Fragments of Uncertain Book, with the Epigrams and Dubia
Ἀδήλων βιβλίων ἀποσπάσματα καὶ ἐπιγράμματα
Headnote
This is the gleaning-basket of the corpus: everything the ancient world saved of Sappho without telling us where it belonged. The Alexandrian edition sorted her songs into books by meter; the quoting authors who preserved these lines — Hephaestion hunting metrical examples, Athenaeus collecting dinner-table lore, grammarians chasing an Aeolic genitive, lexicographers after a rare word — rarely bothered to say which book they were tearing the page from. So the fragments of uncertain book contain some of her most famous sentences, saved for the least literary of reasons: Eros the limb-loosener, that sweetbitter creeping thing, survives because Hephaestion liked its meter; the girl who cannot weave for longing survives the same way; and the one-line claim on the future — someone, I say, will remember us — survives because Dio Chrysostom thought it beautifully said. Here too are the dirge for Adonis with its ritual cry, the wedding-feast of the gods where Hermes pours, little Cleis worth more than all Lydia, the rivals Gorgo and Andromeda and the house of Polyanax, the full moon and the women around the altar. After them, in honesty’s order: the two-word vow that is all we may print of the Artemis poem; three epigrams that travel under her name in the Greek Anthology, elegant Hellenistic dedications and epitaphs that are almost certainly not hers and are part of her surviving corpus anyway, because the ancients curated her that way; the scraps the editors cannot decide between Sappho and Alcaeus; two quotations whose own quoting authors give the game away — Athenaeus doubts the Anacreon stanza in the act of citing it; and finally the single words, reported one at a time by men who cared that she said dawn a particular way. Assembly is the point: most editions print a selection and stop. This gathers the leavings — numbered, sourced, doubts declared — so that the whole of what survives is actually here.
slender Aphrodite has broken me with longing for a girl.
πόθῳ δάμεισα παῖδος βραδίναν δἰ Ἀφρόδιταν.
mine is a quiet heart.
ὄργαν, ἀλλ᾽ ἀβάκην τὰν φρέν᾽ ἔχω.
win yourself a younger bed:
I will not bear to share a house,
I the elder, with a younger man.
λέχος ἄρνυσω νεώτερον,
οὐ γὰρ τλάσομ᾽ ἔγω ξυνοίκην
νεῳ γ᾽ ἔσσα γεραὶτερα.
sweetbitter, impossible to fight, a creature that creeps.
γλυκύπικρον ἀμάχανον ὄρπετον.
Sappho, why the many-blessed Aphrodite —?
Ψἀπφοι τί τὰν πολύολβον Ἀφρόδιταν;
and your tongue were not stirring up something foul to say,
shame would not have caught your eyes:
you would be speaking, plainly, for the right.
καὶ μή τι ϝείπεν γλῶσσ᾽ ἐκύκα κάκον,
αἴδως κέ σ᾽ οὐ κίχανεν ὄππατ᾽
ἄλλ᾽ ἔλεγες περὶ τῶ δικαίως.
and unveil the grace that is in your eyes.
καὶ τὰν ἔπ᾽ ὄσσοις ἀμπέτασον χάριν.
Beat your breasts, girls, and tear your dresses.
καττύπτερθε κόραι καὶ κατερείκεσθε χίτωνας.
and Hermes took up the jug to pour for the gods;
and then all of them held drinking-cups
and made libation, and prayed every good thing
for the bridegroom.
Ἐρμᾶς δ᾽ ἔλεν ὄλπιν θέοις οἰνοχόησαι.
κῆνοι δ᾽ ἄρα πάντες καρχήσιά τ᾽ ἦχον
κάλειβον ἀράσαντο δὲ πάμπαν ἔσλα
τῳ γἀμβρῳ.
[but the blending of both holds the summit of happiness.]
[ἠ δ ἐξ ἀμφοτέρων κρᾶσισ εὐδαιμονιας ἔχει το ἄκρον.]
and the women took their stand around the altar.
αἰ δ᾽ ὠς περὶ βῶμον ἐστάθησαν.
Πωλυανάκτιδα παῖδα χᾶιρην.
keep watch on the tongue that barks for nothing.
μαψθλάκαν γλῶσσαν πεφυλάχθαι.
lying covered [under] hyacinth [flowers].
with the unwearying voice set down here at my feet:
to Aethopia, Leto’s daughter, I was dedicated by Arista,
daughter of Hermocleides son of Saonaiadas —
your servant, mistress of women. Take joy in her,
be gracious, and give our family glory.
φωνὰν ἀκαμάταν κατθεμένα πρὸ ποδῶν,
Ἀιτοπίᾳ με κόρᾳ Λατοῦς ἀνέθηκεν Ἀρίστα
Ἐρμοκλειδαία τῶ Σαοναϊάδα,
σὰ πρόπολοσ, δέσποινα γυναικῶν, ᾆ σὺ χαρεῖσα
πρόφρων ἁμετέραν εὐκλέϊσον γενεάν.
she was received into Persephone’s blue-dark chamber;
and when she perished, every girl of her age took new-whetted
iron and laid the lovely hair of her head upon this grave.
λέξατο Φερσεφόνας κυάνεος θάλαμος,
ἄς καὶ ἀποφθιμέμας πᾶσαι νεοθᾶγι σιδάρῳ
ἄλικες ἰμμερτὰν κρᾶτος ἔθεντο κόμαν.
around a lovely altar,
treading the soft fine flower of the grass.
ὠρχεῦντ᾽ ἀπάλοις ἀμφ᾽ ερόεντα βῶμον
πόας τέρεν ἄνθος μάλακον μάτεισαι.
the one out of the fine Teian country
of beautiful women, which the stately
old man sang so sweetly.
ὗμνον ἐκ τᾶς καλλιγύναικος ἐσθλᾶς
Τηιος χώρας ὃν ἀείδε τερπνῶς
πρέσβυς ἀγαυός.
weaver of fictions (μυθοπλόκος — her word for Eros, says Maximus of Tyre).
Brightness — the gladdening sheen of things (τὸ γάνος; Aristides).
Daughter of Aphrodite — her name for Peitho, Persuasion (the scholiast on
Hesiod).
The barmos and the sarbitos, names of stringed instruments she played
(Athenaeus).
A fair public hall (καλὸν δημόσιον; Eustathius — the context is lost).
Without malice (ἄκακος; the Lexicon Seguerianum).
Vines trained up on poles (ἀμαμάξυδες) and dawn in her own Aeolic, αὔως
(the Etymologicum Magnum).
A short shift of a dress (βεῦδος; Pollux).
A vanity-bag for trinkets (γρύτη; Phrynichus).
Fordable (ζάβατον; a Paris manuscript).
Danger, in her own ending — κίνδυν (Choeroboscus).
Scythian wood — her name for the yellow dye-wood thapsos (Photius).
And the greeting Philostratus says was hers for her girls:
rose-armed, glancing-eyed, fair-cheeked, honey-voiced.
τὸ γάνος — Aristides.
Ἀφροδίτης θυγατέρα — the scholiast on Hesiod (of Peitho).
βάρωμος
βάρμος, σάρβιτος — Athenaeus (names of instruments).
καλὸν δημόσιον — Eustathius.
ἄκακος — the Lexicon Seguerianum.
ἀμαμάξυδες, αὔως — the Etymologicum Magnum.
βεῦδος — Pollux.
γρύτη — Phrynichus.
ζάβατον — a Paris manuscript (ed. Cramer).
κίνδυν (accusative) — Choeroboscus.
ξύλον Σκυθικόν (for θάψος) — Photius.
᾽Ροδοπήχεις καὶ ἐλικώπιδες καὶ καλλιπάρῃοι καὶ μειλιχόφωνοι — Philostratus;
Aristaenetus (μειλιχόφωνοι in a hymeneal song).