ABSTRACT
Women in archaic Greek poetry are sometimes depicted as stepping out of time, creating a non-linear temporal space in which the markers that distinguish different moments of mortal life are missing. The narrative of Atalanta’s deferral of marriage presents one example. This chapter argues that the poem commonly known as “Sappho on Old Age” draws on this paradigm as the speaker reflects on her own mortality. Through the implicit comparison to Tithonos, Sappho depicts her production of poetry as a stepping out of time, creating an extended, ongoing present through which she participates in a divine form of temporality even while aging.
