One of the major focuses of scholars studying Sappho has been to attempt to determine the cultural context in which Sappho's poems were composed and performed.[120] Various cultural contexts and social roles played by Sappho have been suggested:[120] primarily teacher, priestess, chorus leader, and symposiast.[121] However, the performance contexts of many of Sappho's fragments are not easy to determine, and for many more than one possible context is conceivable.[122]
One longstanding suggestion of a social role for Sappho is that of "Sappho as schoolmistress".[123] This view, popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,[124] was advocated by the German classicist Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, to "explain away Sappho's passion for her 'girls'" and defend her from accusations of homosexuality.[125] More recently the idea has been criticised by historians as anachronistic[126] and has been rejected by several prominent classicists as unjustified by the evidence. In 1959, Denys Page, for example, stated that Sappho's extant fragments portray "the loves and jealousies, the pleasures and pains, of Sappho and her companions"; and he adds, "We have found, and shall find, no trace of any formal or official or professional relationship between them... no trace of Sappho the principal of an academy."[127] Campbell in 1967 judged that Sappho may have "presided over a literary coterie", but that "evidence for a formal appointment as priestess or teacher is hard to find".[128] None of Sappho's own poetry mentions her teaching, and the earliest source to support the idea of Sappho as a teacher comes from Ovid, six centuries after Sappho's lifetime.[129]
So you hate me now, Atthis, and Turn towards Andromeda.
— Sappho 131, trans. Edward Storer[130]
In the second half of the twentieth century, scholars began to interpret Sappho as involved in the ritual education of girls,[131] for instance as a trainer of choruses of girls.[120] Though not all of her poems can be interpreted in this light, Lardinois argues that this is the most plausible social context to site Sappho in.[132] Another interpretation which became popular in the twentieth century was of Sappho as a priestess of Aphrodite. However, though Sappho wrote hymns, including some dedicated to Aphrodite, there is no evidence that she held a priesthood.[124] More recent scholars have proposed that Sappho was part of a circle of women who took part in symposia, for which she composed and performed poetry, or that she wrote her poetry to be performed at men's symposia. Though her songs were certainly later performed at symposia, there is no external evidence for archaic Greek women's symposia, and even if some of her works were composed for a sympotic context, it is doubtful that the cultic hymns or poems about family would have been.[133]
Despite scholars' best attempts to find one, Yatromanolakis argues that there is no single performance context to which all of Sappho's poems can be attributed.[134] Camillo Neri argues that it is unnecessary to assign all of her poetry to one context, and suggests that she could have composed poetry both in a pedogogic role and as part of a circle of friends.[135]
