Epigrams

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.

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