Sappho

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics

BBC

Stand-up, History, Comedy

4.8 • 598 Ratings

🗓️ 18 February 2020

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Natalie Haynes and guests return for half an hour of comedy and the Classics from the BBC Radio Theatre in London.

Natalie is a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about Ancient Greece and Rome.

This time she's standing up in the name of Greek poet, Sappho, about whom we know so little, and most of what we think we know is made-up. But one thing is certain: her poetry is scorching, and unforgettable.

There will also be a lot of gossip from over a thousand years ago.

With special guests:

Novelist Stella Duffy Classicist Professor Edith Hall

With music from:

LiTTLe MACHiNe.

Producer: Mary Ward-Lowery

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2017.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:04.8	Hello, hello, and today I will be standing up for Sappho.
0:17.1	So every series, we try to do a program on somebody about whom virtually nothing is known at all,
0:23.2	just to make it a little bit more of a challenge for me, I think.
0:26.2	And this series, that person is Sappho, a woman about whom so little is known
0:31.0	that in the 1970s, two French academics put together a dictionary of distinguished lesbians.
0:36.9	I love saying that. It makes it sound like they're all wearing monocles and top hats. Dist of distinguished lesbians. I love saying that.
0:37.9	It makes it sound like they're all wearing monocles and top hats. Distinguished lesbians.
0:42.1	And on the page for Sappho left completely blank. No one knows anything. So you may wonder how
0:47.4	we're going to get a program out of this. And that's a legitimate question. Here's actual facts
0:51.4	that we know about Sappho insofar as one can. She was born in the 7th century BCE, so around the year 630 BCE.
1:00.5	She lived in Mitalini on Lesbos, city on Lesbos. She wrote lyric poetry, so poetry that was intended to be played with a liar rather than spoken, for example.
1:10.7	And she had brothers, of whom we
1:12.8	know the names of a couple at least, and she died in the sixth century at some point.
1:22.0	28 minutes to go, though. So I thought next we'll do things that people believe to be true about Sappho with more or less evidence. So things people believe to be true about Sappho. Well, her family, right, people have them. Let's start with that. So she very probably had a daughter. A daughter called Clays. It's a pretty name, huh? She refers to her daughter as being like golden flowers. That's a nice thing to say about your daughter, isn't it?
1:45.4	My parents are both here today.
1:47.2	They've never said that.
1:50.3	I know.
1:51.2	Like golden flowers.
1:52.5	Oh, imagine if you were loved that much by your parents.
1:59.6	But the thing is, the reason I don't feel conclus conclusively I would say she definitely had a daughter
2:03.0	even though I believe she had a daughter is because she uses the word Pice child to refer to her
	...

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