Describe how Plato, Sappho, and/or Catullus conceive of love (and/or friendship). You can choose to only discuss one of the three works or compare two or three of them. You can also choose to compare their views on love with The Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, or Lysistrata. You can also choose to focus more specifically on either the lover or the beloved if you like.

In Sappho’s works, it show the importance of the relationship. In poem 16, Sappho states that the most beautiful thing on the Earth is what we love. In that specific poem, it mention about Helen left her husband went to Troy. It is sort of the starting point of the Trojan War. It is similar to Lysistrata where as Lysistrata was trying to use ‘sex’ and the love between couples and to stop the war between Spartan and Athenian. Both of them spotted the relationship between people. In Sappho, she states the relationship between Helen and Paris is love and it become the cause of the Trojan War. On the other side, in Lysistrata, the love between couple become the “weapon” for Lysistrata to be negotiate for the end of the war.

By Xhozef Lumaj

Describe how Plato, Sappho, and/or Catullus conceive of love (and/or friendship). You can choose to only discuss one of the three works or compare two or three of them. You can also choose to compare their views on love with The Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, or Lysistrata. You can also choose to focus more specifically on either the lover or the beloved if you like.

Plato describes love in a few different forms, which varies depending on the individual telling its meaning. It very much reminds me of The Odyssey. Within Homers story, love takes place in many different ways. One being the love of physical desire, which is displayed by Kalypso and Circe and another being the love for family that is displayed by Odyssues, Penelope and Telemachus. The love of family can be said to be the strongest as it was victoriously the end result. The point is, the meaning of love varies from person to person.

Analyze a literary device–most likely an image or metaphor–or series of devices you find in Plato, Sappho, or Catullus.

as the sweetapple reddens on a high branch / high on the highest branch and the applepickers forgot – no, not forgot: were unable to reach

Sappho, Fragment 105A

In this fragmented remnant of one of her lyrical love poems, Sappho employs a simile to compare an unspecified figure to a sweetapple ripening on a difficult-to-reach branch of a tall fruit tree. It can be inferred that the sweetapple represents a virginal young woman, a picture of femininity coming of age (hence the “redden”-ing or ripening imagery), who is beginning to attract the eye of suitors who are watching her maturing beauty unfold. These lines read more of desire and lust than of pure love; the applepickers know that the sweetapple is far from their clutches but nonetheless yearn for it. Still, they are unwilling to strive to reach out for her. Rather, that additional attempt will be made by a romantic hero, the man who truly loves her enough to exert the extra effort necessary to reach the top branches. There is a lack of true sentiment here, as the comparison of a woman to a sweetapple brings to mind images of consumption (or, in this case, consummation) and, inevitably, once the apple is freed from its position at the top of the tree, it is free to be eaten at the whim of the applepicker. Additionally, the “picking” of a fruit off a branch symbolically makes a connection to the concept of being “chosen” or “claimed” by a suitor; a sweetapple is immovable without an outside party acting upon it, just as the reddening, blushing young virgin patiently awaits a fearless, far-reaching suitor to be the catalyst for change in her romantic life.

Describe how Plato, Sappho, and/or Catullus conceive of love (and/or friendship). You can choose to only discuss one of the three works or compare two or three of them. You can also choose to compare their views on love with The Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, or Lysistrata. You can also choose to focus more specifically on either the lover or the beloved if you like.

When comparing the way Sappho and Catullus think of love I feel it is best to compare two very similar works of their’s, Sappho’s Poem 31 and Catullus’s Poem 51. In Catullus’ adaptation of Sappho’s Poem 31, there are difference that show how the two poets view love. The first observation which can be made is that Catullus’s description of emotions and feelings is a level more intense than Sappho’s; for example Sappho writes, “lovely laughing – oh it puts the heart in my chest on wings” (5-6), while Catullus writes, “sweetly laughing-that sunders unhappy me from all my senses” (5-6). However perhaps the biggest difference between the two poets can be seen when comparing the endings, lines 13-16 of both poems. While Sappho, writes about how the pain of unobtainable love causes her to feel paralyzed and helpless when it comes to getting the person she loves, Catullus, writes about how he needs to stop sitting by and doing nothing and actually fight for the love that he wants.

Describe how Plato, Sappho, and/or Catullus conceive of love (and/or friendship). You can also choose to compare their views on love with The Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, or Lysistrata.

Catullus is a very passionate writer, he loves and hates hard. He writes of a woman named Lesbia, it is obvious that the love he has for her is strong just by the way he writes about her. In Poem 5 Catullus says, “You’d like to know how many of your kisses would be enough and over, Lesbia, for me? Match them to every grain of Libyan sand in silphium-rich Cyrene, from the shrine of torrid oracular Jupiter to the sacred sepulchre of old Battus; reckon their total equal to all those stars that in the silent night look down on the stolen loves of mortals.” Here, he describes that he would want endless kisses from Lesbia, he wouldn’t get tired of them. He expresses his love by using metaphors in his poem. Catullus’ poems and Lysistrata are a bit different when it comes to the topic of love because the love is actually genuine in Catullus’ poems. In Lysistrata, it was more about the men just wanting sex out of the women, they didn’t really appreciate them. But they are also a bit similar because sex was brought up many times in the poems of Catullus.

Q: Analyze a literary device–most likely an image or metaphor–or series of devices you find in Plato, Sappho, or Catullus. 

   Sappho uses many metaphor and image in her poem,which helps her convey her emotions and feelings in more imaginary way. For example, "...And fine birds brought you, quick sparrows over the black earth whipping their wings down the sky through midair-they arrived. But you, O blessed one, smiled in your deathless face."(Poem 1 P637) In this sentence, she gives readers the scenes by using birds which whipping its wing down the sky to express her lonely feelings with sad moods. Another example, "Some men say an army of horse and some men say an army on foot and some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing on the black earth. but I say it is what you love." (Poem 16 P638) In this sentence, she uses army of horse, army on foot, and army of ships to describe and emphasize the characteristics of the men. In addition, in most of her poems, she uses many natural scenery to describe her feelings and her thoughts. Sometimes it contains painful and sorrow feelings like the moon which is setting down. Sometimes it contains the happy and sweet feelings like green grass. She naturally describes natural subjects to express her mix of the feelings in her lyric poem.

Love is the feeling that we perceiving on daily basis but most of us are not able to give a convincing definition. The love that mentioned in Plato’s symposium is demonstrated well in Homer’s Odyssey. In Plato’s symposium, Phaedrus brought up an intriguing point in which he split general love into common love and heavenly love. Common love is basically depicting human’s vulgar desires, which mostly reflect on possession of body. In Odyssey, Calypso imprisoned Odysseus for ten years because she “love” Odysseus in “common” way, however, it is questionable that the passion that Calypso had on Odysseus is real love. Therefore, Phaedrus followed up by talked about heavenly love in which described as the passion that beyond sexual desire. Heavenly love could be knowledge, spirit, or other characteristics that bring one person to the another without the involvement of body’s desires. For example, the love that Calypso had on Odysseus may not be classified as heavenly love from my personal perspective because her imprisonment is very likely violated his will. Penelope’s love, nevertheless, shall be called heavenly love. She rejected the chance to select one of the suitors to become new King in order to receive both sexual desire and luxury life. Same as the love that Odysseus had on Penelope, he encountered various difficulties through his venture in order to go back to his city for his family. His heavenly love is demonstrated by his responsibilities and bravery.

Describe how Plato, Sappho, and/or Catullus conceive of love (and/or friendship). You can choose to only discuss one of the three works or compare two or three of them. You can also choose to compare their views on love with The Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, or Lysistrata. You can also choose to focus more specifically on either the lover or the beloved if you like.

Plato’s Symposium is an account of a conversation between men, including Socrates, on the greatness of Love. Most of the men participating in the conversation praise love passionately, but Socrates gives a slightly different speech on love. Contrary to what the others believe, Socrates says that Love is not a god but a spirit, which is in between a mortal and a god. Likewise, Love is in between good and bad, beauty and ugliness. Everyone loves things that are good and desires that they become his own in the present and the future. Socrates states plainly “love is wanting to possess the good forever.” He goes on to say that reproduction is truly love because through reproduction one lives forever through their children. So, in a sense reproduction would be a way of possessing the good- that is, life- forever. Parents love their children very much because it is their children that make them immortal. Other men, like Achilles, seek immortality of soul that will make their memory live on forever. They achieve this immortality of the soul through performing glorious acts instead of through reproduction.

The reading due Monday is Plato’s Symposium (and the introduction to it) and the entirety of the Sappho (pages 635-643) and Catullus sections (pages 940-959) in the Norton anthology. The following assignment will be considered part of your class participation grade for the semester.

Analyze a literary device–most likely an image or metaphor–or series of devices you find in Plato, Sappho, or Catullus.

Describe how Plato, Sappho, and/or Catullus conceive of love (and/or friendship). You can choose to only discuss one of the three works or compare two or three of them. You can also choose to compare their views on love with The Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, or Lysistrata. You can also choose to focus more specifically on either the lover or the beloved if you like.

You are by no means required to write about Sappho, but if you’re up to it, you might find Emily Wilson’s review of Anne Carson’s translations of her (she is the translator for all but one of the poems by Sappho in the Norton) and other works about her in the UK paper The Guardian interesting: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/feb/02/classics

How do Catullus’s goals in writing his epyllion, or “little epic,” number 64 in the anthology, compare with those of Homer in The Odyssey? How and why are they similar or different?

The assignment consists of two parts: your response to one of these three questions in the form of at least five sentences due by midnight on Saturday (midnight between Saturday and Sunday); a response of at least three sentences to one of your classmate’s responses due by Sunday at 5:00 p.m.

Publish your response as a post to the blog and make sure to copy the text of the question you chose to answer at the top.

Publish your response to one of your classmates as a comment on their post.