In Choriambic Metre

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