Abstract

K. J. Mckay includes Sappho i u in his interesting discussion of doors that open spontaneously at the advent of a god. He glides without mention over the fact that workmen are ordered to do the opening and that the workmen's task—an extensive one, justifying a use of the plural —is not simply to open the door but to increase the whole structure's height (). Later in his essay, while discussing Psalm 24, McKay remembers that the idea of gates opening upward is found in Oriental literature, not in Greek. It is odd that, three pages earlier, he forgot to apply this information to Sappho.