person
Gongyla
also: Γογγύλα, ΓΟΓΓΥΛΑ (parchment)
A girl of Sappho's circle, named on the fourth page of the Berlin parchment (fr. 95); ancient testimony makes her one of Sappho's companions, from Colophon. In the fragment her name stands just before a vision or sign and the wish to die.
Reading notes
- Fragments of Book Five §95 Gongyla
Named on the parchment's fourth page; ancient testimony counts Gongyla of Colophon among Sappho's companions. The 1907 apparatus secures the name where the page is otherwise wreckage. What follows in the legible run — a sign, an oath by the blessed one, no pleasure left, a longing to die — suggests a poem of desolation in which she figured.