ted it as a
perfect illustration of perfect verse. The second was given by Longinus as
an example of the sublime in poetry--of the display, as he put it, not of
one emotion, but of a congress of them. Under the collective title of
_Anactoria_, these odes together with many of the fragments, Swinburne has
interwoven into an exquisite whole.

To appreciate it, Sappho herself should be understood. Her features, which
the Lesbians put on their coins, are those of a handsome boy. On seeing
them one does not say, Can this be Sappho? But rather, This is Sappho
herself. They fit her, fit her verse, fit her fame. That fame, prodigious
in her own day, is serviceable in ours. It has retained the name of
Phaon, her lover; the names of girls for whom she also cared. Of these,
Suidas particularly mentioned Atthis and Gorgo. Regarding Anactoria there
is the testimony of the ode. There is more. "I loved thee once, Atthis,
long ago," she exclaimed in one fragment. In another she declared herself
"Of Gorgo full weary." But the extreme poles of her affection are
supposably represented by Phaon and Anactoria. The ode to the latter is,
apart from its perfection, merely a jealous plaint, yet otherwise useful
in showing the trend of her fancy, in addition to the fact that her love
was not always returned. Of that, though, there is further evidence in the
fragments. Some one she reproached with being "Fonder of girls than
Gello." Elsewhere she said "Scornfuller than thou have I nowhere found."
But even in the absence of such evidence, the episode connected with
Phaon, although of a different order, would suffice.

Contemporaneous knowledge of it is derived from Strabo, Servius,
Palaephatus, and from an alleged letter in one of Ovid's literary
forgeries. According to these writers, Phaon was a good-looking young
brute engaged in the not inelegant occupation of ferryman. In what manner
he first approached Sappho, whether indeed Sappho did not first approach
him, is uncertain. Pliny, who perhaps was credulous, believed that Phaon
had happened on the male root of a seaweed which was supposed to act as a
love charm and that by means of it he succeeded in winning Sappho's rather
volatile heart. However that may be, presently Phaon wearied. It was
probably in these circumstances that the Ode to Aphrodite was written,
which, in Swinburne's paraphrase--slightly paraphrased anew--is as
follows:

I beheld in sleep the light that is
In her hi