y fully with Sappho, is disposed to accept
many of the worst stories about her, though he has no pronounced
animus, and, as regards female homosexuality, which he considers
to be "far more venial" than male homosexuality, he remarks that
"in modern times it has numbered among its votaries females
distinguished for refinement of manners and elegant
accomplishments." Bascoul, on the other hand, will accept no
statements about Sappho which conflict with modern ideals of
complete respectability, and even seeks to rewrite her most
famous ode in accordance with the colorless literary sense which
he supposes that it originally bore (J.M.F. Bascoul, _La Chaste
Sappho et le Mouvement Feministe a Athenes_, 1911).
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (_Sappho und Simonides_, 1913) also
represents the antiquated view, formerly championed by Welcker,
according to which the attribution of homosexuality is a charge
of "vice," to be repudiated with indignation. Most competent and
reliable authorities today, however, while rejecting the
accretions of legend around Sappho's name and not disputing her
claim to respect, are not disposed to question the personal and
homosexual character of her poems. "All ancient tradition and the
character of her extant fragments," says Prof. J.A. Platt
(_Encyclopedia Britannica_, 11th. ed., art. "Sappho"), "show that
her morality was what has ever since been known as 'Lesbian.'"
What exactly that "Lesbian morality" involved, we cannot indeed
exactly ascertain. "It is altogether idle," as A. Croiset remarks
of Sappho (_Histoire de la Litterature Grecque_, vol. ii, ch. v),
"to discuss the exact quality of this friendship or this love, or
to seek to determine with precision the frontiers, which language
itself often seems to seek to confuse, of a friendship more or
less esthetic and sensual, of a love more or less Platonic." (See
also J.M. Edmonds, _Sappho in the Added Light of the New
Fragments_, 1912). Iwan Bloch similarly concludes (_Ursprung der
Syphilis_, vol. ii, 1911, p. 507) that Sappho probably combined,
as modern investigation shows to be easily possible, lofty ideal
feelings with passionate sensuality, exactly as happens in normal
love.

It must also be said that in literature homosexuality in women has
furnished a much more frequent motive to the artist than homosexualit