SOURCE: Heikkilä, Kai. “Sappho Fragment 2 L.-P: Some Homeric Readings.” Arctos 26 (1992): 39-53.

In the following essay, Heikkilä traces Homeric parallels—sometimes recast in erotic contexts—in Sappho's second fragment.

Introduction

The relationship of Sappho's poems to Homer has been studied several times.¹ Fairly recently four fragments of Sappho, namely frs. “1,” “16,” “31,” and “44” L.-P. have been studied by Leah Rissman as to their Homeric allusions.² Rissman's methodological approach to Homeric allusions in Sappho deserves attention as a model with which to highlight the purposes and method of this study. Rissman assigns the types of Homeric allusions in three general categories: repetition of a word or expression, adaptation thereof and similarity of situation. The effect of the allusions is produced if the audience thinks of Homer in the first place.³ She rightly notes that this approach involves several difficulties: epicisms in archaic poetry can be coincidental, lyric formulae may arise...