philistine barbarianism is all Greek to me. Pure double-dutch. Linguistic vandalism. Frankly, quite outlandishly gothic and arabesque. Hunnish pariahs trying to gyp us. Not at all germane. These welshers must be scotched in the womb!

[Paul Potts]

If Sappho was male, Homer was female. Certainly what's his name - Cornford thought so, and he wasn't joking.

Paulo

[Paul Potts]

Dear Michael Bulley

Presenting Greek characters has also occurred to me. What I would do is to send them as an attachment to a separate Email, which Mary can present as she chooses.

Paulo

[Paul Potts]

Dear PL

Quite a lot of Catullus' poems are overtly Gay. Perhaps Lesbia was a man, in which case the poet's "passer" could have been the boyfriend's penis, not his own.

Paulo

[Michael Bulley]

If somebody can tell me how to get Greek characters on to this web site, I could provide the new Sappho poem asked for below (above). I've tried with the Symbol character set and SPIonic, but both just convert the letters into Roman (I'm not going to spend ages inserting 600 "special characters" one by one). Anyway, the poem, in Greek, can be found in the TLS of June 24, 2005.

[SW Foska]

I forgot to mention that the alternative nesonym, Mytilene, has also been productive in Slavic cultures, where it has given rise to a number of words denoting oil, fat, and also olives: maslo, maslina &c. e.g. the Bulgarian word for an oil-gauge is 'maslometar'. But the islanders seem not to have protested at, for instance, the Romanian verb 'a maslui' meaning to falsify or rearrange (e.g. cards, statistics; cf. to 'oil the wheels', grease someone's palm, &c.), also this latter could be equally insulting. Should the principle of ethnoslander be extended infinitely by the jurists? One thing is certain, linguists won't be smart enough to make a buck out of this.

[klimt]

When being thought of as gay or lesbian is no longer considered to be a slight (merely erroneous if mistaken) and we are all whatever sexuality we choose to be without the unwelcome intrusion of prejudice, then the islanders of Lesbos will have nothing to complain about. Would thay they were complaining about homophobia! However, the worry is that their lawsuit is a backward step towards bigotry. How much more refreshing it would be if Lesbos were to make a stand against intolerance, and hold an annual party for Sappho - in all her guises.

[ricardo moraes]

I've learned once that Sapphpo wrote poems about how to be an amoreuse woman.It was a kind of ladies classes for future marriages. Dear Mary, is that correct? If so, all the troubles are solved, or no?

[PL]

Does anyone know if the name "Sappho" was given to other girls in antiquity? If so, attestation of the fact would make strongly against the notion that Sappho the poetess's reputation for lesbianism was generally known and taken seriously, especially if there is evidence that girls were names after her.

The fact that Catullus wrote love poems in which he addresses his mistress as "Lesbia" suggests that, at least in 1st-c.-BC Rome, that word at least conveyed no suggestion of homosexuality.

[Tony Francis]

There is a picture of G. Greer on the internet. If you look hard enough, you can find it. After having that image burned on my brain, I have found it difficult, if not impossible to take anything she ever said very seriously.

[Heresiarch]

In the nineteenth century, wasn't all homosexuality (and especially the male kind) referred to as "Greek love" anyway?

It is presumably by some accident of linguistic development that "lesbian" became widely adopted, but "Greek" fell by the wayside in favour of "gay". It could easily have been otherwise. We could be speaking today about "greek rights" or "greek pride" or "greek and lesbian film festivals." In which case, the Greeks generally would know how some of these Lesbians are apparently feeling...

[Richard]

Dear Jane (and anybody else),

I know of Prof. Greer's scepticism from reports of a lecture which I didn't attend (I think that there were press reports at the time). Relevant facts are the following: the two papyri from which the text derives are considerably later than the date of Sappho herself (this is true of almost all witnesses to ancient texts). The content of the new papyrus is held to be Sappho by virtue of the following facts: a) the dialect of the poem is specifically characteristic of the island of Lesbos in the archaic period, and the only Lesbian poets whose works in the relevant lyric metres were being read later in antiquity seem to have been Sappho and Alcaeus (and if there were lots of others, we could reasonably expect to know about it); b) the subject matter appears to be much closer to what we expect on the basis of other fragments of Sappho. So far, I think we would be able to be pretty confident anyway. But there is also c): the new poem on the new papyrus is in fact only new-ish, because it overlaps with a much later papyrus which we know to be part of a copy of a collected edition of Sappho's works produced in the Hellenistic period (the new papyrus predates this edition - probably - but the papyrus we had already is much later, written in the third century AD). We still call the "new Sappho" "new" because this other papyrus only preserves small parts of the relevant lines: not enough to get continuous sense with any confidence.

There are therefore grounds for doubt which are not 100% unreasonable, although I think that they are unpersuasive: it might be that the ancient scholars who put together the ancient edition from which the other papyrus derives attributed songs to Sappho which were merely "in the style of". We have no evidence at all that this was the case, but of course if the scholars simply called masses of stuff "Sappho" without much worrying about it, we might not have any evidence, unless somebody disagreed with them. And the reasons for modern scholars to agree with the attribution (i.e., the fact that the new poem "looks like" Sappho) are obviously provisional and based on beliefs about Sappho which might be incorrect.

The fact of the anecdotal tradition I commented about below might encourage scepticism: essentially, we know that the ancients (as moderns...) were very prone to talking nonsense about Sappho and making up biography. But I don't buy this: the fact is that this anecdotal tradition has had no effect (i.e., obviously, no *visible* effect) whatsoever on the transmission of the poems.

There are also some scholars who believe that the two papyri preserve different versions of the poem: one longer (Sappho's poem, preserved on the papyrus from the "collected edition") and one shorter (a shorter adaptation, preserved on the new, earlier papyrus). This is much more likely than the idea that the poem is not by Sappho at all (but personally I don't believe in this theory either: I think that the poem was the same on both papyri).

Here endeth the lesson.

But on a completely different note, the great Steve Bell has a cartoon in the Guardian today of relevance to all interested in modern representations of the Roman Triumph (it concerns the recent victory of Boris Johnson in the London mayoral elections):

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/stevebell/index.html

All best,
Richard

[Jane]

This is all extraordinarily interesting, not least because it revives interest in the poems of Sappho.
On what was G Greer's doubt founded?
I myself do wonder if Sappho was in fact a man.

[Richard]

PS "may be Sappho's" - despite the doubts expressed by e.g. Germaine Greer at the time, there is no real reason to doubt that this is genuine Sappho. The text of the new papyrus overlaps with a previously known papyrus which was part of a "complete works" of Sappho. And while it is of course possible that the ancient texts could have suffered from interpolation, there is no particular reason to suspect it in this case.
All best,
Richard

[Richard]

"New Sappho" with Greek and English:
http://www1.union.edu/wareht/story.html

Let me know if you can work out what to read in the third line from the end...

Richard

[Tony Francis]

Dearest Richard: They call Cos lettuce Kos lettuce because it comes from the Island of Kos - 'cos you knew this.
http://www.hub-uk.com/cooking/tipsromaine.htm
Which reminds me of the old riddle: "Where was Hippocrates born? Don't know? 'Kos you know."
PL: I had never heard of "Penang Lawyer"... until now... I am always learning something here.
Dearest Foska: I looked at that article you mentioned by Rictor Norton, and to be honest, I couldn't figure out just what the point of it was. Distinguishing "act" from "state of existence" (which I think was the issue) just doesn't make much sense to me. So where am I going wrong?
Which brings me to Lizzie Borden, the notorious ax-murderess in Fall River, Massachusetts:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzie_Borden
She was acquitted by good lawyering (although it probably wasn't Penang Lawyering). It was probably as much bungled police work. Ladies in those days just didn't do things like kill their father and step mother with an ax. The best theory is that Lizzie was a Lezzie, and got caught in the act with the maid. Rage followed... and well, you can guess the rest:
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mlizzieborden.html
There was a case of homicide in Wichita I revewed some years ago. THE wife followed THE husband and HIS girlfriend to a cheap and dingy motel. THE wife had a deer rifle and put one shot through the window of the cheap and dingy motel, which passed through the thigh of said girlfriend and into THE husband's cranium, causing instant death. I will let you figure out the anatomy involved. But the moral is: don't marry a woman who has a deer rifle, and knows how to use it.

[The Lazy Aussie]

I've always thought they should just call themselves "Leswegians". There's Nor-wegians, Glas-wegians, why not Leswegians?
The Worst of Perth
http://theworstofperth.com/

[Richard]

One of the ancient stories about Sappho's life (the ancients told lots of anecdotes of dubious or non-existent historicity about Sappho) had her married to a man called Kerkylas of Andros. Kerkus was a word for penis, and the name of the island Andros sounds the same as the genitive of the word for "man". One scholar suggested the translation "Dick Allcock of the Isle of Man". So it looks as if this story expresses the idea "we all know what these lesbians really want to put them right...".

In fact, Sappho's life is probably the best example of a place where the anxieties and concerns of later people have shaped how a person's biography has been described (real evidence for Sappho's life is very scarce). Thus the Times version of this story tells us:

"Lesvos was the birthplace of Sappho, a poet who ran a finishing school for well-bred girls in the early 6th century BC. She is reputed to have fallen in love with several of them, especially Atthis, whose concerned parents removed her from the school."

The existence of this school is very dubious indeed. But if it did exist, and if Sappho wrote about her feelings of loss when Atthis left her (which she did), then surely Atthis' parents must have removed her because of their anxiety that she was learning rather a lot more than how to manage the household slaves or sing to the lyre... Needless to say, there is not a shred of evidence for these concerned parents.

The Times article also quotes the plaintiff as saying "We are suffering psychological and moral rape”. See here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3850185.ece

There is a new book by Dimitrios Yatromanolakis about early Sappho reception, called "Sappho in the Making". ISBN: 978-0-674-02686-5

See here:
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/YATSAP.html

I haven't seen a copy yet, but it looks very interesting...

All best,
Richard

[Richard]

It's the people of Kos I feel for. Constantly accused of being lettuces. I wouldn't like anybody to call *MY* sister a lettuce.

I can't say I find "a nice middle-aged lyric about not having the knees to dance any more" a very enticing description of the New Sappho: trust me, folks, the Arthritic Ode is more exciting than this makes it sound...

All best,
Richard

[Christopher Kelk]

I would love to read the newly discovered poem that may be Sappho's, preferably in the original Greek. Where may I find it?

[Paul Potts]

I'm not sure about this. If "Brit" were to become synonymous with "sado-masochistic state terrorist", as well it might, I, as a Brit, might well be reluctant to allow myself to be identified as such. Recourse to law would be useless, of course, unless the British authorities allow there to be categories of "anti-Brits" who actually constitute the realty of being British. I think of Robin Hood - the hero of England at least, whose terrorist activities have inspired the Spirit of England and even now curdle the blood if properly presented. Some versions even bring Islam into it, because although Richard the Lionheart was a crusader par excellence, some Muslims were converted to care about England and the state of its Christianity - the holy war promised a friendship. And why not?

Chaucer's Knight, fresh back from another crusade, may provide an insight into this, but I as his Squire would suggest that fighting against labels such as "Lesbian", "gay", "Muslim", "Christian" has in fact replaced the really important matters - but they cannot be resolved by bombs or legislation or more and more "Intelligence" funding and personnel.

In an earlier post, I mentioned "Carry on Up the Khyber" in connection with the folly of warring in Afghanistan. I have since learned that the film was banned for public showing during the first Gulf War. I wonder why. Anyway, the DVD is easily available.

Paulo

[SW Foska]

Nicholson may be a whizz at looking things up in the OED but had he clicked on the link in note 3 of the Wikipedia article 'Lesbian' he would have found an interesting discussion and a reference to a book (Emma Donoghue, Passions Between Women: British lesbian culture 1668-1801. London, 1993) which, it is claimed, establishes 'beyond doubt' 'that throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the word "lesbian" was used in the very same sense as today'. The author of that discussion, Rictor Norton, is mainly interested in debates within the history of sexuality about whether the term was mainly an adjective or noun, in order to consider whether lesbianism is something people happen to do and to which no significance is attributed (like cutting their nails) or something that defines their identity.
However, the term's relation to its geographical referent is worth considering. 'Lesbian' bears some superficial analogy to 'Sodomite', denoting someone who does what people in a certain place are reputed to do. But it was rarely alleged that ALL lesbians did lesbian things (some of them were men, for a start). The term doubtless gained currency as a periphrasis or euphemism for 'Sapphist', initially more popular in English. (Rather like saying 'the Stagyrite' for 'Aristotle').
SWF nevertheless feels some sympathy with the Lesbiot cause, as the sexual meaning is an exogenous imposition from a more powerful culture and developed not only through the attribution of the practices of a single group member to the whole, but also in the more general context of attributing perversion to the oriental other. (A comparable term is 'bugger', originally attributed to Bulgars, the alleged ethnic origin of religiously heterodox Cathars in southern France in the Middle Ages. But this last etymology is now only semantically vestigial so no ethnic offence is given or taken by the use of the term.)

[PL]

What Siamese nerve! The French pox on those Mongaloid idiots! They probably Welsh on their debts when their Dutch courage is up, drinking that stinking ouzo! A few whacks with a Penang lawyer is what they need!

[Tony Francis]

Based upon the painting you have provided, it is apparent that Sappho suffered from asymmetric breast development. Clearly, this distorted her body image, which in turn dictated her tastes in sexuality.
http://www.wdxcyber.com/nbreast3.htm
(For you fragile blossoms who can't muster the strength to click on this site, it is about breast asymmetry.)

[Tony Francis]

My mother used to lament that the word "gay" had been corrupted, and could no longer be used as it had in previous generations. I suspect the lawsuit to ban "lesbians" from calling themselves "Lesbians" is nothing more than a publicity stunt to spur tourism to the Island. I hadn't thought of Lesbo for a while. Now I am thinking about it a lot. Concerning our fair blossom lesbians: Does a rose by any other name smell as sweet? (Didn't Shakespeare write something like this?) My article on Bracton is finished (except for correction of spelling and rewriting of awkward language):
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_de_Bracton

[Jon Goerner]

Isn't a person from Lesbos a Lesbiote, regardless of sexual orientation? If this makes no sense in English, how much less sense will it make it a Greek court of law?

[Michael Bulley]

I don't see the problem. There are Lesbians who aren't lesbians, lesbians who aren't Lesbians and lesbians who are Lesbians, which is the same thing as Lesbians who are lesbians. What could be simpler?

[judith weingarten]

The OED might not recognize 'Lesbian' in its modern English sense before 1870, but the island was already a byword for gay girls as early as Anacreon, a generation or so after Sappho:

"... the young lady from Lesbos despises my grey head and goes gaping after another -- girl!"

You can't say fairer than that.

[Jackie]

You try and white out Shakespeare from Stratford upon Avon under pain of terrible torments! The good burghers of the town certainly know a good thing when they see it. And, boy - don't they make the most of it!

[Gilles]

The Lesbians also have ούζο which is more palatable than poetry, for some. So, maybe they drink too much, that would explain this bizarre initiative.

[Oliver Nicholson]

Why does your list of eminent Lesbians vault lightly (but in a manner not uncharacteristic of classical scholars) over roughly two thousand years of post-classcial history. How about Zacharias of Mytilene, whose not unentertaining early Byzantine Chronicle survives in a Syriac version - there is certainly more of him than there is of Sappho.

I find that OED gives no instance of Lesbian or Lesbianism in its modern English sense earlier than 1870. It was possible for a respectable family in Willesden as late as 1898 (presumably admirers of Catullus, 'tenderest of Roman poets') to name their daughter Lesbia; she grew up to be Lesbia Scott, wife of a vicar of Chagford and author of an All Saints; Day hymn of great charm, "I sing a song of the saints of God", more sung in the United States than in her native land. No doubt Alma-Tadema has much to answer for.