Introduction to Lesbian Studies 101a by Prof. Iphiginia Beanflicker

Good evening class and welcome to Lesbian Studies 101a. As I look about the room, I notice that many of you belong to a sex that one usually doesn’t find in this course. But that perfectly all right. You ladies are welcome to stay.

The starting point of any lecture on the current subject must certainly be a discussion of Sappho of Lesbos, the great Greek poetess of the Archaic period. Today, Sappho is remembered for practically inventing the art of lyric poetry. Indeed, her poems are some of the most well-constructed and melodious girl-on-girl action ever written.

But in her day, Sappho was more famous for making a school girl ….I mean, making a girl’s school.

Through the ages, Sappho has acquired a rather scandalous reputation, owing in no small measure to her unorthodox teaching method (which consisted of intense mutual matriculation.) But several newly discovered poems have cast doubt on these assumptions. One of these is a charming little ode in praise of gardening implements entitled…”Working up my dirty, dirty ho.”

The great frustration to any scholar of Sapphic poetry is that so much of it exists only as fragments. The newly discovered works are no different. In fact, all we have of one poem is a fragment of a single line.

True happiness is anal…

As this is almost certainly a poem about the virtues of analysis, you can imagine that the search is on for the back end of this line.

The most intact of the newly discovered works is a play called Γατομαχη (gatomachy.) This should be translated as “cat fight,” but it is curiously devoid of any actual felines. It does seem to involve considerable amount of howling though …and one chew toy.

The play is a retelling of the Amazonomachy and deals with a group of fierce warrior women who happen upon a bevy of young schoolgirls from the Isle of Lesbos. As one might expect, the women get into a terrible row. Oddly, none seem to be the worse for it.

It starts off with a chorus of Amazons coming forward:

We Amazons have finally licked the Lesbos’ hills.
Whose haughty breasts do heave and move in such a way
That truly would we drop our arms to press
and feel our pointy nipples touch their mirrored’ twins.

This is a rather odd way to start a battle I think. But then the Lesbosian schoolgirls come forward ...and don't really clear anything up:

And Lesbos comes to check you warrior maidens out.
O let us munch the hoary carpet on the floor
and meet enflamed’ lips with softly-plying club
that we’ll thrust deep to hasten fast-winged Nike’s joy. 

(The weapon mentioned in these verses, which I have translated as “club,” is described later as being only 7 inches long.  I’m not sure why they would think this an effective weapon to bring to any sort of battle…or why it would need to be lubricated.)

The battle is afoot, but the struggling of the armies can only be described as a bizarre wrestling match. And considerable time is spent in versification of anguished moans…well, moans of one sort or another. The struggle reaches a fever pitch at which point both armies make plaintive pleas to Zeus.


Ω θεοσ Ω θεοσ Ω θεοσ ναααααιιιιι

This line has caused quite a bit on controversy in the philological world, but it is generally excepted that it should be translated as:

O God! O God! O God! Yeeeessss!

The battle then ends abruptly and, remarkably, the Lesbosians' wind up on top. At least that what I gather from the lines of the Amazon chorus:

We’ll die a little death from just their fingers’ touch.
We Amazons have never been so soundly licked.

The Lesbosians then finish off the play with the rousing lines:

O come beloved broadly-bosomed new found friends.
Let’s lay us down and swear eternal binding oaths
And scissor bang ‘til Golden Aphrodite come. 

(I’m completely flummoxed by that last line for as far as I know, the Greeks didn’t even have scissors.)

We'll end there I think and take it up again next week with an Aeschylean satire of one of his fellow dramatists entitled, “Euripides I-ripa-dose.”