‘All you Need is Love’: Some Thoughts on the Structure, Texture, and Meaning of the Brothers Song as well as on Its Relation to the Kypris Song (P. Sapph. Obbink)

The new Brothers Song is not a personal, biographical, and intimate expression of family matters but functions rather with a public dimension. As an originally public and choral performance it communalizes erotic experiences and acts out discourses of power relations in the polis and the clan. As aesthetic production it is embedded in an over-arching song-and-performance culture. The Brothers Song is connected with the traditional idea of a myth-and-ritual scenario, creating new myths and narratives for ritual performance. Thus the original occasion for this song was most likely the choral performance during the public festival at Messon. The Brothers Song does not really offer an alternative but like the new Kypris Song and many other erotic poems, deals with the consequences of love. Sappho thus portrays erotic entanglement as a programmatic feature of her clan. She probably used the bio-mythic cycle with her brother as well as more direct exchanges about love for wider educational and political purposes. As seen, the erotic song becomes an aristocratic and female discourse; politics with other means of addressing the strife of the hetaireiai in Lesbos.