Sappho, Fragment 16 and more
Posted: November 20th, 2014, 7:43 am
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 ... :
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:Catullus 51 wrote:ille mi par esse deo videtur ...
which was nicely English by Wharton:Δέδυκε μὲν ἀ σελάννα
καὶ Πληΐαδες, μέσαι δέ
νύκτες, πάρα δ' ἔρχετ' ὤρα,
ἔγω δὲ μόνα κατεύδω.
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.The moon has set, and the Pleiades; it is midnight, the time is going by, and I sleep alone.
Stephen Hughes wrote:Beautiful priamel. Allow me to make it a little more accessible...cwconrad wrote:Which means no more than that there are different kinds of κόσμος that people find appealing.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.
- 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.