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the program. Hello today we'll be discussing Greek and Roman love poetry the source of many of the images and metaphors of love that have

survived in literature through the centuries. We begin with the words of Sappho, known as the

tenth muse and one of the great love poets of ancient Greece.

quote love a bittersweet and inescapable creeps up on me and grabs me once again unquote

there's no defense love is visceral. Such heartfelt imploring by Sappho and other mainly male writers

led poetry away from the great epics of Homer and towards a new personal expression of emotion.

These outpourings would have been sung at intimate gatherings

accompanied by the liar and we gather plenty of wine. The style fell out of fashion

to be revived first in Alexandria in the third century BC and then by the Roman poets in the first century

BC. Katellus and his peers developed the form and employed powerful metaphors

of war and slavery to express their obsession to their beloved as well as the

ill treatment of the invariably received at her hands.

So why did Greek poetry turn away from heroic narratives and turn to love in the 6th century

BC?

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