The Complete Fragments

Ποικιλόθρον’, ἀθάνατ’ Ἀφρόδιτα,
παῖ Δίος, δολόπλοκε, λίσσομαί σε
μή μ’ ἄσαισι μήτ’ ὀνίαισι δάμνα,
πότνια, θῦμον·
ἀλλὰ τυῖδ’ ἔλθ’, αἴποτα κἀτέρωτα
τᾶς ἔμας αὔδως ἀΐοισα πήλυι
ἔκλυες, πάτρος δὲ δόμον λίποισα
χρύσιον ἦλθες
ἄρμ’ ὐποζεύξαισα· κάλοι δέ σ’ ἆγον
ὤκεες στροῦθοι περὶ γᾶς μελαίνας
πύκνα δινεῦντες πτέρ’ ἀπ’ ὠράνω αἴθε-
ρας διὰ μέσσω.
αἶψα δ’ ἐξίκοντο· τὺ δ’, ὦ μάκαιρα,
μειδιάσαισ’ ἀθανάτῳ προσώπῳ,
ἤρε’, ὄττι δηὖτε πέπονθα κὤττι
δηὖτε κάλημι,
κὤττι μοι μάλιστα θέλω γένεσθαι
μαινόλᾳ θύμῳ· τίνα δηὖτε Πείθω
μαῖς ἄγην ἐς σὰν φιλότατα, τίς σ’, ὦ
Ψάπφ’, ἀδικήει;
καὶ γὰρ αἰ φεύγει, ταχέως διώξει,
αἰ δὲ δῶρα μὴ δέκετ’ ἀλλὰ δώσει,
αἰ δὲ μὴ φίλει, ταχέως φιλήσει
κωὐκ ἐθέλοισα.
ἔλθε μοι καὶ νῦν, χαλεπᾶν δὲ λῦσον
ἐκ μεριμνᾶν, ὄσσα δέ μοι τελέσσαι
θῦμος ἰμέρρει, τέλεσον· σὺ δ’ αὔτα
σύμμαχος ἔσσο.

A HYMN TO VENUS.

O Venus, beauty of the skies,
To whom a thousand temples rise,
Gaily false in gentle smiles,
Full of love-perplexing wiles;
O goddess, from my heart remove
The wasting cares and pains of love.
If ever thou hast kindly heard
A song in soft distress preferred,
Propitious to my tuneful vow,
O gentle goddess, hear me now.
Descend, thou bright immortal guest,
In all thy radiant charms confessed.
Thou once didst leave almighty Jove
And all the golden roofs above;
The car thy wanton sparrows drew,
Hovering in air they lightly flew;
As to my bower they winged their way
I saw their quivering pinions play.
The birds dismissed (while you remain)
Bore back their empty car again:
Then you, with looks divinely mild,
In every heavenly feature smiled,
And asked what new complaints I made,
And why I called you to my aid?
What frenzy in my bosom raged,
And by what cure to be assuaged?
What gentle youth I would allure,
Whom in my artful toils secure?
Who does thy tender heart subdue,
Tell me, my Sappho, tell me who?
Though now he shuns thy longing arms,
He soon shall court thy slighted charms;
Though now thy offerings he despise,
He soon to thee shall sacrifice;
Though now he freeze, he soon shall burn,
And be thy victim in his turn.
Celestial visitant, once more
Thy needful presence I implore.
In pity come, and ease my grief,
Bring my distempered soul relief,
Favour thy suppliant’s hidden fires,
And give me all my heart desires.
— Ambrose Philips, 1711.

TO THE GODDESS OF LOVE.

O Venus, daughter of the mighty Jove,
Most knowing in the mystery of love,
Help me, oh help me, quickly send relief,
And suffer not my heart to break with grief.
If ever thou didst hear me when I prayed,
Come now, my goddess, to thy Sappho’s aid.
Orisons used, such favour hast thou shewn,
From heaven’s golden mansions called thee down.
See, see, she comes in her cerulean car,
Passing the middle regions of the air.
Mark how her nimble sparrows stretch the wing,
And with uncommon speed their Mistress bring.
Arrived, and sparrows loosed, hastens to me;
Then smiling asks, What is it troubles thee?
Why am I called? Tell me what Sappho wants.
Oh, know you not the cause of all my plaints?
I love, I burn, and only love require;
And nothing less can quench the raging fire.
What youth, what raving lover shall I gain?
Where is the captive that should wear my chain?
Alas, poor Sappho, who is this ingrate
Provokes thee so, for love returning hate?
Does he now fly thee? He shall soon return;
Pursue thee, and with equal ardour burn.
Would he no presents at thy hands receive?
He will repent it, and more largely give.
The force of love no longer can withstand;
He must be fond, wholly at thy command.
When wilt thou work this change? Now, Venus free,
Now ease my mind of so much misery;
In this amour my powerful aider be;
Make Phaon love, but let him love like me.
— Herbert, 1713.

HYMN TO VENUS.

Immortal Venus, throned above
In radiant beauty, child of Jove,
O skilled in every art of love
And artful snare;
Dread power, to whom I bend the knee,
Release my soul and set it free
From bonds of piercing agony
And gloomy care.
Yet come thyself, if e’er, benign,
Thy listening ears thou didst incline
To my rude lay, the starry shine
Of Jove’s court leaving,
In chariot yoked with coursers fair,
Thine own immortal birds that bear
Thee swift to earth, the middle air
With bright wings cleaving.
Soon they were sped—and thou, most blest,
In thine own smiles ambrosial dressed,
Didst ask what griefs my mind oppressed—
What meant my song—
What end my frenzied thoughts pursue—
For what loved youth I spread anew
My amorous nets—‘Who, Sappho, who
‘Hath done thee wrong?
‘What though he fly, he’ll soon return—
‘Still press thy gifts, though now he spurn;
‘Heed not his coldness—soon he’ll burn,
‘E’en though thou chide.’
—And saidst thou thus, dread goddess? Oh,
Come then once more to ease my woe:
Grant all, and thy great self bestow,
My shield and guide!
— John Herman Merivale, 1833.

HYMN TO APHRODITE.

Golden-throned beyond the sky,
Jove-born immortality:
Hear and heal a suppliant’s pain:
Let not love be love in vain!
Come, as once to Love’s imploring
Accents of a maid’s adoring,
Wafted ‘neath the golden dome
Bore thee from thy father’s home;
When far off thy coming glowed,
Whirling down th’ aethereal road,
On thy dove-drawn progress glancing,
‘Mid the light of wings advancing;
And at once the radiant hue
Of immortal smiles I knew;
Heard the voice of reassurance
Ask the tale of love’s endurance:—
‘Why such prayer? And who for thee,
Sappho, should be touch’d by me;
Passion-charmed in frenzy strong—
Who hath wrought my Sappho wrong?
‘—Soon for flight pursuit wilt find,
Proffer’d gifts for gifts declined;
Soon, thro’ long reluctance earn’d,
Love refused be Love return’d.’
—To thy suppliant so returning,
Consummate a maiden’s yearning:
Love, from deep despair set free,
Championing to victory!
— F. T. Palgrave, 1854.

Splendour-throned Queen, immortal Aphrodite,
Daughter of Jove, Enchantress, I implore thee
Vex not my soul with agonies and anguish;
Slay me not, Goddess!
Come in thy pity—come, if I have prayed thee;
Come at the cry of my sorrow; in the old times
Oft thou hast heard, and left thy father’s heaven,
Left the gold houses,
Yoking thy chariot. Swiftly did the doves fly,
Swiftly they brought thee, waving plumes of wonder—
Waving their dark plumes all across the aether,
All down the azure.
Very soon they lighted. Then didst thou, Divine one,
Laugh a bright laugh from lips and eyes immortal,
Ask me, ‘What ailed me—wherefore out of heaven
‘Thus I had called thee?
‘What it was made me madden in my heart so?’
Question me, smiling—say to me, ‘My Sappho,
‘Who is it wrongs thee? Tell me who refuses
‘Thee, vainly sighing.’
‘Be it who it may be, he that flies shall follow;
‘He that rejects gifts, he shall bring thee many;
‘He that hates now shall love thee dearly, madly—
‘Aye, though thou wouldst not.’
So once again come, Mistress; and, releasing
Me from my sadness, give me what I sue for,
Grant me my prayer, and be as heretofore now
Friend and protectress.
— Edwin Arnold, 1869.

Beautiful-throned, immortal Aphrodite,
Daughter of Zeus, beguiler, I implore thee,
Weigh me not down with weariness and anguish
O thou most holy!
Come to me now, if ever thou in kindness
Hearkenedst my words,—and often hast thou hearkened—
Heeding, and coming from the mansions golden
Of thy great Father,
Yoking thy chariot, borne by the most lovely
Consecrated birds, with dusky-tinted pinions,
Waving swift wings from utmost heights of heaven
Through the mid-ether;
Swiftly they vanished, leaving thee, O goddess,
Smiling, with face immortal in its beauty,
Asking why I grieved, and why in utter longing
I had dared call thee;
Asking what I sought, thus hopeless in desiring,
Wildered in brain, and spreading nets of passion—
Alas, for whom? and saidst thou, ‘Who has harmed thee?
‘O my poor Sappho!
‘Though now he flies, ere long he shall pursue thee;
‘Fearing thy gifts, he too in turn shall bring them;
‘Loveless to-day, to-morrow he shall woo thee,
‘Though thou shouldst spurn him.’
Thus seek me now, O holy Aphrodite!
Save me from anguish; give me all I ask for,
Gifts at thy hand; and thine shall be the glory,
Sacred protector!
— T. W. Higginson, 1871.

O fickle-souled, deathless one, Aphrodite,
Daughter of Zeus, weaver of wiles, I pray thee,
Lady august, never with pangs and bitter
Anguish affray me!
But hither come often, as erst with favour
My invocations pitifully heeding,
Leaving thy sire’s golden abode, thou camest
Down to me speeding.
Yoked to thy car, delicate sparrows drew thee
Fleetly to earth, fluttering fast their pinions,
From heaven’s height through middle ether’s liquid
Sunny dominions.
Soon they arrived; thou, O divine one, smiling
Sweetly from that countenance all immortal,
Askedst my grief, wherefore I so had called thee
From the bright portal?
What my wild soul languished for, frenzy-stricken?
‘Who thy love now is it that ill requiteth,
Sappho? and who thee and thy tender yearning
Wrongfully slighteth?
Though he now fly, quickly he shall pursue thee—
Scorns he thy gifts? Soon he shall freely offer—
Loves he not? Soon, even wert thou unwilling,
Love shall he proffer.’
Come to me then, loosen me from my torment,
All my heart’s wish unto fulfilment guide thou,
Grant and fulfil! And an ally most trusty
Ever abide thou.
Moreton John Walhouse, in The
Gentleman’s Magazine, 1877.

Glittering-throned, undying Aphrodite,
Wile-weaving daughter of high Zeus, I pray thee,
Tame not my soul with heavy woe, dread mistress,
Nay, nor with anguish!
But hither come, if ever erst of old time
Thou didst incline, and listenedst to my crying,
And from thy father’s palace down descending,
Camest with golden
Chariot yoked: thee fair swift-flying sparrows
Over dark earth with multitudinous fluttering,
Pinion on pinion, thorough middle ether
Down from heaven hurried.
Quickly they came like light, and thou, blest lady,
Smiling with clear undying eyes didst ask me
What was the woe that troubled me, and wherefore
I had cried to thee:
What thing I longed for to appease my frantic
Soul: and Whom now must I persuade, thou askedst,
Whom must entangle to thy love, and who now,
Sappho, hath wronged thee?
Yea, for if now he shun, he soon shall chase thee;
Yea, if he take not gifts, he soon shall give them;
Yea, if he love not, soon shall he begin to
Love thee, unwilling.
Come to me now too, and from tyrannous sorrow
Free me, and all things that my soul desires to
Have done, do for me, queen, and let thyself too
Be my great ally!
— J. Addington Symonds, 1893.

Besides these complete versions—many others there are, but these are by far the best—compare the following stanza out of Akenside’s Ode on Lyric Poetry (about 1745):—

But lo, to Sappho’s melting airs
Descends the radiant queen of Love:
She smiles, and asks what fonder cares
Her suppliant’s plaintive measures move:
Why is my faithful maid distressed?
Who, Sappho, wounds thy tender breast?
Say, flies he?—Soon he shall pursue.
Shuns he thy gifts?—He soon shall give.
Slights he thy sorrows?—He shall grieve,
And soon to all thy wishes bow.

And Swinburne’s paraphrase—

For I beheld in sleep the light that is
In her high place in Paphos, heard the kiss
Of body and soul that mix with eager tears
And laughter stinging through the eyes and ears:
Saw Love, as burning flame from crown to feet,
Imperishable, upon her storied seat;
Clear eyelids lifted toward the north and south,
A mind of many colours, and a mouth
Of many tunes and kisses; and she bowed,
With all her subtle face laughing aloud,
Bowed down upon me, saying, ‘Who doth thee wrong,
Sappho?’ but thou—thy body is the song,
Thy mouth the music; thou art more than I,
Though my voice die not till the whole world die;
Though men that hear it madden; though love weep,
Though nature change, though shame be charmed to sleep.
Ay, wilt thou slay me lest I kiss thee dead?
Yet the queen laughed from her sweet heart and said:
‘Even she that flies shall follow for thy sake,
And she shall give thee gifts that would not take,
Shall kiss that would not kiss thee’ (yea, kiss me)
‘When thou wouldst not’—when I would not kiss thee!
Anactoria, p. 67 f.

And his—

O thou of divers-coloured mind,⁷ O thou
Deathless, God’s daughter subtle-souled—lo now,
Now to the song above all songs, in flight
Higher than the day-star’s height,
And sweet as sound the moving wings of night!
Thou of the divers-coloured seat—behold
Her very song of old!—
O deathless, O Gods daughter subtle-souled!
                                *
Child of God, close craftswoman, I beseech thee;
Bid not ache nor agony break nor master,
Lady, my spirit.
Songs of the Spring-tides: On the Cliffs.

As well as Frederick Tennyson’s—

Come to me; what I seek in vain
Bring thou; into my spirit send
Peace after care, balm after pain;
And be my friend.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, writing at Rome about 25 B.C., quotes this, commonly called The Ode to Aphrodite, as a perfect illustration of the elaborately finished style of poetry, showing in detail how its grace and beauty lie in the subtle harmony between the words and the ideas. Certain lines of it, though nowhere else the whole, are preserved by Hephaestion and other authors.

• 7.ποικιλόθρον’ = richly worked throne, is by some read ποικιλόφρον = full of various wiles, subtle-minded.

Φαίνεταί μοι κήνος ἴσος θέοισιν
ἔμμεν ὤνηρ, ὄστις ἐναντίος τοι
ἰζάνει, καὶ πλασίον ἆδυ φωνεύ-
σας ὑπακούει
καὶ γελαίσας ἰμερόεν, τό μοι μάν
καρδίαν ἐν στήθεσιν ἐπτόασεν·
ὡς γὰρ εὔιδον βροχέως σε, φώνας
οὐδὲν ἔτ’ εἴκει·
ἀλλὰ κὰμ μὲν γλῶσσα ἔαγε, λέπτον δ’
αὔτικα χρῷ πῦρ ὐπαδεδρόμακεν,
ὀππάτεσσι δ’ οὐδὲν ὄρημ’, ἐπιρρόμ-
βεισι δ’ ἄκουαι.
ἀ δέ μίδρως κακχέεται, τρόμος δέ
παῖσαν ἄγρει, χλωροτέρα δὲ ποίας
ἔμμι, τεθνάκην δ’ ὀλίγω ‘πιδεύης
φαίνομαι [ἄλλα].
ἀλλὰ πᾶν τόλματον, [ἐπεὶ καὶ πένητα].

The famous imitation of this ode by Catullus, li., Ad Lesbiam—

Ille mi par esse deo videtur,
Ille, si fas est, superare divos,
Qui sedens adversus identidem te
Spectat et audit
Dulce ridentem, misero quod omnis
Eripit sensus mihi: nam simul te,
Lesbia, aspexi, nihil est super mi
                                *
Lingua sed torpet, tenuis sub artus
Flamma demanat, sonitu suopte
Tintinant aures, gemina teguntur
Lumina nocte—

is thus translated by Mr. W. E. Gladstone:—

Him rival to the gods I place,
Him loftier yet, if loftier be,
Who, Lesbia, sits before thy face,
Who listens and who looks on thee;
Thee smiling soft. Yet this delight
Doth all my sense consign to death;
For when thou dawnest on my sight,
Ah, wretched! flits my labouring breath.
My tongue is palsied. Subtly hid
Fire creeps me through from limb to limb:
My loud ears tingle all unbid:
Twin clouds of night mine eyes bedim.

and recently by the late Sir R. F. Burton:—

Peer of a god meseemeth he,
Nay, passing gods (an that can be!),
Who all the while sits facing thee,
Sees thee and hears
Thy low sweet laughs which (ah me!) daze
Mine every sense, and as I gaze
Upon thee, Lesbia, o’er me strays
.        .        .        .        .        .
My tongue is dulled, my limbs adown
Flows subtle flame; with sound its own
Rings either ear, and o’er are strown
Mine eyes with night.

Blest as the immortal gods is he,
The youth who fondly sits by thee,
And hears and sees thee all the while
Softly speak and sweetly smile.
’Twas this deprived my soul of rest,
And raised such tumults in my breast;
For while I gazed, in transport tost,
My breath was gone, my voice was lost:
My bosom glowed; the subtle flame
Ran quick through all my vital frame;
O’er my dim eyes a darkness hung;
My ears with hollow murmurs rung.
In dewy damps my limbs were chilled;
My blood with gentle horror thrilled;
My feeble pulse forgot to play;
I fainted, sank, and died away.
— Ambrose Philips, 1711.

Thy fatal shafts unerring move,
I bow before thine altar, Love
I feel thy soft resistless flame
Glide swift through all my vital frame.
For while I gaze my bosom glows,
My blood in tides impetuous flows;
Hope, fear, and joy alternate roll,
And floods of transports whelm my soul.
My faltering tongue attempts in vain
In soothing murmurs to complain;
My tongue some secret magic ties,
My murmurs sink in broken sighs.
Condemned to nurse eternal care,
And ever drop the silent tear,
Unheard I mourn, unknown I sigh,
Unfriended live, unpitied die.
— Smollett, in Roderick Random, 1748.

Blest as the immortal gods is he,
The youth whose eyes may look on thee,
Whose ears thy tongue’s sweet melody
May still devour.
Thou smilest too?—sweet smile, whose charm
Has struck my soul with wild alarm,
And, when I see thee, bids disarm
Each vital power.
Speechless I gaze: the flame within
Runs swift o’er all my quivering skin;
My eyeballs swim; with dizzy din
My brain reels round;
And cold drops fall; and tremblings frail
Seize every limb; and grassy pale
I grow; and then—together fail
Both sight and sound.
— John Herman Merivale, 1833.

Peer of gods he seemeth to me, the blissful
Man who sits and gazes at thee before him,
Close beside thee sits, and in silence hears thee
Silverly speaking,
Laughing love’s low laughter. Oh this, this only
Stirs the troubled heart in my breast to tremble!
For should I but see thee a little moment,
Straight is my voice hushed;
Yea, my tongue is broken, and through and through me
‘Neath the flesh impalpable fire runs tingling;
Nothing see mine eyes, and a noise of roaring
Waves in my ear sounds;
Sweat runs down in rivers, a tremor seizes
All my limbs, and paler than grass in autumn,
Caught by pains of menacing death, I falter,
Lost in the love-trance.
— J. Addington Symonds, 1883.

Compare Lord Tennyson:—

I watch thy grace; and in its place
My heart a charmed slumber keeps,
While I muse upon thy face;
And a languid fire creeps
Through my veins to all my frame,
Dissolvingly and slowly: soon
From thy rose-red lips my name
Floweth; and then, as in a swoon,
With dinning sound my ears are rife,
My tremulous tongue faltereth,
I lose my colour, I lose my breath,
I drink the cup of a costly death
Brimmed with delicious draughts of warmest life.
I die with my delight, before
I hear what I would hear from thee.
Eleänore, 1832.

And—

Last night, when some one spoke his name,
From my swift blood that went and came
A thousand little shafts of flame
Were shiver’d in my narrow frame.—Fatima.⁸

And with line 14, Swinburne’s—

Paler than grass in summer.—Sapphics.

and—

Made like white summer-coloured grass.
Aholibah.

Longinus, about 250 A.D., uses this, The Ode to Anactoria, or To a beloved Woman, or To a Maiden, as tradition variously names it, to illustrate the perfection of the Sublime in poetry, calling it ‘not one passion, but a congress of passions,’ and showing how Sappho had here seized upon the signs of love-frenzy and harmonised them into faultless phrase. Plutarch had, about 60 A.D., spoken of this ode as ‘mixed with fire,’ and quoted Philoxenus as referring to Sappho’s ‘sweet-voiced songs healing love.’

• 8.When Fatima was first published (1832) this motto was prefixed— Φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θεοῖσιν  ἔμμεν ἀνήρ, showing Tennyson’s acknowledgments to Sappho.

Ἄστερες μὲν ἀμφὶ κάλαν σελάνναν
αἶψ ἀπυκρύπτοισι φάεννον εἶδος,
ὄπποτα πλήθοισα μάλιστα λάμπῃ
γᾶν [ἐπὶ πᾶσαν]
–⏑–⏑ ἀργυρία –⏑–⏑·

Planets, that around the beauteous moon
Attendant wait, cast into shade
Their ineffectual lustre, soon
As she, in full-orbed majesty arrayed,
Her silver radiance pours
Upon this world of ours.
— J. H. Merivale.

The stars around the lovely moon
Their radiant visage hide as soon
As she, full-orbed, appears to sight,
Flooding the earth with her silvery light.
— ? Felton.

The stars about the lovely moon
Fade back and vanish very soon,
When, round and full, her silver face
Swims into sight, and lights all space.
— Edwin Arnold, 1869.

Stars that shine around the refulgent full moon
Pale, and hide their glory of lesser lustre
When she pours her silvery plenilunar
Light on the orbed earth.
— J. A. Symonds, 1883.

‘As the stars draw back their shining faces when they surround the fair moon in her silver fulness.’ F. T. Palgrave.

Quoted by Eustathius of Thessalonica, late in the twelfth century, to illustrate the simile in the Iliad, viii. 551:—

As when in heaven the stars about the moon
Look beautiful.
— Tennyson.

Julian, about 350 A.D., says Sappho applied the epithet silver to the moon; wherefore Blomfield suggested its position here.

Ἀμφὶ δὲ ψῦχρον κελάδει δι’ ὔσδων
μαλίνων, αἰθυσσομένων δὲ φύλλων
κῶμα καταρρεῖ

Through orchard-plots with fragrance crowned
The clear cold fountain murmuring flows;
And forest leaves with rustling sound
Invite to soft repose.
— J. H. Merivale.

All around through branches of apple-orchards
Cool streams call, while down from the leaves a-tremble
Slumber distilleth.
— J. A. Symonds, 1883.

Professor F. T. Palgrave says:—

‘We have three lines on a garden scene full of the heat and sleep of the fortunate South:—

‘”Round about the cool water thrills through the apple-branches, and sleep flows down upon us in the rustling leaves.”

‘If there were any authority,’ he adds in a note, ‘I should like to translate “through the troughs of apple-wood.” That Eastern mode of garden irrigation gives a much more defined, and hence a more Sappho-like, image than “through the boughs.”’

From the sound of cool waters heard through the green boughs
Of the fruit-bearing trees,
And the rustling breeze,
Deep sleep, as a trance, down over me flows.
— Frederick Tennyson, 1890.

Cited by Hermogenes, about 170 A.D., as an example of simple style, and to show the pleasure given by description. The fragment describes the gardens of the nymphs, which Demetrius, about 150 A.D., says were sung by Sappho. Cf. Theocritus, Idyl vii. 135: ‘High above our heads waved many a poplar, many an elm-tree, while close at hand the sacred water from the Nymph’s own cave welled forth with murmurs musical’ (A. Lang). And Ovid, Heroïd., xv. 157—

A spring there is whose silver waters show, etc.—

(cf. Pope’s translation, infra, p. 194) probably refers to it.

–⏑–⏑–⏑⏑ Ἔλθε Κύπρι
χρυσίαισιν ἐν κυλίκεσσιν ἄβρως
συμμεμιγμένον θαλίαισι νέκταρ
οἰνοχοεῦσα.

Come, Venus, come
Hither with thy golden cup,
Where nectar-floated flowerets swim.
Fill, fill the goblet up;
These laughing lips shall kiss the brim,—
Come, Venus, come!
— Anon. (Edin. Rev., 1832).

Kupris, hither
Come, and pour from goblets of gold the nectar
Mixed for love’s and pleasure’s delight with dainty
Joys of the banquet.
— J. A. Symonds, 1883.

Athenaeus, a native of Naucratis, who flourished about 230 A.D., quotes these verses as an example of the poets’ custom of invoking Aphrodite in their pledges. Applying them to himself and his fellow-guests, he adds the words τούτοισι τοῖς ἑταίροις ἐμοῖς γε καὶ σοῖς. Some scholars believe that Sappho actually wrote—

ταῖσδε ταῖς ἔμαις ἐτάραισι καὶ σαῖς,

For these my companions and thine.

Aphrodite was called Cypris, ‘the Cyprian,’ because it was mythologically believed that when she rose from the sea she was first received as a goddess on the shore of Cyprus (Homeric Hymns, vi.). Sappho seems to be here figuratively referring to the nectar of love.

Ἤ σε Κύπρος καὶ Πάφος ἤ Πάνορμος.

If thee Cyprus, or Paphos, or Panormos.
— J. A. Symonds, 1883.

From Strabo, about 19 A.D. Panormus (Palermo) in Sicily was not founded till after Sappho’s time, but it was a common name, and all seaports were under the special protection of Aphrodite.

Σοὶ δ’ ἔγω λεύκας ἐπὶ βῶμον αἶγος
–⏑–⏑–⏑⏑–⏑–⏑
κἀπιλείψω τοι ⏑⏑–⏑–⏑·

Adduced by Apollonius of Alexandria, about 140 A.D., to illustrate similarities in dialects. The fragment is probably part of an ode describing a sacrifice offered to Aphrodite.

Αἴθ’ ἔγω, χρυσοστέφαν’ Ἀφρόδιτα,
τόνδε τὸν πάλον λαχόην.

From Apollonius, to show how adverbs give an idea of prayer.

Αἴ με τιμίαν ἐπόησαν ἔργα
τὰ σφὰ δοῖσαι.

From Apollonius, to illustrate the Aeolic dialect. Bergk thinks this fragment had some connection with fr. 68, and perhaps with fr. 32. It seems to refer to the Muses.

–⏑–⏑– Τάδε νῦν ἐταίραις
ταῖς ἔμαισι τέρπνα κάλως ἀείσω.

Quoted by Athenaeus to prove that freeborn women and maidens often called their girl associates and friends ἑταῖραι (Hetaerae), without any idea of reproach.

–⏑–⏑–⏑⏑ Ὄττινας γὰρ
εὖ θέω, κῆνοί με μάλιστα σίννον-
ται. ⏑⏑–⏑·

From the Etymologicum Magnum, a dictionary which was compiled about the tenth century A.D.

–⏑–⏑–⏑ Ἔγω δὲ κήν’ ὄτ-
τω τις ἔραται.

From Apollonius, to illustrate the use of the verb ἐράω. Bergk now reads ἔραται instead of ἐρᾶται as formerly, on the analogy of διάκηται and δύνᾱμαι in the Fayum fragments.

Ταῖς κάλαις υμμιν [τὸ] νόημα τὦμον
οἰ διάμειπτον.

From Apollonius, to show the Aeolic use of ὔμμιν for ὑμῖν, ‘to you.’

–⏑–⏑–⏑ Ἔγων δ’ ἰμαύτᾳ
τοῦτο σύνοιδα.

From Apollonius, to show Aeolic accentuation.

Ταῖσι [δὲ] ψῦχρος μὲν ἔγεντο θῦμος,
παρ δ’ ἴεισι τὰ πτέρα. –⏑–⏑

In Pindar, Pyth. i. 10, the eagle of Zeus, delighted by music, drops his wings, and the Scholiast quotes this fragment to show that Sappho says the same of doves.

–⏑–⏑–⏑ κατ’ ἔμον στάλαγμον·
Τὸν δ’ ἐπιπλάζοντες ἄμοι φέροιεν
καὶ μελεδώναις.

Him the wanderer o’er the world
Far away the winds will bear,
And restless care.
— Frederick Tennyson.

From the Etymologicum Magnum, to show that the Aeolians used ζ in the place of σσ. Ἄμοι is a guess of Bergk’s for ἄνεμοι, ‘winds.’

Ἀρτίως μ’ ἀ χρυσοπέδιλλος Αὔως.

Me but now Aurora the golden-sandalled.
— J. A. Symonds, 1883.

Quoted by Ammonius of Alexandria, at the close of the fourth century A.D., to show Sappho’s use of ἀρτίως.

–⏑–⏑–⏑⏑ Πόδας δέ
ποίκιλος μάσλης ἐκάλυπτε, Λύδι-
ον κάλον ἔργον.

Quoted by the Scholiast on Aristophanes’ Peace, 1174; and also by Pollux, about 180 A.D. Blass thinks the lines may have referred to an apparition of Aphrodite.

–⏑–⏑ Παντοδάπαις μεμιγμέ-
να χροΐαισιν.

Quoted by the Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes, i. 727, in speaking of Jason’s double-folded mantle having been reddish instead of flame-coloured. Some think, however, that Sappho here refers to Iris, i.e. the rainbow.

... Ἔμεθεν δ’ ἔχεισθα λάθαν

From Apollonius, as is also the following, to show the Aeolic use of ἔμεθεν for ἐμοῦ, ‘of me.’

–⏑–⏑–⏑⏑ Ἤ τιν’ ἄλλον
[μᾶλλον] ἀνθρώπων ἔμεθεν φίλησθα.

Οὔ τι μοι ὔμμες.

Quoted by Apollonius, as is also the following fragment, to show that ὑμεῖς was in Aeolic ὔμμες ‘you.’

Ας θέλετ’ ὔμμες.

Καὶ ποθήω καὶ μάομαι ⏑–⏑

From the Etymologicum Magnum, to show that the Aeolians used ποθήω for ποθέω, ‘I yearn.’

Κεῖνον, ὦ χρυσόθρονε Μοῦσ’, ἔνισπες
ὕμνον, ἐκ τᾶς καλλιγύναικος ἐσθλᾶς
Τήιος χώρας ὃν ἄειδε τερπνῶς
πρέσβυς ἀγαυός.

O Muse, who sitt’st on golden throne,
Full many a hymn of dulcet tone
The Teian sage is taught by thee;
But, goddess, from thy throne of gold,
The sweetest hymn thou’st ever told
He lately learned and sang for me.
— T. Moore.

Athenaeus says ‘Hermesianax was mistaken when he represented Sappho and Anacreon as contemporaries, for Anacreon lived in the time of Cyrus and Polycrates [probably 563-478 B.C.], but Sappho lived in the reign of Alyattes the father of Croesus. But Chamaeleon, in his treatise on Sappho, asserts that according to some these verses were made upon her by Anacreon:—

“Spirit of Love, whose tresses shine
Along the breeze in golden twine,
Come, within a fragrant cloud
Blushing with light, thy votary shroud,
And on those wings that sparkling play
Waft, oh waft me hence away!
Love, my soul is full of thee,
Alive to all thy luxury.
But she, the nymph for whom I glow,
The pretty Lesbian, mocks my woe,
Smiles at the hoar and silvery hues
Which Time upon my forehead strews.
Alas, I fear she keeps her charms
In store for younger, happier arms.”’
— T. Moore.

Then follows Sappho’s reply, the present fragment. ‘I myself think,’ Athenaeus goes on to say, ‘that Hermesianax is joking concerning the love of Anacreon and Sappho, for Diphilus the comic poet, in his play called Sappho, has represented Archilochus and Hipponax as the lovers of Sappho.’

Probably the whole is spurious, for certainly Sappho never saw Anacreon: she must have died before he was born. Even Athenaeus says that it is clear to every one that the verses are not Sappho’s.

II

Σκιδναμένας ἐν στήθεσιν ὄργας
μαψυλάκαν γλῶσσαν πεφύλαχθαι.

When through thy breast wild wrath doth spread
And work thy inmost being harm,
Leave thou the fiery word unsaid,
Guard thee; be calm.
— Michael Field, 1889.

Quoted by Plutarch, in his treatise On restraining anger, to show that in wrath nothing is more noble than quietness. Blass thinks that Bergk is wrong in his restoration of the verses; he considers their metre choriambic (like fr. 64, ff.), and reads them thus:

⏓⏓ σκιδναμένας στήθεσιν ὄργας πεφυλαγμένα (?)
γλῶσσαν μαψυλάκαν –⏑⏑––⏑⏑–⏑–

He compares fr. 72 with them.

III

Αἰ δ’ ἦχες ἔσλων ἴμερον η κάλων,
καὶ μή τι ϝείπην γλῶσσ’ ἐκύκα κάκον,
αἴδως κέ σ’ οὐ κίχανεν ὄππατ’,
ἀλλ’ ἔλεγες περὶ τῶ δικαίως.

The Loves of Sappho and Alcaeus.

Alcaeus.—I fain would speak, I fain would tell,
But shame and fear my utterance quell.
Sappho.—If aught of good, if aught of fair
Thy tongue were labouring to declare,
Nor shame should dash thy glance, nor fear
Forbid thy suit to reach my ear.
— Anon. (Edin. Rev., 1832, p. 190).

Aristotle, in his Rhetoric, i. 9, about 330 B.C., says ‘base things dishonour those who do or wish them, as Sappho showed when Alcaeus said—

ἰόπλοκ’ ἄγνα μελλιχόμειδε Σάπφοι,
θέλω τι ϝείπην, ἀλλά με κωλύει αἴδως.

“Violet-weaving, pure, softly-smiling Sappho, I would say something, but shame restrains me”’ (cf. supra, p. 8), and she answered him in the words of the present fragment.

Blass (Rhein. Mus. 1879, xxix. p. 150) believes that these verses also are Sappho’s, not Alcaeus’. Certainly they were quoted as Sappho’s by Anna Comnena, about 1110 A.D., as well as by another writer whom Blass refers to. Blass would read the last line περὶ ὦ δικαίως (‘δικαίως) = περὶ οὗ ἐδικαίους, about that which thou didst pretend.

IV

Στᾶθι κἄντα φίλος ...
καὶ τὰν ἐπ’ ὄσσοις ἀμπέτασον χάριν.

Athenaeus, speaking of the charm of lovers’ eyes, says Sappho addressed this to a man who was admired above all others for his beauty. Bergk thinks it may have formed part of an ode to Phaon (cf. fr. 140), or of a bridal song; and A. Schoene suspects that it was possibly addressed to Sappho’s brother. The metre is quite uncertain.

V

Χρύσεοι δ’ ἐρέβινθοι ἐπ’ ἀϊόνων ἐφύοντο.

Quoted by Athenaeus, when he is speaking of vetches.

Λάτω καὶ Νιόβα μάλα μὲν φίλαι ἦσαν ἔταιραι.

Quoted by Athenaeus for the same reason as fr. 11. Compare also fr. 143.

Μνάσεσθαί τινά φαμι καὶ ὔστερον ἄμμεων.

Compare Swinburne’s—

Thou art more than I,
Though my voice die not till the whole world die.

and—

Memories shall mix and metaphors of me.

and—

I Sappho shall be one with all these things,
With all high things for ever.
Anactoria.

Dio Chrysostom, the celebrated Greek rhetorician, writing about 100 A.D., observes that Sappho says this ‘with perfect beauty.’

To illustrate this use of φαμι, Bergk quotes a fragment preserved by Plutarch, which may have been written by Sappho:

.    .    .    .    .    ἔγω φᾶμι ἰοπλόκων
Μοισᾶν εὖ λάχεμεν.

I think I have a goodly portion in the violet weaving Muses.

Ηράμαν μὲν εγω σέθεν, Ἄτθι, πάλαι πότα.

I loved thee,—hark, one tenderer note than all—
Atthis, of old time, once—one low long fall,
Sighing—one long low lovely loveless call,
Dying—one pause in song so flamelike fast—
Atthis, long since in old time overpast—
One soft first pause and last.
One,—then the old rage of rapture’s fieriest rain
Storms all the music-maddened night again.
— Swinburne, Songs of the Springtides, p. 57.

Quoted by Hephaestion, about 150 A.D., as an example of metre. The verse stood at the beginning of the first ode of the second book of Sappho’s poems, which Hephaestion says was composed entirely of odes in this metre: thus,

⏓⏓–⏑⏑–⏑⏑–⏑⏑–⏑⏒·

Σμίκρα μοι πάϊς ἔμμεν ἐφαίνεο κἄχαρις.

Quoted by Plutarch; and by others also.

Bergk thinks it is certain that this fragment belongs to the same poem as does the preceding, judging from references to it by Terentianus Mauris, about 100 A.D., and by Marius Victorinus, about 350 A.D.

Αλλα, μη μεγαλύνεο δακτυλίω πέρι.

Preserved by Herodian the grammarian, who lived about 160 A.D.

Οὐκ οἶδ’ οττι θέω· δύο μοι τα νοήματα.

Quoted by the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus, about 220 B.C.

Ψαύην δ’ οὐ δοκίμοιμ’ ὀράνω δύσι πάχεσιν.

Quoted by Herodian. Cf. Horace, Carm. I. i. 36, Sublimi feriam sidera vertice,—

My head, exalted so, will touch the stars,

which some think a direct translation of this line of Sappho’s.

Old Horace? ‘I will strike,’ said he,
‘The stars with head sublime.’
— Tennyson, Tiresias, 1885.

Ὠς δὲ παῖς πεδα μάτερα πεπτερύγωμαι.

Like a child whose mother’s lost,
I am fluttering, terror-tost.
— M. J. Walhouse.

After my mother I flew like a bird.
— Frederick Tennyson.

Quoted in the Etymologicum Magnum as an example of Aeolic. It may have related to a sparrow, and been imitated by Catullus, 3, 6 ff.:

Sweet, all honey: a bird that ever hailed her
Lady mistress, as hails the maid a mother.
Nor would move from her arms away: but only
Hopping round her, about her, hence or hither
Piped his colloquy, piped to none beside her.
— Robinson Ellis.

Ἦρος ἄγγελος ἰμερόφωνος ἀήδων.

The dear good angel of the spring,
The nightingale.
— Ben Jonson, The Sad Shepherd, Act ii.

The tawny sweetwinged thing
Whose cry was but of Spring.
— Swinburne, Songs of the Springtides, p. 52.

Quoted by the Scholiast on Sophocles, Electra, 149, ‘the nightingale is the messenger of Zeus, because it is the sign of Spring.’

Ἔρος δαὖτέ μ’ ὀ λυσιμελης δόνει,
γλυκύπικρον ἀμάχανον ὄρπετον.

Lo, Love once more, the limb-dissolving King,
The bitter-sweet impracticable thing,
Wild-beast-like rends me with fierce quivering.
— J. Addington Symonds, 1883.

Compare—

O Love, Love, Love! O withering might!
— Tennyson, Fatima.

O bitterness of things too sweet!
— Swinburne, Fragoletta.

Sweet Love, that art so bitter.
— Swinburne, Tristram of Lyonesse.

and the song in Bothwel, act i. sc. 1:—

Surely most bitter of all sweet things thou art,
And sweetest thou of all things bitter, love.

Quoted by Hephaestion. Cf. fr. 125.

Ἄτθι, σοὶ δ’ ἔμεθεν μεν ἀπήχθετο
φροντίσδην, ἐπὶ δ’ Ἀνδρομέδαν πότῃ.

Quoted by Hephaestion together with fr. 40, but it seems to be the beginning of a different ode.

Ἔρος δαὖτ’ ἐτίναξεν ἔμοι φρένας,
ἄνεμος κατ’ ὄρος δρύσιν ἐμπέσων.

Love shook me like the mountain breeze
Rushing down on the forest trees.
— Frederick Tennyson.

Lo, Love once more my soul within me rends,
Like wind that on the mountain oak descends.
— J. A. Symonds, 1883.

Quoted by Maximus Tyrius, about 150 B.C., in speaking of Socrates exciting Phaedrus to Bacchic frenzy when he talked of love.

Ὄτα πάννυχος ἄσφι κατάγρει.

Quoted by Apollonius to show the Aeolic form of σφί. Bergk thinks that Sappho may have written—

ὄππατ’ [ἄωρος],
ὄτα πάννυχος ἄσφι κατάγρει,

therefore I translate it so.

Χειρόμακτρα δε καγγόνων
πορφυρᾶ ...
καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ἀτιμάσεις,
επεμψ’ ἀπὺ Φωκάας
δῶρα τίμια καγγόνων.

Quoted by Athenaeus out of the fifth book of Sappho’s Songs to Aphrodite, to show that χειρόμακτρα were cloths, handkerchiefs, for covering the head. But the whole passage is hopelessly corrupt.

Ἄγε δὴ χέλυ δῖά μοι
φωνάεσσα γένοιο.

Quoted by Hermogenes and Eustathius, of Sappho apostrophising her lyre.

Κἀπάλαις ὑποθύμιδας
πλέκταις ἀμπ’ ἀπάλᾳ δέρα.

From Athenaeus.

Γέλλως παιδοφιλωτέρα.

Quoted as a proverb by Zenobius, about 130 A.D.; said of those who die an untimely death, or of those whose indulgence brings ruin on their children. Gello was a maiden who died in youth, whose ghost, the Lesbians said, pursued children and carried them off.

Μάλα δὴ κεκορημένας
Γόργως.

I am weary of all thy words and soft strange ways.
— Swinburne, Anactoria.

Quoted by Choeroboscus, about the end of the sixth century A.D., to show that the Aeolic genitive ended in -ως. Maximus Tyrius mentions this girl Gorgo along with Andromeda (cf. fr. 41) as beloved by Sappho.

Βρενθείω βασιληΐω.

Athenaeus says Sappho here mentions the ‘royal’ and the ‘brentheian’ unguent together, as if they were one and the same thing; but the reading is very uncertain.

Ἔγω δ’ ἐπὶ μαλθάκαν
τύλαν σπολέω μέλεα.

From Herodian.

Κῆ δ’ ἀμβροσίας μὲν κράτηρ ἐκέκρατο,
Ἐρμᾶς δ’ ἔλεν ὄλπιν θέοις οἰνοχόησαι.
κῆνοι δ’ ἄρα παντες καρχησιά τ’ ἦχον
κἄλειβον, ἀράσαντο δὲ πάμπαν ἔσλα
τῷ γάμβρῳ.

The first two lines are quoted by Athenaeus to show that in Sappho Hermes was cupbearer to the gods; and in another place he quotes the rest to illustrate her mention of carchēsia, cups narrow in the middle, with handles reaching from the top to the bottom. Lachmann first joined the two fragments. The verses appear to belong to the Epithalamia.

Δέδυκε μὲν ἀ σελάννα
καὶ Πληΐαδες, μέσαι δέ
νύκτες, πάρα δ’ ἔρχετ’ ὤρα,
ἔγω δὲ μόνα κατεύδω.

The silver moon is set;
The Pleiades are gone;
Half the long night is spent, and yet
I lie alone.
— J. H. Merivale.

The moon hath left the sky;
Lost is the Pleiads’ light;
It is midnight
And time slips by;
But on my couch alone I lie.
— J. A. Symonds, 1883.

Quoted by Hephaestion as an example of metre.

Πλήρης μὲν ἐφαίνετ’ ἀ σελάννα,
αἰ δ’ ὡς περὶ βῶμον ἐστάθησαν.

Quoted by Hephaestion as an example of Praxilleian verses, i.e. such as the Sicyonian poetess Praxilla (about B.C. 450) wrote in the metre known as the Ionic a majore trimeter brachycatalectic. Blass thinks that the lines are part of the same poem as that to which the succeeding fragment belongs.

Κρῆσσαί νύ ποτ’ ὦδ’ ἐμμελέως πόδεσσιν
ὠρχεῦντ’ ἀπάλοις ἀμφ’ ἐρόεντα βῶμον
πόας τέρεν ἄνθος μάλακον μάτεισαι.

Mr. Moreton J. Walhouse thus combines the previous fragment with this:—

Then, as the broad moon rose on high,
The maidens stood the altar nigh;
And some in graceful measure
The well-loved spot danced round,
With lightsome footsteps treading
The soft and grassy ground.

Quoted by Hephaestion as an example of metre, vv. 1 and 2 in one place and v. 3 in another; Bergk says Santen first joined them.

Ἄβρα δηὖτε παχήᾳ σπόλᾳ ἀλλόμαν.

From Herodian, as an illustration of the Aeolic dialect. Bergk attributes this to Sappho, but Cramer and others think that Alcaeus wrote the line.

Φαῖσι δή ποτα Λήδαν ὐακινθίνων
[ὐπ’ ἀνθέων] πεπυκαδμένον
εὔρην ὤϊον.

From the Etymologicum Magnum, Athenaeus, and others. Bergk thinks fr. 112 may be continuous with this, thus—

εὔρην ὤϊον ὠΐω
πόλυ λευκότερον –⏑⏑–⏑–

since Athenaeus quotes fr. 112 after fr. 56. It is uncertain what flower the Greeks meant by ‘hyacinth’; it probably had nothing in common with our hyacinth, and it seems to have comprised several flowers, especially the iris, gladiolus, and larkspur.

Ὀφθάλμοις δὲ μέλαις νύκτος ἄωρος.

From the Etymologicum Magnum, to show that the first letter of ἄωρος = ὦρος, ‘sleep,’ was redundant.

Χρυσοφάη θεράπαιναν Ἀφροδίτας.

Philodemus, about 60 B.C., in a MS. discovered at Herculaneum, says that Sappho thus addresses Πειθώ, Persuasion. The MS. is, however, defective, and Gomperz, the editor, thinks from the context that Hecate is here referred to. Cf. frr. 132, 125. (Bergk formerly numbered this fr. 141.)

Ἔχει μὲν Ἀνδρομέδα κάλαν ἀμοίβαν.

Quoted by Hephaestion together with the following, although the lines are obviously out of different odes. Probably each fragment is the first line of separate poems.

Ψάπφοι, τί τὰν πολύολβον Ἀφρόδιταν;

Δεῦτέ νυν, ἄβραι Χάριτες, καλλίκομοί τε Μοῖσαι.

Come hither, fair-haired Muses, tender Graces,
Come hither to our home.
— Frederick Tennyson.

Quoted by Hephaestion, Attilius Fortunatianus (about the fifth century A.D.), and Servius, as an example of Sappho’s choriambic tetrameters.

Πάρθενον ἀδύφωνον.

From Attilius Fortunatianus.

Κατθνάσκει, Κυθέρη’, ἄβρος Ἄδωνις, τί κε θεῖμεν·
Καττύπτεσθε κόραι καὶ κατερείκεσθε χίτωνας.

Quoted by Hephaestion, and presumed to be Sappho’s from a passage in Pausanias, where he says she learnt the name of the mythological personage Oetolĭnus (as if οἶτος Λίνου, ‘the death of Linus’), from the poems of Pamphōs, a mythical poet of Attica earlier than Homer, and so to her Adonis was just like Oetolinus. The Linus-song was a very ancient dirge or lamentation, of which a version (or rather a late rendering, apparently Alexandrian) has been preserved by a Scholiast on Homer (Iliad, xviii. 569), running thus: ‘O Linus, honoured by all the gods, for to thee first they gave to sing a song to men in clear sweet sounds; Phoebus in envy slew thee, but the Muses lament thee.’ A charming example of what the Linus-song was in the third century B.C., remains for us in Bion’s Lament for Adonis.

The dirge was chiefly sung by the Greek peasants at vintage-time, and so may have arisen from a mythical personification of Apollo, as the burning sun of summer suddenly slaying the life and bloom of nature. It is said to have been of Phoenician origin, and to have derived its name from the words ai le nu, ‘woe is us,’ which may have been the burden of the song. The word αἴλινος, so frequent a refrain in the mournful choral odes of the Greek tragic poets, seems to indicate that the personality of Linus was the invention of a time when the meaning of the burden had been forgotten.

Ὦ τὸν Ἄδωνιν.

From Marius Plotius, about 600 A.D. It seems to be the refrain of the ode to Adonis. Cf. fr. 108.

Ah for Adonis! So
The virgins cry in woe:
Ah, for the spring, the spring,
And all fleet blossoming.
— Michael Field, 1889.

Ἔλθοντ’ ἐξ ὀράνω πορφυρίαν [ἔχοντα] περθέμενον
χλάμυν.

From heaven he came,
And round him the red chlamys burned like flame.
— J. A. Symonds.

He came from heaven in purple mantle clad.
— Frederick Tennyson.

Quoted by Pollux, about 180 A.D., who says that Sappho, in her ode to Eros, out of which this verse probably came, was the first to use the word χλαμύς, a short mantle fastened by a brooch on the right shoulder, so as to hang in a curve across the body.

Βροδοπάχεες ἄγναι Χάριτες, δεῦτε Δίος κόραι.

Theocritus’ Idyl 28, On a Distaff, according to the argument prefixed to it, was written in the dialect and metre of this fragment. And Philostrătus, about 220 A.D., says ‘Sappho loves the rose, and always crowns it with some praise, likening to it the beauty of her maidens; she likens it also to the arms of the Graces, when she describes their elbows bare.’ Cf. fr. 146.

–⏑– Ὀ δ’ Ἄρευς φαῖσί κεν Ἄφαιστον ἄγην βίᾳ.

From Priscian, late in the fifth century A.D.

–⏑–⏑⏑––⏑⏑– Πόλλα δ’ ἀνάριθμα
ποτήρια καλαίφις.

Quoted by Athenaeus when descanting on drinking-cups.

Κατθάνοισα δὲ κείσεαι πότα, κωὐ μναμοσύνα σέθεν
ἔσσετ’ οὔτε τότ’ οὔτ’ ὔστερον· οὐ γὰρ πεδέχεις βρόδων
τών ἐκ Πιερίας, ἀλλ’ ἀφάνης κἠν Ἀΐδα δόμοις
φοιτάσεις πεδ’ ἀμαύρων νεκύων ἐκπεποταμένα.

In the cold grave where thou shalt lie
All memory too of thee shall die,
Who in this life’s auspicious hours
Disdained Pieria’s genial flowers;
And in the mansions of the dead,
With the vile crowd of ghosts, thy shade,
While nobler spirits point with scorn,
Shall flit neglected and forlorn.
— ? Felton.

Unknown, unheeded, shalt thou die,
And no memorial shall proclaim
That once beneath the upper sky
Thou hadst a being and a name.
For never to the Muses’ bowers
Didst thou with glowing heart repair,
Nor ever intertwine the flowers
That fancy strews unnumbered there.
Doom’d o’er that dreary realm, alone,
Shunn’d by the gentler shades, to go,
Nor friend shall soothe, nor parent own
The child of sloth, the Muses’ foe.
— Rev. R. Bland, 1813.

Thee too the years shall cover; thou shalt be
As the rose born of one same blood with thee,
As a song sung, as a word said, and fall
Flower-wise, and be not any more at all,
Nor any memory of thee anywhere;
For never Muse has bound above thine hair
The high Pierian flowers whose graft outgrows
All Summer kinship of the mortal rose
And colour of deciduous days, nor shed
Reflex and flush of heaven about thine head, etc.
— Swinburne, Anactoria.

Woman dead, lie there;
No record of thee
Shall there ever be,
Since thou dost not share
Roses in Pieria grown.
In the deathful cave,
With the feeble troop
Of the folk that droop,
Lurk and flit and crave,
Woman severed and far-flown.
— William Cory, 1858.

Thou liest dead, and there will be no memory left behind
Of thee or thine in all the earth, for never didst thou bind
The roses of Pierian streams upon thy brow; thy doom
Is writ to flit with unknown ghosts in cold and nameless gloom.
— Edwin Arnold, 1869.

Yea, thou shalt die,
And lie
Dumb in the silent tomb;
Nor of thy name
Shall there be any fame
In ages yet to be or years to come:
For of the flowering Rose,
Which on Pieria blows,
Thou hast no share:
But in sad Hades’ house,
Unknown, inglorious,
‘Mid the dim shades that wander there
Shalt thou flit forth and haunt the filmy air.
— J. A. Symonds, 1883.

When thou fallest in death, dead shalt thou lie, nor shall thy memory
Henceforth ever again be heard then or in days to be,
Since no flowers upon earth ever were thine, plucked from Pieria’s spring,
Unknown also ‘mid hell’s shadowy throng thou shalt go wandering.
— Anon., Love in Idleness, 1883.

From Stobaeus, about 500 A.D., as addressed to an uneducated woman. Plutarch quotes the fragment as written to a certain rich lady; but in another work he says the crown of roses was assigned to the Muses, for he remembered Sappho’s having said to some unpolished and uneducated woman these same words. Aristīdes, about 150 A.D., speaks of Sappho’s boastfully saying to some well-to-do woman, ‘that the Muses made her blest and worthy of honour, and that she should not die and be forgotten;’ though this may refer to fr. 10.

Οὐδ’ ἴαν δοκίμοιμι προσίδοισαν φάος ἀλίω
ἔσσεσθαι σοφίαν πάρθενον εἰς οὐδένα πω χρόνον
τοιαύταν.

Methinks no maiden ever
Will live beneath the sun
Who is as wise as thou art,—
Not e’en till Time is done.

Quoted by Chrysippus. It is probably out of the same ode as the preceding.

Τίς δ’ ἀγροιῶτίς τοι θέλγει νόον,
οὐκ ἐπισταμένα τὰ βράκε’ ἔλκην ἐπὶ τῶν σφύρων;

What country maiden charms thee,
However fair her face,
Who knows not how to gather
Her dress with artless grace?

Athenaeus, speaking of the care which the ancients bestowed upon dress, says Sappho thus jests upon Andromeda. Three other authors quote the same lines.

Ἤρων ἐξεδίδαξ’ εκ Γυάρων τὰν τανυσίδρομον.

Quoted by Choeroboscus, to show the Aeolic accusative.

–⏑ Ἀλλά τις οὐκ ἔμμι παλιγκότων
οργαν, ἀλλ’ ἀβάκην τὰν φρέν’ ἔχω ⏑–

Quoted in the Etymologicum Magnum to show the meaning of ἀβάκης, ‘childlike, innocent.’

–⏑ Αὐτὰρ ὀραῖαι στεφανηπλόκευν.

Quoted by the Scholiast on Aristophanes Thesmophoriazusae 401, to show that plaiting wreaths was a sign of being in love.

–⏑– Σύ τε κἄμος θεράπων Ἔρος.

Quoted by Maximus Tyrius to show that Sappho agreed with Diotima when the latter said to Socrates (Plato, Sympos., p. 328) that Love is not the son, but the attendant and servant, of Aphrodite. Cf. fr. 132.

Ἀλλ’ ἔων φίλος ἄμμιν [ἄλλο]
λέχος ἄρνυσο νεώτερον·
οὐ γὰρ τλάσομ’ ἔγω ξυνοίκην
νέῳ γ’ ἔσσα γεραιτέρα.

From Stobaeus’ Anthology, and Apostolius.

Εὐμορφοτέρα Μνασιδίκα τᾶς ἀπάλας Γυρίννως.

Quoted by Hephaestion as an example of metre (cf. p. 24).

Ἀσαροτέρας οὔδαμ’ ἐπ’, ὦ ῎ραννα, σέθεν τύχοισα.

Quoted by Hephaestion with the foregoing. The MSS. do not agree; perhaps ὦ ῎ραννα is an adjective, for ὦ ἐρατεινή, O lovely—.

Σὺ δὲ στεφάνοις, ὦ Δίκα, περθέσθ’ ἐράταις φόβαισιν,
ὄρπακας ἀνήτοιο συνέρραισ’ ἀπαλάισι χέρσιν·
εὐάνθεσιν ἔκ γὰρ πέλεται καὶ χάριτος μακαιρᾶν
μᾶλλον προτέρην· ἀστεφανώτοισι δ’ ἀπυστρέφονται.

Here, fairest Rhodope, recline,
And ‘mid thy bright locks intertwine,
With fingers soft as softest down,
The ever verdant parsley crown.
The Gods are pleased with flowers that bloom
And leaves that shed divine perfume,
But, if ungarlanded, despise
The richest offered sacrifice.
— J. H. Merivale.

But place those garlands on thy lovely hair,
Twining the tender sprouts of anise green
With skilful hand; for offerings and flowers
Are pleasing to the Gods, who hate all those
Who come before them with uncrowned heads.
— C. D. Yonge.

Of foliage and flowers love-laden
Twine wreaths for thy flowing hair,
With thine own soft fingers, maiden.
Weave garlands of parsley fair;
For flowers are sweet, and the Graces
On suppliants wreathed with may
Look down from their heavenly places,
But turn from the crownless away.
— J. A. Symonds, 1883.

Mr. J. A. Symonds has also thus expanded the lines into a sonnet (1883):—

Bring summer flowers, bring pansy, violet,
Moss-rose and sweet-briar and blue columbine;
Bring loveliest leaves, rathe privet, eglantine,
Brown myrtles with the dews of morning wet:
Twine thou a wreath upon thy brows to set;
With thy soft hands the wayward tendrils twine;
Then place them, maiden, on those curls of thine,
Those curls too fair for gems or coronet.
Sweet is the breath of blossoms, and the Graces,
When suppliants through Love’s temple wend their way,
Look down with smiles from their celestial places
On maidens wreathed with chaplets of the may;
But from the crownless choir they hide their faces,
Nor heed them when they sing nor when they pray.

Athenaeus, quoting this fragment, says:—‘Sappho gives a more simple reason for our wearing garlands, speaking as follows ... in which lines she enjoins all who offer sacrifice to wear garlands on their heads, as they are beautiful things and acceptable to the Gods.’

Ἐγὼ δὲ φίλημ’ ἀβροσύναν, καὶ μοι τὸ λάμπρον
ἔρος ⏑ ἀελίω καὶ τὸ κάλον λέλογχεν.

In speaking of perfumes, Athenaeus, quoting Clearchus, says:—‘Sappho, being a thorough woman and a poetess besides, was ashamed to separate honour from elegance, and speaks thus ... making it evident to everybody that the desire of life that she confessed had brilliancy and honour in it; and these things especially belong to virtue.’

Κὰμ μέν τε τύλαν κασπολέω.

Quoted by Herodian, along with fr. 50.

Ὀ πλοῦτος ἄνευ σεῦ γ’ ἀρέτα ‘στ’ οὐκ ἄσινης πάροικος
[ἠ δ’ ἐξ ἀμφοτέρων κρᾶσις εὐδαιμονίας ἔχει τὸ ἄκρον].

Wealth without virtue is a dangerous guest;
Who holds them mingled is supremely blest.
— J. H. Merivale.

From the Scholiast on Pindar. The second line appears to be the gloss of the commentator, though Blass believes it is Sappho’s.

VI

Αὔτα δὲ σὺ Καλλιόπα.

Quoted by Hephaestion when he is analysing a metre invented by Archilochus.

Δαύοις ἀπάλας ἐτάρας
ἐν στήθεσιν –⏑⏑–.

From the Etymologicum Magnum. Blass thinks that the proper place for this fragment is among the Epithalamia.

Δεῦρο δηὖτε Μοῖσαι, χρύσιον λίποισαι.

Quoted by Hephaestion as an example of a verse made of two Ithyphallics.

Ἔστι μοι κάλα πάϊς, χρυσίοισιν ἀνθέμοισιν
ἐμφέρην ἔχοισα μόρφαν, Κλῆϊς’ ἀγαπάτα,
ἀντί τᾶς ἔγω οὐδὲ Λυδίαν παῖσαν οὐδ’ ἔρανναν.

I have a child, a lovely one,
In beauty like the golden sun,
Or like sweet flowers of earliest bloom;
And Claïs is her name, for whom
I Lydia’s treasures, were they mine,
Would glad resign.
— J. H. Merivale.

A lovely little girl is ours,
Kleïs the beloved,
Kleïs is her name,
Whose beauty is as the golden flowers.
— Frederick Tennyson.

Quoted and elaborately scanned by Hephaestion, although Bergk regards the lines as merely trochaic.

Πόλλα μοι τὰν
Πωλυανάκτιδα παῖδα χαῖρην.

From Maximus Tyrius. It seems to be addressed to either Gorgo or Andromeda.

VII

Ζὰ δ’ ἐλεξάμαν ὄναρ Κυπρογενήᾳ.

I.e. Aphrodite. From Hephaestion.

Τί με Πανδίονις ὦ ῎ραννα χελίδων;

From Hephaestion, who says Sappho wrote whole songs in this metre. Ὦ ῎ραννα is Is. Vossius’ emendation; ὠράνα is the ordinary reading, which Hesychius explains as perhaps an epithet of the swallow ‘dwelling under the roof.’

Ah, Procne, wherefore dost thou weary me?
Thus flitting out and flitting in ...
Tease not the air with this tumultuous wing.
— Michael Field, 1889.

... Ἀμφὶ δ’ ἄβροις λασίοις εὖ ϝε πύκασσεν.

From Pollux, who says the line refers to fine closely-woven linen.

Γλύκεια μᾶτερ, οὔτοι δύναμαι κρέκην τὸν ἴστον,
πόθῳ δάμεισα παῖδος βραδίναν δι’ Ἀφρόδιταν.

[As o’er her loom the Lesbian maid
In love-sick languor hung her head,
Unknowing where her fingers strayed
She weeping turned away and said—]
‘Oh, my sweet mother, ’tis in vain,
I cannot weave as once I wove,
So wildered is my heart and brain
With thinking of that youth I love.’
T. Moore, Evenings in
Greece, p. 18.

Mother, I cannot mind my wheel;
My fingers ache, my lips are dry:
Oh, if you felt the pain I feel!
But oh, who ever felt as I?
— W. S. Landor, Simonidea, 1807.

Sweet mother, I can spin no more,
Nor ply the loom as heretofore,
For love of him.
— Frederick Tennyson.

Sweet mother, I the web
Can weave no more;
Keen yearning for my love
Subdues me sore,
And tender Aphrodite
Thrills my heart’s core.
— M. J. Walhouse.

Cf. Mrs. John Hunter’s ‘My mother bids me bind my hair,’ etc.

From Hephaestion, as an example of metre.

VIII

Ἴψοι δὴ τὸ μέλαθρον
᾿Υμήναον
ἀέρρετε τέκτοντες ἄνδρες·
᾿Υμήναον
γάμβρος ἔρχεται ἶσος Ἄρευϊ,
[᾿Υμήναον]
ἄνδρος μεγάλω πόλυ μείζων·
[᾿Υμήναον]

Artists, raise the rafters high!
Ample scope and stately plan—
Mars-like comes the bridegroom nigh,
Loftier than a lofty man.
— Anon., Edinb. Rev., 1832, p. 109.

High lift the beams of the chamber,
Workmen, on high;
Like Arés in step comes the Bridegroom;
Like him of the song of Terpander,
Like him in majesty.
— F. T. Palgrave, 1854.

Quoted by Hephaestion as an example of a mes-hymnic poem, where the refrain follows each line. The hymenaeus or wedding-song was sung by the bride’s attendants as they led her to the bridegroom’s house, addressing Hymen the god of marriage. The metre seems, says Professor Mahaffy (Hist. of Class. Greek Lit., i., p. 20, 1880), to be the same as that of the Linus song; cf. fr. 62.

Πέρροχος, ὠς ὄτ’ ἄοιδος ὀ Λέσβιος ἀλλοδάποισιν.

Quoted by Demetrius, about 150 A.D. It is uncertain what ‘Lesbian singer’ is here referred to; probably Terpander, but Neue thinks it may mean the whole Lesbian race, from their pre-eminence in poetry.

Οἶον τὸ γλυκύμαλον ἐρεύθεται ἄκρῳ ἐπ’ ὔσδῳ
ἄκρον ἐπ’ ἀκροτάτῳ· λελάθοντο δὲ μαλοδρόπηες,
οὐ μὰν ἐκλελάθοντ’, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐδύναντ’ ἐπίκεσθαι.

—O fair—O sweet!
As the sweet apple blooms high on the bough,
High as the highest, forgot of the gatherers:
So thou:—
Yet not so: nor forgot of the gatherers;
High o’er their reach in the golden air,
—O sweet—O fair!
— F. T. Palgrave, 1854.

Quoted by the Scholiast on Hermogenes, and by others, to explain the word γλυκύμαλον, ‘sweet-apple,’ an apple grafted on a quince; it is used as a term of endearment by Theocritus (Idyl xi. 39), ‘Of thee, my love, my sweet-apple, I sing.’ Himerius, writing about 360 A.D., says: ‘Aphrodite’s orgies we leave to Sappho of Lesbos, to sing to the lyre and make the bride-chamber her theme. She enters the chamber after the games, makes the room, spreads Homer’s bed, assembles the maidens, leads them into the apartment with Aphrodite in the Graces’ car and a band of Loves for playmates. Binding her tresses with hyacinth, except what is parted to fringe her forehead, she lets the rest wave to the wind if it chance to strike them. Their wings and curls she decks with gold, and drives them in procession before the car as they shake the torch on high.’ And particularly this: ‘It was for Sappho to liken the maiden to an apple, allowing to those who would pluck before the time to touch not even with the finger-tip, but to him who was to gather the apple in season to watch its ripe beauty; to compare the bridegroom with Achilles, to match the youth’s deeds with the hero’s.’ Further on he says: ‘Come then, we will lead him into the bride-chamber and persuade him to meet the beauty of the bride. O fair and lovely, the Lesbian’s praises appertain to thee: thy play-mates are rosy-ankled Graces and golden Aphrodite, and the Seasons make the meadows bloom.’ These last words especially—

Ὦ κάλα, ὦ χαρίεσσα.

O fair, O lovely ...

seem taken out of one of Sappho’s hymeneal odes, although they also occur in Theocritus, Idyl xviii. 38.

Οἴαν τὰν ὐάκινθον ἐν οὔρεσι ποίμενες ἄνδρες
πόσσι καταστείβοισι, χάμαι δ’ ἐπιπορφύρει ἄνθος.

Compare Catullus, xi. 21-24:—

Think not henceforth, thou, to recall Catullus’
Love; thy own sin slew it, as on the meadow’s
Verge declines, un-gently beneath the ploughshare
Stricken, a flower.
— (Robinson Ellis.)

And Vergil, Aeneid, ix. 435, of Euryalus dying:—

And like the purple flower the plough cuts down
He droops and dies.
Pines she like to the hyacinth out on the path by the hill top;
Shepherds tread it aside, and its purples lie lost on the herbage.
— Edwin Arnold, 1869.

One Girl.

(A combination from Sappho.)

I.

Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough,
A-top on the topmost twig,—which the pluckers forgot, somehow,—
Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it till now.

II.

Like the wild hyacinth flower which on the hills is found,
Which the passing feet of the shepherds for ever tear and wound,
Until the purple blossom is trodden into the ground.
— D. G. Rossetti, 1870;

in 1881 he altered the title to Beauty. (A combination from Sappho.)

Quoted by Demetrius, as an example of the ornament and beauty proper to a concluding sentence. Bergk first attributed the lines to Sappho.

Ϝέσπερε, πάντα φέρων, ὄσα φαίνολις ἔσκέδασ’ αὔως,
φέρεις οἶν, φέρες αἶγα, φέρεις ἄπυ ματέρι παῖδα.

Thus imitated by Byron:—

O Hesperus, thou bringest all good things—
Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer,
To the young bird the parent’s brooding wings,
The welcome stall to the o’erlaboured steer;
Whate’er of peace about our hearthstone clings,
Whate’er our household gods protect of dear,
Are gathered round us by thy look of rest;
Thou bring’st the child too to its mother’s breast.
Don Juan, iii. 107.

And by Tennyson:—

The ancient poetess singeth, that Hesperus all things bringeth,
Smoothing the wearied mind: bring me my love, Rosalind.
Thou comest morning or even; she cometh not morning or evening.
False-eyed Hesper, unkind, where is my sweet Rosalind?
Leonine Elegiacs, 1830-1884.

Hesperus brings all things back
Which the daylight made us lack,
Brings the sheep and goats to rest,
Brings the baby to the breast.
— Edwin Arnold, 1869.

Hesper, thou bringest back again
All that the gaudy daybeams part,
The sheep, the goat, back to their pen,
The child home to his mother’s heart.
— Frederick Tennyson, 1890.

Evening, all things thou bringest
Which dawn spread apart from each other;
The lamb and the kid thou bringest,
Thou bringest the boy to his mother.
— J. A. Symonds, 1883.

Hesper, whom the poet call’d the Bringer home of all good things.
— Tennyson, Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, 1886.

From the Etymologicum Magnum, where it is adduced to show the meaning of αὔως, ‘dawn.’ The fragment occurs also in Demetrius, as an example of Sappho’s grace. One cannot but believe that Catullus had in his mind some such hymeneal ode of Sappho’s as that in which this fragment must have occurred when he wrote his Vesper adest, juvenes, consurgite: Vesper Olympo, etc. (lxii.), part of which was imitated in the colloquy between Opinion and Truth in Ben Jonson’s The Barriers.

Ἀϊπάρθενος ἔσσομαι.

From a Parisian MS. edited by Cramer, adduced to show the Aeolic form of ἀεί, ‘ever.’

Δώσομεν, ησι πάτηρ.

From a Parisian MS. edited by Cramer.

Θυρώρῳ πόδες ἐπτορόγυιοι,
τὰ δὲ σάμβαλα πεμπεβόηα,
πίσυγγοι δὲ δέκ’ ἐξεπόνασαν.

From Hephaestion, as an example of metre. Demetrius says: ‘And elsewhere Sappho girds at the rustic bridegroom and the doorkeeper ready for the wedding, in prosaic rather than poetic phrase, as if she were reasoning rather than singing, using words out of harmony with dance and song.’

Ὄλβιε γάμβρε, σοὶ μὲν δὴ γάμος, ὠς ἄραο,
ἐκτετέλεστ’, ἔχῃς δὲ πάρθενον, ἂν ἄραο.

Happy bridegroom, thou art blest
With blisses far beyond the rest,
For thou hast won
The chosen one,
The girl thou lovest best.
— Frederick Tennyson.

Quoted by Hephaestion, along with the following, to exemplify metres; both fragments seem to belong to the same ode.

Μελλίχιος δ’ ἐπ’ ἰμέρτῳ κέχυται προσώπῳ.

In the National Library of Madrid there is a MS. of an epithalamium by Choricius, a rhetorician of Gaza, who flourished about 520 A.D., in which the lamented Ch. Graux (Revue de Philologie, 1880, p. 81) found a quotation from Sappho which is partly identical with this fragment preserved by Hephaestion. H. Weil thus attempts to restore the passage:—

Σοὶ χάριεν μὲν εἶδος, ὄππατα δ’ –⏑–⏒
μέλλιχρ’, ἔρος δ’ ἐπ’ ἰμέρτῳ
κέχυται προσώπῳ·
–⏑ τετίμακ’ ἐξοχά σ’ Ἀφροδίτα.

Well favoured is thy form, and thine eyes ... honeyed, and love is spread over thy fair face ... Aphrodite has honoured thee above all.

Two apparent imitations by Catullus are quoted by Weil to confirm his restoration of Sappho’s verses; viz., mellitos oculos, honeyed eyes (48, 1), and pulcher es, neque te Venus negligit, fair thou art, nor does Venus neglect thee (61, 194).

Ὀ μὲν γὰρ κάλος, ὄσσον ἴδην, πέλεται [ἄγαθος],
ὀ δὲ κἄγαθος αὔτικα καὶ κάλος ἔσσεται.

Beauty, fair flower, upon the surface lies;
But worth with beauty e’en in aspect vies.
— ? Felton.

Galen, the physician, writing about 160 A.D., says: ‘It is better therefore, knowing that the beauty of youth is like Spring flowers, its pleasure lasting but a little while, to approve of what the Lesbian [here] says, and to believe Solon when he points out the same.’

Ἦρ’ ἔτι παρθενίας ἐπιβάλλομαι;

Quoted by Apollonius, and by the Scholiast on Dionysius of Thrace, to illustrate the interrogative particle ἆρα, Aeolic ἦρα, and as an example of the catalectic iambic.

Χαίροισα νύμφα, χαιρέτω δ’ ὀ γάμβρος.

From Hephaestion, as a catalectic iambic.

Τίῳ σ’, ὦ φίλε γάμβρε, κάλως ἐϊκάσδω;
ὄρπακι βραδίνῳ σε κάλιστ’ ἐϊκάσδω.

From Hephaestion, as an example of metre.

... Χαῖρε, νύμφα,
χαῖρε, τίμιε γάμβρε, πόλλα.

Quoted by Servius, about 390 A.D., on Vergil, Georg. i. 31; also referred to by Pollux and Julian.

Οὐ γαρ ἦν ἀτέρα πάϊς, ὦ γάμβρε, τοιαύτα.

From Dionysius of Halicarnassus.

Ἐσπετ’ ᾿Υμήναον.
Ὦ τὸν Ἀδώνιον.

From Plotius, about the fifth or sixth century A.D., to show the metre of Sappho’s hymeneal odes. The text is corrupt; the first verse is thus emended by Bergk, the second by Scaliger. Cf. fr. 63.

A. Παρθενία, παρθενία, ποῖ με λίποισ’ ἀποίχῃ;
Β. Οὐκέτι ἥξω πρὸς σέ, οὐκέτι ἥξω.

‘Sweet Rose of May, sweet Rose of May,
Whither, ah whither fled away?’
‘What’s gone no time can e’er restore—
I come no more, I come no more.’
— J. H. Merivale.

From Demetrius, who quoted the fragment to show the grace of Sappho’s style and the beauty of repetition.

Ἄλλαν μὴ καμεστέραν φρένα.

From a very corrupt passage in Herodian. The translation is from Bergk’s former emendation—

Ἄλλα μὴ κάμε τὺ στερέαν φρένα.

Φαίνεταί ϝοι κῆνος.

From Apollonius, to show that the Aeolians used the digamma, ϝ. Bergk says this fragment does not belong to fr. 2.

Ὠΐω πόλυ λευκότερον.

From Athenaeus; cf. frs. 56 and 122.

Μήτ’ ἔμοι μέλι μήτε μέλισσα

A proverb quoted by many late authors, referring to those who wish for good unmixed with evil. They seem to be the words of the bride. This, and the second line of fr. 62, and many other verses, show Sappho’s fondness for alliteration; frs. 4 and 5, among several others, show that she did not ignore the charm of assonance.

Μὴ κίνη χέραδας.

Quoted by the Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius to show that χεράδες were ‘little heaps of stones.’

Ὄπταις ἄμμε.

Compare Swinburne’s—

My life is bitter with thy love; thine eyes
Blind me, thy tresses burn me, thy sharp sighs
Divide my flesh and spirit with soft sound, etc.
Anactoria.

Quoted by Apollonius to show the Aeolic form of ἡμᾶς, ‘us.’

Ἠμιτύβιον σταλάσσον.

From the Scholiast on Aristophanes’ Plutus, quoted to show the meaning of ἡμιτύβιον, ‘a half worn out shred of linen with which to wipe the hands.’

Τὸν ϝὸν παῖδα κάλει.

Quoted by Apollonius to show the Aeolic use of the digamma.

IX

Παῖδες, ἄφωνος ἐοῖσα τόδ’ ἐννέπω, αἴ τις ἔρηται,
φωνὰν ἀκαμάταν κατθεμένα πρὸ ποδῶν·
Αἰθοπίᾳ με κόρᾳ Λατοῦς ἀνέθηκεν Ἀρίστα
Ἑρμοκλειδαία τῶ Σαοναϊάδα,
σὰ πρόπολος, δέσποινα γυναικῶν· ᾇ σὺ χαρεῖσα
πρόφρων ἁμετέραν εὐκλέϊσον γενεάν.

On a Priestess of Diana.

Does any ask? I answer from the dead;
A voice that lives is graven o’er my head:
To dark-eyed Dian, ere my days begun,
Aristo vowed me, wife of Saon’s son:
Then hear thy priestess, hear, O virgin Power,
And thy best gifts on Saon’s lineage shower.
R.

The goddess here invoked as the ‘queen of women’ appears to have been Artĕmis, the Diana of the Romans.

Τιμάδος ἅδε κόνις, τὰν δη πρὸ γάμοιο θανοῦσαν
δέξατο Φερσεφόνας κυάνεος θάλαμος,
ἇς καὶ ἀποφθιμένας πᾶσαι νεοθᾶγι σιδάρῳ
ἅλικες ἱμερτὰν κρατὸς ἔθεντο κόμαν.

This dust was Timas’; ere her bridal hour
She lies in Proserpina’s gloomy bower;
Her virgin playmates from each lovely head
Cut with sharp steel their locks, their strewments for the dead.
— Sir Charles A. Elton.

This is the dust of Timas, whom unwed
Persephone locked in her darksome bed:
For her the maids who were her fellows shore
Their curls, and to her tomb this tribute bore.
— J. A. Symonds.

Τῷ γριπεῖ Πελάγωνι πατὴρ ἐπέθηκε Μενίσκος
κύρτον καὶ κώπαν, μνάμα κακοζοΐας.

On a Fisherman.

This oar and net and fisher’s wickered snare
Meniscus placed above his buried son—
Memorials of the lot in life he bare,
The hard and needy life of Pelagon.
— Sir Charles A. Elton.

Here, to the fisher Pelagon, his sire Meniscus laid
A wicker-net and oar, to show his weary life and trade.
— Lord Neaves.

Above a fisher’s tomb
Were set his withy-basket and his oar,
The tokens of his doom,
Of how in life his labour had been sore:
A father put them up above his son,
Meniscus over luckless Pelagon.
— Michael Field, 1889.

Bergk sees no reason to accept the voice of tradition in attributing this epigram to Sappho.

X

‘It is something natural that people who fancy themselves beautiful and elegant should be fond of flowers; on which account the companions of Persephone are represented as gathering flowers. And Sappho says she saw—

ἄνθε’ ἀμέργουσαν παῖδ’ ἄγαν ἁπαλάν,

‘A maiden full tender plucking flowers.’

Πόλυ πάκτιδος ἀδυμελεστέρα, χρύσω χρυσοτέρα.

Quoted by Demetrius as an example of hyperbolic phrase. A commentator on Hermogenes the rhetorician says: ‘These things basely flatter the ear, like the erotic phrases which Anacreon and Sappho use, γάλακτος λευκοτέρα whiter than milk, ὕδατος ἁπαλωτέρα fresher than water, πηκτίδων ἐμμελεστέρα more musical than the harp, ἵππου γαυροτέρα more skittish than a horse, ῥόδων ἁβροτέρα more delicate than the rose, ἱματίου ἑανοῦ μαλακωτέρα softer than a fine robe, χρυσοῦ τιμιωτέρα more precious than gold.’

‘Wherefore also Sappho is eloquent and sweet when she sings of Beauty, and of Love and Spring and the Kingfisher; and every beautiful expression is woven into her poetry, besides what she herself invented.’

‘Diotima says that Love flourishes in prosperity, but dies in adversity; a sentiment which Sappho comprehends when she calls Love γλυκίπικρος bitter-sweet [cf. fr. 40] and ἀλγεσίδωρος giver of pain. Socrates calls Love the wizard, Sappho μυθοπλόκος the weaver of fictions.’

Τὸ μέλημα τοὐμόν.

Quoted by Julian, and by Theodoras Hyrtacenus in the twelfth century A.D., as of ‘the wise Sappho.’ Bergk says Sappho would have written τὸ μέλημα ὦμον in her own dialect.

Τὸ γάνος the brightness standing over the whole city, οὐ διαφθεῖρον τὰς ὄψεις not destroying the sight, as Sappho says, but developing at once and crowning and watering with cheerfulness; in no way ὑακινθίνῳ ἄνθει ὅμοιον like a hyacinth-flower, but such as earth and sun never yet showed to men.’

‘Anacreon ... says they are crowned also with dill, as both Sappho [cf. fr. 78] and Alcaeus say; though these also say σελίνοις with parsley.’

‘Thus contend [the maidens] ῥοδοπήχεις καὶ ἑλικώπιδες καὶ καλλιπάρῃοι καὶ μελίφωνοι with rosy arms and glancing eyes and fair cheeks and honeyed voices—this indeed is Sappho’s sweet salutation.’

And Aristaenĕtus:—

‘Before the porch the most musical and μειλιχόφωνοι soft-voiced of the maidens sang the hymeneal song; this indeed is Sappho’s sweetest utterance.’

Antipater of Sidon, Anthol. Pal. ix. 66, and others, call Sappho sweet-voiced.

‘If therefore nought prevented Sappho the Lesbian from praying νύκτα αὐτῇ γενέσθαι διπλασίαν that the night might be doubled for her, let me also ask for something similar. Time, father of year and months, stretch out this very year for us as far as may be, as, when Herakles was born, thou didst prolong the night.’

Bergk thinks that Sappho probably prayed for νύκτα τριπλασίαν a night thrice as long as an ordinary night, in reference to the myth of Jupiter and Alcmene, the mother of Hercules.

‘A hundred furlongs further (from Elaea, a city in Aeolis) is Cané, the promontory opposite to Lectum, and forming the Gulf of Adramyttium, of which the Elaïtic Gulf is a part. Canae is a small city of the Locrians of Cynus, over against the most southerly extremity of Lesbos, situated in the Canaean territory, which extends to Arginusae and the overhanging cliff which some call Aega, as if “a goat,” but the second syllable should be pronounced long, Aegā, like ἀκτά and ἀρχά, for this was the name of the whole mountain which at present is called Cané or Canae ... and the promontory itself seems afterwards to have been called Aega, as Sappho says the rest Canē or Canae.’

‘Apollonius calls Love the son of Aphrodite, Sappho of Earth and Heaven.’

But the Argument prefixed to Theocritus, Idyl xiii., says:—

‘Sappho called Love the child of Aphrodite and Heaven.’

And Pausanias, about 180 A.D., says:—

‘On Love Sappho the Lesbian sang many things which do not agree with one another.’ Cf. fr. 74.

‘Thou art, I think, an evening-star, of all stars the fairest: this is Sappho’s song to Hesperus.’ And again: ‘Now thou didst appear like that fairest of all stars; for the Athenians call thee Hesperus.’

Bergk thinks Sappho’s line ran thus:—

Ἀστέρων πάντων ὁ κάλιστος ...

Of all stars the fairest.

Elsewhere Himerius refers to what seems an imitation of Sappho, and says: ‘If an ode had been wanted, I should have given him such an ode as this—

Νύμφα ῥοδέων ἐρώτων βρύουσα, Νύμφα Παφίης ἄγαλμα κάλλιστον, ἴθι πρὸς εὐνήν, ἴθι πρὸς λέχος μείλιχα παίζουσα, γλυκεῖα νυμφίῳ· Ἕσπερος σ’ ἑκοῦσαν ἄγοι, ἀργυρόθρονον ζυγίαν Ἥραν θαυμάζουσαν.’

Bride teeming with rosy loves, bride, fairest image of the goddess of Paphos, go to the couch, go to the bed, softly sporting, sweet to the bridegroom. May Hesperus lead thee rejoicing, honouring Hera of the silver throne, goddess of marriage.

Bride, in whose breast haunt rosy loves!
Bride, fairest of the Paphian groves!
Hence, to thy marriage rise, and go!
Hence, to thy bed, where thou shalt show
With honeyed play thy wedded charms,
Thy sweetness in the bridegroom’s arms!
Let Hesper lead thee forth, a wife,
Willing and worshipping for life,
The silver-throned, the wedlock dame,
Queen Hera, wanton without shame!
— J. A. Symonds, 1883.

‘The story of the love of Selēnē is told by Sappho, and by Nicander in the second book of his Europa; and it is said that Selene came to Endymion in the same cave’ (on Mount Latmus in Caria).

‘Sappho calls Persuasion Ἀφροδίτης θυγατέρα Daughter of Aphrodite.’ Cf. fr. 141.

‘Socrates blames Xanthippe for lamenting his death, as Sappho blames her daughter—

Οὐ γαρ θέμις ἐν μουσοπόλων οἰκίᾳ θρήνον εἶναι· οὐκ ἄμμι πρέπει τάδε.

For lamentation may not be in a poet’s house: such things befit not us.’

In the home of the Muses ’tis bootless to mourn.
— Frederick Tennyson.

ἢ ὥσπερ Σαπφώ, ὅτι το ἀποθνήσκειν κακόν· οἱ θεοὶ γὰρ οὕτω κεκρίκασιν· ἀπέθνησκον γὰρ ἄν.

Gregory, commenting on Hermogenes, also quotes the same saying:—

οἷον φησιν ἡ Σαπφώ, ὅτι τὸ ἀποθνήσκειν κακόν· οἱ θεοὶ γὰρ οὕτω κεκρίκασιν· ἀπέθνησκον γὰρ ἄν, εἴπερ ἦν καλὸν τὸ ἀποθνήσκειν.

Several attempts have been made to restore these words to a metrical form, and this of Hartung’s appears to be the simplest:—

Τὸ θνάσκειν κακόν· οὕτω κεκρίκασι θεοί·
ἔθνασκον γὰρ ἄν εἴπερ κάλον ἦν τόδε.

Death is evil; the Gods have so judged: had it been good, they would die.

The preceding fragment (136) seems to have formed part of the same ode as the present. Perhaps it was this ode, which Sappho sent to her daughter forbidding her to lament her mother’s death, that Solon is said to have so highly praised. The story is quoted from Aelian by Stobaeus thus: ‘Solon the Athenian [who died about 558 B.C.], son of Execestĭdes, on his nephew’s singing an ode of Sappho’s over their wine, was pleased with it, and bade the boy teach it him; and when some one asked why he took the trouble, he said, ἵνα μαθὼν αὐτὸ ἀποθανω, ‘That I may not die before I have learned it.’

‘Naucratis has produced some celebrated courtesans of exceeding beauty; as Dōricha, who was beloved by Charaxus, brother of the beautiful Sappho, when he went to Naucratis on business, and whom she accuses in her poetry of having robbed him of much. Herodotus calls her Rhodōpis, not knowing that Rhodopis was different from the Doricha who dedicated the famous spits at Delphi.’

Herodotus, about 440 B.C., said:—

‘Rhodopis came to Egypt with Xanthes of Samos; and having come to make money, she was ransomed for a large sum by Charaxus of Mitylene, son of Scamandronymus and brother of Sappho the poetess. Thus Rhodopis was made free, and continued in Egypt, and being very lovely acquired great riches for a Rhodopis, though no way sufficient to erect such a pyramid [as Mycerīnus’] with. For as any one who wishes may to this day see the tenth of her wealth, there is no need to attribute any great wealth to her. For Rhodopis was desirous of leaving a monument to herself in Greece, and having had such a work made as no one ever yet devised and dedicated in a temple, to offer it at Delphi as a memorial of herself: having therefore made from the tenth of her wealth a great number of iron spits for roasting oxen, as far as the tenth allowed, she sent them to Delphi; and they are still piled up behind the altar which the Chians dedicated, and opposite the temple itself. The courtesans of Naucratis are generally very lovely: for in the first place this one, of whom this account is given, became so famous that all the Greeks became familiar with the name Rhodopis; and in the next place, after her another whose name was Archidĭce became celebrated throughout Greece, though less talked about than the former. As for Charaxus, after ransoming Rhodopis he returned to Mitylene, where Sappho ridiculed him bitterly in an ode.’

And Strabo:—

‘It is said that the tomb of the courtesan was erected by her lovers: Sappho the lyric poet calls her Dōricha. She was beloved by Sappho’s brother Charaxus, who traded to the port of Naucratis with Lesbian wine. Others call her Rhodopis.’

And another writer (Appendix Prov., iv. 51) says:—

‘The beautiful courtesan Rhodopis, whom Sappho and Herodotus commemorate, was of Naucratis in Egypt.’

‘The beautiful Sappho in several places celebrates her brother, Larĭchus, as cup-bearer to the Mitylenaeans in the town-hall.’

The Scholiast on the Iliad, xx. 234, says:—

‘It was the custom, as Sappho also says, for well-born and beautiful youths to pour out wine.’

Cf. fr. 5.

‘Phaon gained his livelihood by a boat and the sea; the sea was crossed by a ferry; and no complaint was made by any one, since he was just, and only took from those who had means. He was a wonder among the Lesbians for his character. The goddess—they call Aphrodite “the goddess”—commends the man, and having put on the appearance of a woman now grown old, asks Phaon about sailing; he was swift to wait on her and carry her across and demand nothing. What thereupon does the goddess do? They say she transformed the man and restored him to youth and beauty. This is that Phaon, her love for whom Sappho several times made into a song.’

The story is repeated by many writers. Cf. fr. 29.

‘Yet that gold does not contract rust the Lesbian poetess is a witness, and gold itself shows it.’

And the Scholiast on Pindar, Pyth., iv. 407:—

‘But gold is indestructible; and so says Sappho,

Διος παῖς ὁ χρυσός, κείνον οὐ σης οὐδε κὶς δάπτει,

Gold is son of Zeus, no moth nor worm devours it.’

Sappho’s own phrase is lost.

‘Homer says Niobe had six sons and six daughters, Euripides seven of each, Sappho nine, Bacchylides and Pindar ten.’

Cf. fr. 31, the only line extant from the ode here referred to.

‘Some would have it believed that Theseus rescued along with himself seven boys and seven maidens, as Plato says in his Phaedo, and Sappho in her lyrics, and Bacchylides in his dithyrambics, and Euripides in his Hercules.’

No such passage from Sappho has been preserved.

‘Prometheus, son of Iapĕtus and Clymĕne, after he had created man, is said to have ascended to heaven by help of Minerva, and having applied a small torch [or perhaps ‘wand’] to the sun’s wheel, he stole fire and showed it to men. The Gods being angered hereby sent two evils upon the earth, fevers and disease [the text is here obviously corrupt; it ought to be ‘women and disease’ or ‘fevers and women’], as Sappho and Hesiod tell.’

‘Sappho loves the Rose, and always crowns it with some praise, likening beautiful maidens to it.’

This remark seems to have led some of the earlier collectors of Sappho’s fragments to include the ‘pleasing song in commendation of the Rose’ quoted by Achilles Tatius in his love-story Clitophon and Leucippe, but there is no reason to attribute it to Sappho. Mrs. E. B. Browning thus translated it:—

Song of the Rose.

If Zeus chose us a king of the flowers in his mirth,
He would call to the Rose and would royally crown it,
For the Rose, ho, the Rose, is the grace of the earth,
Is the light of the plants that are growing upon it.
For the Rose, ho, the Rose, is the eye of the flowers,
Is the blush of the meadows that feel themselves fair—
Is the lightning of beauty that strikes through the bowers
On pale lovers who sit in the glow unaware.
Ho, the Rose breathes of love! Ho, the Rose lifts the cup
To the red lips of Cypris invoked for a guest!
Ho, the Rose, having curled its sweet leaves for the world,
Takes delight in the motion its petals keep up,
As they laugh to the wind as it laughs from the west!

And Mr. J. A. Symonds (1883):—

The Praise of Roses.

If Zeus had willed it so
That o’er the flowers one flower should reign a queen,
I know, ah well I know
The rose, the rose, that royal flower had been!
She is of earth the gem,
Of flowers the diadem;
And with her flush
The meadows blush:
Nay, she is beauty’s self that brightens
In Summer, when the warm air lightens!
Her breath’s the breath of Love,
Wherewith he lures the dove
Of the fair Cyprian queen;
Her petals are a screen
Of pink and quivering green,
For Cupid when he sleeps,
Or for mild Zephyrus, who laughs and weeps.

‘Sappho loves flowers with a personal sympathy,’ writes Professor F. T. Palgrave. “Cretan girls,” she says, “with their soft feet dancing lay flat the tender bloom of the grass” [fr. 54]: she feels for the hyacinth “which shepherds on the mountain tread under foot, and the purple flower is on the ground” [fr. 94]: she pities the wood-doves (apparently) as their “life grows cold and their wings fall” before the archer’ [fr. 16].

‘These gifts of yours must now be likened to those of the leader of the Muses himself, as Sappho and Pindar, in an ode, adorn him with golden hair and lyres, and attend him with a team of swans to Helicon while he dances with Muses and Graces; or as poets inspired by the Muses crown the Bacchanal (for thus the lyre calls him, meaning Dionȳsos), when Spring has just flashed out for the first time, with Spring flowers and ivy-clusters, and lead him, now to the topmost heights of Caucasus and vales of Lydia, now to the cliffs of Parnassus and the rock of Delphi, while he leaps and gives his female followers the note for the Evian tune.’

‘There is, we see, a vagabond friendship, as Sappho would say, καλὸν δημόσιον, a public blessing.’

This appears to have been said against Rhodopis. Cf. fr. 138.

‘Ἄκακος one who has no experience of ill, not, one who is good-natured. So Sappho uses the word.’

Ἀμαμαξύς a vine trained on long poles, and says Sappho makes the plural ἀμαμάξυδες. So Choeroboscus, late in the sixth century A.D., says ‘the occurrence of the genitive ἀμαμαξύδος [the usual form being ἀμαμάξυος] in Sappho is strange.’

‘And in this way metaplasms of words [i.e., tenses or cases formed from non-existent presents or nominatives] arise, like ἐρυσάρματες [chariot-drawing], λῖτα [cloths], and in Sappho τὸ αὔα, Dawn.’

And the Etymologicum Magnum says:—

‘We find παρὰ τὴν αὔαν [during the morning] in Aeolic, for “during the day.”’

‘Αὔως or ἠώς, that is, the day; thus we read in Aeolic. Sappho has—

πότνια αὔως,

Queen Dawn.’

The solemn Dawn.
— Frederick Tennyson.

‘The βάρωμος [baromos] and σάρβιτος [sarbĭtos], both of which are mentioned by Sappho and Anacreon, and the Magădis and the Triangles and the Sambūcae, are all ancient instruments.’

Athenaeus in another place, apparently more correctly, gives the name of the first as βάρμος [barmos].

What these instruments precisely were is unknown. Cf. p. 46.

‘Sappho used the word βεῦδος for a woman’s dress, a kimberĭcon, a kind of short transparent frock.’

‘Sappho calls a woman’s dressing-case, where she keeps her scents and such things, γρύτη.’

‘Among the Aeolians ζ is used for δ, as when Sappho says ζάβατον for διάβατον, fordable.’

Nauck would restore the epithet to verse 2 of fr. 42.

‘Sappho makes the accusative of κίνδυνος danger κίνδυν.’

Another writer, in the Codex Marc., says:—

‘Sappho makes the accusative κίνδυνα.’

‘The acute accent falls either on the last syllable or the last but one or the last but two, but never on the last but three; the accent of Μήδεϊα [Medeia the sorceress, wife of Jason] in Sappho is allowed by supposing the ει to form a diphthong.’

‘Sappho, in her second book, calls σμίρνα myrrh μύρρα.’

‘The genitive plural of Μοῦσα is Μωσάων among the Laconians, Μοισάων of the Muses in Sappho.’

Νίτρον natron (carbonate of soda) is the form ‘an Aeolian would use, such as Sappho, with a ν; but,’ he goes on, ‘an Athenian would spell it with a λ, λίτρον.’

‘Sappho said πολυΐδριδι of much knowledge as the dative of πολύϊδρις.’

‘Θάψος is a wood with which they dye wool and hair yellow, which Sappho calls Σκυθικὸν ξύλον Scythian wood.’

And the Scholiast on Theocritus, Idyl ii. 88, says:—

‘Θάψος is a kind of wood which is also called σκυθάριον or Scythian wood, as Sappho says; and in this they dip fleeces and make them of a quince-yellow, and dye their hair yellow; among us it is called χρυσόξυλον gold-wood.’

Ahrens thinks that here the Scholiast quoted Sappho, and he thus restores the verses:—

–⏑– Ζκύθικον ξύλον,
τῷ βάπτοισί τε τἤρια
ποΐεισι δὲ μάλινα
ξανθίσδοισί τε τὰς τρίχας.

Scythian wood, in which they dip fleeces and make them quince-coloured, and dye their hair yellow.

Thapsus may have been box-wood, but it is quite uncertain.

‘The Aeolians say Τίοισιν ὀφθάλμοισιν with what eyes ... [using τίοισι for τίσι, the dative plural of τίς] as Sappho does.’

‘In Sappho χελώνη is χελύνη a tortoise’; which is better written χελύνα, or rather χέλυνα, as other writers imply.

‘Bowls with a boss in the middle are called βαλανειόμφαλοι, circular-bottomed, from their shape, χρυσόμφαλοι, gold-bottomed, from the material, like Sappho’s χρυσαστράγαλοι, with golden ankles.’

Some few other fragments are attributed to Sappho, but Bergk admits none as genuine. Above is to be seen every word which he considered hers. An account of some which have recently been brought to light is given on the succeeding pages.