Talk:Anactoria

Anactoria is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
April 5, 2024	Good article nominee	Listed
November 3, 2024	Featured article candidate	Promoted

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on May 4, 2024.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that scholars debate whether Anactoria, mentioned in Sappho's poems, was a real person, a pseudonym, or an invention of Sappho?

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Untitled

This should just mention Sappho and Algy, and the poem might go at Wikisource. I'm tagging it because I'm in the middle of something else and might forget this. —JerryFriedman 04:40, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by PrimalMustelid talk 23:58, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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Article history

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... that scholars debate whether Anactoria, mentioned in the poems of Sappho, was a real person, a pseudonym or Sappho's invention? Source: Ford, Andrew L. (2011). Aristotle as Poet: The Song for Hermias and Its Contexts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 120. ISBN 9780199733293.
- ALT1: ... that Algernon Charles Swinburne's poem about the love of Sappho for Anactoria has been called "frankly pornographic"? Source: Cook, David A. (1971). "The Content and Meaning of Swinburne's 'Anactoria'". Victorian Poetry. 9 (1/2): 77. JSTOR 40001590.
- ALT2: ... that Sappho compared her beloved Anactoria with Helen of Troy? Source: Pfeijffer, Ilja Leonard (2000). "Shifting Helen: An Interpretation of Sappho, Fragment 16 (Voigt)". The Classical Quarterly. 50 (1): 6. JSTOR 1558930.
- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Audrys Nin Reyes Template:Did you know nominations/Dynastes tityus

Improved to Good Article status by UndercoverClassicist (talk).

Number of QPQs required: 2. DYK is currently in unreviewed backlog mode and nominator has 20 past nominations.

Post-promotion hook changes will be logged on the talk page; consider watching the nomination until the hook appears on the Main Page.

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: First hook approved BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 20:05, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@UndercoverClassicist: the first hook looks fine. I think that the quote in ALT1 should be attributed. I found ALT2 less interesting than the others, and I'm not sure that "Sappho compared her beloved Anactoria with Helen of Troy" is quite the same as "Sappho compares her desire for Anactoria, who is described as being absent, with that of Helen of Troy for Paris". Let me kow what you think. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 22:23, 8 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@BennyOnTheLoose: thanks - appreciate your time on the review. Honestly, ALT0 is my preferred one, so I’m happy to just run with that if you are. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 15:53, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@UndercoverClassicist: Thanks for your work on the article! Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 20:05, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Thanks for your note, UndercoverClassicist. Three immediate thoughts from me; I'll give the article a proper read over if I get a minute:

Anactoria also appears in fragment 141, where Sappho writes to another of her female companions, Atthis, saying that Anactoria still "thinks of [Sappho] constantly" despite living away in the city of Sardis. This is fragment 141 in Barnstone's Greek Lyric, which is Sappho 96 in the standard numeration. And I'm pretty sure that the mention of Anactoria in it derives from JM Edmonds' wild speculation rather than anything in the Greek – none of the modern translations have it (including Barnstone's more recent translations).
- I see: I've clarified the numbering and slightly weakened the phrasing, following the footnote in an updated edition of Barnstone. Do you think that's enough? It doesn't seem like wild speculation there (that the unnamed "she" is in Sardis, Anaktoria was in Sardis, so the unnamed "she" may/should be Anaktoria"), but then I'm only just coming to the problem with very little reading on it. Do you know of anyone blaming Edmonds for this in print? UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:46, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  - I've had a look through my usual sources and I can't find much explicitly discussing the suggestion that the girl in Sardis in Sappho 96 is Anactoria; the closest is in Denys Page's Sappho and Alcaeus (p.93): To these and certain other speculations, it is sufficient to reply that they find no support in Sappho's words; a footnote to "speculations" reads Lavagnini ... names the absent girl 'Anactoria', and actually sends her to join the harem of Alyattes at the court of Sardis. More recent commentators on the poem just don't mention the possibility at all, and pretty universally refer to her as simply "a girl" or "a woman". A couple (Burnett, Three Archaic Poets p.302 n.65 and Hutchinson, Greek Lyric Poetry p.179) discuss the possibility that the girl is called Arignota/Arignote.
    As for Sardis, I think Barnstone's argument that 'she' is Anaktoria because she was away in Sardis is circular; AFAIK the only connection between Sardis and Anactoria is his assumption that the woman in Sardis in Sappho 96 is Anactoria. The testimonia associate her only with Miletus (at least assuming she is Suda's "Anagora"); the only other reference to Sardis in Sappho is the headband she can't give her daughter in fr.98. There is I guess a very tenuous argument to be made that the reason Sappho refers to the war-chariots of Lydia in fr. 16 is because Anactoria is associated with Lydia, but again there's no actual textual evidence.
    All this is to say that the current text isn't actively wrong – there's no evidence that Anactoria isn't the unnamed woman of Sappho 96 – and Barnstone is a reasonably well-regarded translator so in an article which is already as light on detail as this one is I guess it's worth mentioning the possibility, but I would be inclined to be even less committal than the current text and explicitly attribute this to Barnstone. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 18:44, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Agreed -- will tone it down even more to "has been speculated". I don't suppose you could find the citation for Lavagnini, as referenced in Page? UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 19:13, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Page gives "Lavagnini, Aglaia pp.139f." Looks to be this, but it's not available through archive.org or google books for me. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 19:23, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Brilliant: thanks. Will try to track down: if not, can always do "Page, citing Lavagnini". UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:59, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    OK, I think I've got something here: moved the fr. 141 material down below the "Ode to Anactoria" and made clearer that this is speculation: I've cribbed the notes you very helpfully provided above into an efn. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 08:56, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
She is mentioned, among other pupils of Sappho's, in fragmentary works by Damophyla of Pamphylia. Robinson, who is the source for this claim, certainly seems to say this, but he's either confused or writing unclearly: the "her own fragments mention Anactoria ..." in the source must refer to Sappho's fragments; nothing of Damophyla's work survives. I checked I.M. Plant's anthology Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome and he explicitly says that there are no fragments of Damophyla.
- Oh dear -- axed the sentence. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:46, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
the poem's first line is "My life is bitter with thy love", translated from fragment 130 I'm not sure I'd really call this "translated from" Sappho 130 ("Eros melter of limbs (now again) stirs me— / sweetbitter unmanageable creature who steals in" in Carson's translation) so much as alluding to or being inspired by it.
- Now "which alludes to". UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:46, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:46, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for these, Caeciliusinhorto. Replies above: I think I've managed to sort them, though perhaps I'm still being too bullish on frag 96/141. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:46, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

May I check that this correction is what you were planning to write? I can drop in an advertisment for this script which makes it easy to spot errors with the {{harv}}/{{sfn}} family of citation templates. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 11:43, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oops -- yes, you are quite right! Well spotted and thank you for fixing. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 12:40, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]