Sappho, Fragment 16 and more

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cwconrad
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Sappho, Fragment 16 and more

Post by cwconrad »

Elsewhere in this forum Stephen has expanded on my addendum to his word study on δίστομος and τρίστομος. I cited in response to his citation regarding a troop formation part of a stanza of Sappho on her own alternative preference to the admiration of some for the beauty of troop movements on the field of battle. I want first of all to reformulate Stephen's citation of that stanza so that the final short line (metricians call it an "adonius") falls below the third Sapphic line so that the metrical formation appears intact. I would add, however, that this last line of a Sapphic stanza is actually a coda to the third line and that not infrequently in Sappho (and in Horace's Latin imitation) there is such tight enjambement of the two lines that a single word bridges them (here ὅττω), so that printing the fourth line as an addend to the third has some justification. The meter itself is a nice melodic rhythm; those familiar with Latin verse will know it from Catullus' imitation of Sappho's φαίνεται μοι κῆνος ἴσος θεοῖςιν ... :
Catullus 51 wrote:ille mi par esse deo videtur ...
I still remember my delight in discovering Sappho's Aeolic verse fragments early in my exploration of Greek literary treasures. As was the case with Homer also, so here there was the additional fascination with a distinctive dialect and alternative morphological elements, although you'd think that the beauty of these fragments was quite enough to tickle the aesthetic taste buds. There are the longer fragments, worth anybody's exploration (for instance, the rest of fragment 16 itself is marvelous). but then too there are the little pieces. One favorite of mine has always been the wistful fragment 52:
Δέδυκε μὲν ἀ σελάννα
καὶ Πληΐαδες, μέσαι δέ
νύκτες, πάρα δ' ἔρχετ' ὤρα,
ἔγω δὲ μόνα κατεύδω.
which was nicely English by Wharton:
The moon has set, and the Pleiades; it is midnight, the time is going by, and I sleep alone.
Sappho is a jewel in the crown of Greek literature, and I thought that Stephen's expansion and brief notes on my little Sapphic citation deserved its own place apart from a lexical aside on double-edged and triple-edged blades or military formations. So I now repeat his notes on Sappho 16 with this my own preface to them.
Stephen Hughes wrote:
cwconrad wrote:
Sappho fragment 16. First stanza [quoted in full now] wrote:Οἱ μὲν ἰππήων στρότον οἰ δὲ πέσδων
οἰ δὲ νάων φαῖσ' ἐπ[ὶ] γᾶν μέλαι[ν]αν
ἔ]μμεναι κάλλιστον ἔγω δὲ κῆν᾽ ὄ-
τω τις ἔραται.
Which means no more than that there are different kinds of κόσμος that people find appealing.
Beautiful priamel. Allow me to make it a little more accessible...
  • οἰ - some (people)
  • μὲν ... δὲ ... (δὲ ...) - a clue to repeat some element of the first phrase in the subsequent phrase(s)
  • ἰππήων - an Aeolian (Lesbian) form of what we would say as ἰππέων from ἱππεύς - cavalry man or charioteer.
  • στρότον - an Aeolian (Lesbian) form of what we would say as στρατός, but we see in the New Testament as στρατιά military force, army (on land), navy (on the sea). Treat the accent in nouns as recessive in the same way we do with most verbs.
  • πέσδων - an Aeolian (Lesbian) form of what we would say as πεζῶν < πεζοί or στρατός πεζῶν foot soldiers.
  • φαῖσ' - φαῖσι according to LSJ this is a third person plural form, and according to Perseus' parsing tool, this is a paticiple (part pl pres act masc dat doric / aeolic), I'm going with LSJ on this one. It is a simple yet beautiful bread and butter verb of speaking with the accusative and infinitive construction. The form of the verb φημί that we are familiar with for this is φασίν in Romans 3:8 Καὶ μή — καθὼς βλασφημούμεθα, καὶ καθώς φασίν τινες ἡμᾶς λέγειν — ὅτι Ποιήσωμεν τὰ κακὰ ἵνα ἔλθῃ τὰ ἀγαθά; Ὧν τὸ κρίμα ἔνδικόν ἐστιν.
  • ἐπὶ γᾶν μέλαιναν - we are used to this alpha being changed to eta. γῆν. The μέλαιναν is a third declension (consonant stem) adjective, and the iota is the remnant of a sigma.
  • ἔμμεναι - what we say as εἶναι
  • ἔγω δὲ - with this δὲ the person of the verb carried on through this construction needs to change to φᾶμι, which we would say as φημί
  • ὄττω - a dialectical form of ὅστις this form is a genitive singular omicron + omicron = omega (not the diphthong that we are used to)
  • κῆν᾽ - this is the reason I said I would make this text a little more accessible. From a distant memory, I would say that it is a form of ἐκεῖνος, but instinct set in place by past mistakes tells me that is Attic only, and sensibility tells me it should be a particle of affirmation. In short, I need help on this word.
  • ἔραται - remember this is Lesbian love poetry. The verb takes a genitive of the person or thing loved.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Sappho, Fragment 16 and more

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Well I suppose that I should repeat my self correction that belongs with this material.
Stephen Hughes wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:Allow me to make it a little more accessible...
  • κῆν᾽ - this is the reason I said I would make this text a little more accessible. From a distant memory, I would say that it is a form of ἐκεῖνος, but instinct set in place by past mistakes tells me that is Attic only, and sensibility tells me it should be a particle of affirmation. In short, I need help on this word.
Well I've had a chance to look in the dictionary now. My memory was right that it was a dialectical form of ἐκεῖνος, but a bit hazy about which form for which dialect.

Now let me say that the (understood) φᾶμι "I say" (a verb of speaking) is constructed with two accusatives κῆνο "that thing" and κάλλιστον "the best thing" and an infinitive of the verb to be.

κῆνο being neuter is another reason - besides that Sappho's poetry usually expresses the love culture between women - to conclude that ὄττω is neuter not masculine.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
cwconrad
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Joined: May 5th, 2011, 5:52 pm
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Re: Sappho, Fragment 16 and more

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen Hughes wrote:Well I suppose that I should repeat my self correction that belongs with this material.
Stephen Hughes wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:Allow me to make it a little more accessible...
  • κῆν᾽ - this is the reason I said I would make this text a little more accessible. From a distant memory, I would say that it is a form of ἐκεῖνος, but instinct set in place by past mistakes tells me that is Attic only, and sensibility tells me it should be a particle of affirmation. In short, I need help on this word.
Well I've had a chance to look in the dictionary now. My memory was right that it was a dialectical form of ἐκεῖνος, but a bit hazy about which form for which dialect.

Now let me say that the (understood) φᾶμι "I say" (a verb of speaking) is constructed with two accusatives κῆνο "that thing" and κάλλιστον "the best thing" and an infinitive of the verb to be.

κῆνο being neuter is another reason - besides that Sappho's poetry usually expresses the love culture between women - to conclude that ὄττω is neuter not masculine.
Since we're in the process of writing scholia in the margins of a text, let me add a couple more notes:
--κάλλιστον: I've always understood the adjective here in Sappho's text more literally, "most beautiful"; that's the reason I used the word κόσμος, itself a word that I think is at root aesthetic, in the sense of "pleasing arrangement of elements envisioned" -- a starry sky (galaxy = "Milky Way" = "universe"), troops arrayed in full array, a fleet of ships in formation, or, as Sappho puts it -- more or less -- in Fragment 16, "the shadow of your smile as you walk by" (so to speak).
--κῆν᾽ ὄττω τις ἔραται: Yes, κῆνο is neuter, and although Sappho may have been a Lesbian in both the literal and the extended sense, the neuter pronoun might very well refer to a man or a woman; the neuter noun ἐρώτιον/Ἐρώτιον (proper name) is not uncommon in Greek for "darling/Darling".

To clarify the note on κάλλιστον, here's what she says:
Sappho 16, 4th and 5th stanzas wrote:κἄμε νῦν Ἀνακτορίας ὀνέμναι-
σ’ οὐ παρεοίσας

τᾶς κε βολλοίμαν ἔρατόν τε βᾶμα
κἀμάρυχμα λάμπρον ἴδην προσώπω
ἢ τὰ Λύδων ἄρματα κἀν ὄπλοισι
πεσδομάχεντας.
Roughly: "It's put me in mind of Anactoria who's not here (with me); it's her lovely way of walking and her sparkling glance that I'd rather catch a glimpse of than the chariots of the Lydians and foot soldiers in full armor" -- which completes the thought of the opening line: some people really do prefer looking at troops maneuvering on the battlefield; not so Sappho.
--ὀνέμναισ’ = ἀνέμνησε(ν)
--παρεοίσας = παρούσης
--τᾶς = ἐκείνης
--κε βολλοίμαν = βουλοίμην ἄν
--βᾶμα = βῆμα
--ἀμάρυχμα = ἀμάρυγμα
--ἴδην = ἰδεῖν
--προσώπω = προσώπου
--πεσδομάχεντας = πεζομαχοῦντας (Lesbian Aeolic πεσδομάχημμι = Attic πεζομαχέομαι)
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Sappho, Fragment 16 and more

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Rather than play hopscotch over the two intervening squares, here are a few very pedestrian aids to make them accessible. It really is fragmentary, and there are quite a number of scholarly restorations of the text, so if you see other restorations you can keep an open mind to them too. I am a little worried that I have not used a text that relies on the latest (2005) papyrus finds.

At university I had a copy of Page's work to help me through this authour, but now on the other side of the world, the best one I can find online as a reading aid, without a waffly talk-through is William S. Annis'. This poetry dates from the 7th century BCE, so I haven't found or furnished New Testament parallels to the interesting points here.
Sappho Fragment 16, Stanzas 2 and 3 wrote:πά]γχυ δ’ εὔμαρες σύνετον πόησαι
π]άντι τ[ο]ῦτ’· ἀ γὰρ πολὺ περσκέθοισα
κάλλος [ἀνθ]ρώπων Ἐλένα τὸν ἄνδρα
τὸν [πανάρι]στον

καλλ[ίποι]σ΄ ἔβα ΄ς Τροΐαν πλέοι[σα
κωὐδ[ὲ πα]ῖδος οὐδὲ φίλων το[κ]ήων
πά[μπαν] ἐμνάσθη͵ ἀλλὰ παράγαγ΄ αὔταν
]σαν
  • πάγχυ - Adv., (πᾶς, πᾶν) Ep., Ion., and Aeol. for πάνυ wholly, entirely.
  • εὔμαρες - a neuter form of the adjective εὐμαρής used as an adverb. Thee construction here with an infinitive πόησαι requires / implies an ἐστι to be understood.
  • σύνετον πόησαι πάντι τοῦτο - in our time, we would write / say that as συνετὸν ποιῆσαι παντὶ τοῦτο - the adjective συνετός ordinarily means "intelligent", but the neuter forms can sometimes be used in the passive sense to means "intelligible" and that is what we have here. The dative πάντι goes with this adjective, not because of the συν- prefix (which refers to things coming together in one's mind), but as (what I think is called) the dative of advantage. ποιῆσαι of course means "to make". It is the verb that is usually used to add an adjective to our understanding of something.
  • is ἡ
  • ἀ ... περσκέθοισα - this articular participle obviously refers to Helen (popularly known as the cause, but probably just one of the contributing factors of the Trojan war), what is not so obvious is what verb it is from. περιέχειν LSJ II "surpass" +gen of the people surpassed and an accusative of respect (i.e. in regard to what she exceeded the others). The loss of the aspiration that we see at the beginning of words (the smooth breathing οἰ for οἱ for example) would cause / allow the χ in the forms of ἔχειν to become a κ. Well, if you look at the word again - περσκέθοισα - and think about how it lost the aspiration, the obvious question is, "Why is there a θ (an aspirated τ in the word)?". It has to do with the chronology of the development of the language. Aeolian speakers lost the aspiration from words at an earlier point of the language, but the passives in theta were introduced at a later point of the language, so were not lost. Having said that, the question is, "What is it doing there?". It is ostensibly an active participle (indicated by the -σχ-) with something that looks like a middle/passive voice indicator (θε) inserted into the middle of it. It is an innovation of about the same degree of departure from the standard as saying "She used to exceeded others in beauty." Having the ε after the σχ is not surprising given that we have the form ἔσχηκα.
    So, after discussing all that, let's just say that Sappho's περσκέθοισα is what we would see as περισχοῦσα or περιέχθεισα depending on which voice you think Sappho is using.
  • καλλίποισα - unlike what we are used to, the final vowel of prepositions is lost in some other dialects. The suffixed κατα- becomes κατ- and is then assimilated to the lambda to which it is prefixed. So then the form we would have been expecting if were were reading a text in the Attic Koine is καταλιποῦσα "having completely forsaken".
  • τὸν ἄνδρα τὸν [πανάρι]στον - the article regularly implies the force of a possessive when used with a word like ἄνδρα that is something owned (more or less, or perhaps semi-) exclusively, so the meaning here is clearly, "her most [noble] husband".
  • ἔβα ΄ς Τροΐαν πλέοι[σα - once again the earlier long alpha is retained, where we are used to the more closed eta ἔβη. The strengthening of ἐν by adding a sigma that we see in the Koine as εἰς, is shorter here for the sake of the metre, and lost after the long alpha.
  • ἔβα ... πλέοι[σα - two words, one meaning
  • πλέοι[σα - Following the pattern that we recognise by now, we would have been expecting the form πλεοῦσα
  • κωὐδ[ὲ ... οὐδὲ - καὶ οὐδὲ ... οὐδὲ
  • το[κ]ήων - τοκέων < τοκεύς "parent"
  • πά[μπαν - utterly, completely
  • ἐμνάσθη - We find this as ἐμνήσθη (+gen.) < μιμνήσκειν in our literature.
  • παράγαγ΄ αὔταν - The long alpha is still written as alpha in Aeolian, but we would find it as eta, as in the LXX παρήγαγεν. αὔταν would also be familiar to us if it had an eta for the alpha. Who exactly is doing the leading astray was presumably originally written in the part of the text that is now lost. The classical Greek euphemism for sex or sexual desire was Ἀφροδίτη, and that has been suggested as the cause.
Last edited by Stephen Hughes on November 20th, 2014, 10:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Sappho, Fragment 16 and more

Post by Stephen Hughes »

cwconrad wrote:I want first of all to reformulate Stephen's citation of that stanza so that the final short line (metricians call it an "adonius") falls below the third Sapphic line so that the metrical formation appears intact. I would add, however, that this last line of a Sapphic stanza is actually a coda to the third line and that not infrequently in Sappho (and in Horace's Latin imitation) there is such tight enjambement of the two lines that a single word bridges them (here ὅττω), so that printing the fourth line as an addend to the third has some justification. The meter itself is a nice melodic rhythm; those familiar with Latin verse will know it from Catullus' imitation of Sappho's φαίνεται μοι κῆνος ἴσος θεοῖςιν ... :
Catullus 51 wrote:ille mi par esse deo videtur ...
Richard Welland Crowell at Ancient Greek Online wrote:Sapphic Stanza

First 3 lines: ˉ ˘ ˉ ˉ | ˉ ˘ ˘ ˉ | ˘ ˉ ˉ or ˉ ˘ ˉ ˘ | ˉ ˘ ˘ ˉ | ˘ ˉ ˉ

Last line: ˉ ˘ ˘ ˉ ˉ (must carry over from 3rd line)
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
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