Sappho 44 is a fragment of a poem by the archaic Greek poet Sappho, which describes the wedding of Hector and Andromache. Preserved on a piece of papyrus found in Egypt, it is the longest of Sappho's surviving fragments, and is written in epic style suiting its subject. The metre is glyconic with double dactylic expansion.
The poem was preserved on Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1232, [1] a fragment of papyrus found at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt and first published in 1914, now in the collection of the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. [2] The papyrus dates to the first half of the third century AD. [3] Fragment 44 is the longest piece of Sappho's poetry preserved. [4] A second papyrus, Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 2076, confirms Sappho's authorship, and shows that the poem came at the end of the second book of the Alexandrian edition of her works; a citation in Athenaeus also supports this attribution. [5]
The poem's meter is the glyconic with double dactylic expansion (gl2d) – each line is of the form "xx -uu -uu -uu- ux", where "-" denotes a long syllable, "u" a short syllable, and "x" a syllable which could be either long or short. [6] In the Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poems, it was included in Book II. [7]
Sappho's authorship of the poem has been contested. Scholars such as Edgar Lobel and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf have doubted that Sappho wrote the work due to its epic style. [8] However, the poem was accepted as authentic in the Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poetry, and modern scholars generally agree that she wrote the poem. [9]
Sappho 44 tells the story of the marriage of Hector and Andromache, which is mentioned in Book 22 of the Iliad . It describes Andromache's arrival in Troy, escorted by Hector and watched by the Trojans. [9] The first portion of the poem describes the herald Idaeus announcing the imminent arrival of Hector and Andromache to the city, and the Trojans preparing to greet them. Following this, a portion of the poem – presumably dealing with the arrival of Hector and Andromache – is missing; the length of this missing section is uncertain. The final section describes the wedding celebrations, with music, wine, and the men of Troy singing a hymn to Apollo. [10]
The metre and style of the poem evoke Greek epic, and the poem is often interpreted as an intertext to the Iliad. [9] The Iliad did not have its later status as the canonical epic poem in sixth-century Lesbos, however, and it is difficult to tell how many of the allusions in the poem to the Epic Cycle are specific to the Iliad, rather than being traditional. [11] Adrian Kelly describes the poem's reinterpretation of an epic narrative to foreground the perspective of women as characteristically Sapphic. [12]
The poem may have been written for performance at a wedding. [13] However, as early as 1966, some scholars had begun to question this belief, noting that the story of Hector and Andromache – culminating in the death of Hector and the enslavement of Andromache – is not particularly suitable for a wedding. [14] Lawrence Schrenk argues that the poem specifically alludes to two scenes in the Iliad – firstly, Andromache's seeing Hector's body being dragged from the battlefield and the subsequent flashback to her wedding in Book 22, and secondly, the recovery of Hector's corpse in Book 24. [15]
The poem has received relatively little scholarly attention, and many scholars consider it not to be one of Sappho's best works. [16] However, Schrenk argues that the poem is more subtle than has often been appreciated. [17]
Alcaeus of Mytilene was a lyric poet from the Greek island of Lesbos who is credited with inventing the Alcaic stanza. He was included in the canonical list of nine lyric poets by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria. He was a contemporary of Sappho, with whom he may have exchanged poems. He was born into the aristocratic governing class of Mytilene, the main city of Lesbos, where he was involved in political disputes and feuds.
The Judgement of Paris is a story from Greek mythology, which was one of the events that led up to the Trojan War, and in later versions to the foundation of Rome.
Sappho was an Archaic Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied by music. In ancient times, Sappho was widely regarded as one of the greatest lyric poets and was given names such as the "Tenth Muse" and "The Poetess". Most of Sappho's poetry is now lost, and what is extant has mostly survived in fragmentary form; only the Ode to Aphrodite is certainly complete. As well as lyric poetry, ancient commentators claimed that Sappho wrote elegiac and iambic poetry. Three epigrams formerly attributed to Sappho are extant, but these are actually Hellenistic imitations of Sappho's style.
Bacchylides was a Greek lyric poet. Later Greeks included him in the canonical list of Nine Lyric Poets, which included his uncle Simonides. The elegance and polished style of his lyrics have been noted in Bacchylidean scholarship since at least Longinus. Some scholars have characterized these qualities as superficial charm. He has often been compared unfavourably with his contemporary, Pindar, as "a kind of Boccherini to Pindar's Haydn". However, the differences in their styles do not allow for easy comparison, and translator Robert Fagles has written that "to blame Bacchylides for not being Pindar is as childish a judgement as to condemn ... Marvell for missing the grandeur of Milton". His career coincided with the ascendency of dramatic styles of poetry, as embodied in the works of Aeschylus or Sophocles, and he is in fact considered one of the last poets of major significance within the more ancient tradition of purely lyric poetry. The most notable features of his lyrics are their clarity in expression and simplicity of thought, making them an ideal introduction to the study of Greek lyric poetry in general and to Pindar's verse in particular.
Archilochus was a Greek lyric poet of the Archaic period from the island of Paros. He is celebrated for his versatile and innovative use of poetic meters, and is the earliest known Greek author to compose almost entirely on the theme of his own emotions and experiences.
Ibycus was an Ancient Greek lyric poet, a citizen of Rhegium in Magna Graecia, probably active at Samos during the reign of the tyrant Polycrates and numbered by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria in the canonical list of nine lyric poets. He was mainly remembered in antiquity for pederastic verses, but he also composed lyrical narratives on mythological themes in the manner of Stesichorus. His work survives today only as quotations by ancient scholars or recorded on fragments of papyrus recovered from archaeological sites in Egypt, yet his extant verses include what are considered some of the finest examples of Greek poetry.
In Greek mythology, Andromache was the wife of Hector, daughter of Eetion, and sister to Podes. She was born and raised in the city of Cilician Thebe, over which her father ruled. The name means 'man battler' or 'fighter of men' or 'man fighter' or 'man's battle', from the Greek stem ἀνδρ- 'man' and μάχη 'battle'.
The Little Iliad is a lost epic of ancient Greek literature. It was one of the Epic Cycle, that is, the Trojan cycle, which told the entire history of the Trojan War in epic verse. The story of the Little Iliad comes chronologically after that of the Aethiopis, and is followed by that of the Iliou persis. The Little Iliad was variously attributed by ancient writers to Lesches of Pyrrha, Cinaethon of Sparta, Diodorus of Erythrae, Thestorides of Phocaea, or Homer himself. The poem comprised four books of verse in dactylic hexameter, the heroic meter.
Stesichorus was a Greek lyric poet native of Metauros. He is best known for telling epic stories in lyric metres, and for some ancient traditions about his life, such as his opposition to the tyrant Phalaris, and the blindness he is said to have incurred and cured by composing verses first insulting and then flattering to Helen of Troy.
Erinna was an ancient Greek poet. She is best known for her long poem The Distaff, a 300-line hexameter lament for her childhood friend Baucis, who had died shortly after her marriage. A large fragment of this poem was discovered in 1928 at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. Along with The Distaff, three epigrams ascribed to Erinna are known, preserved in the Greek Anthology. Biographical details about Erinna's life are uncertain. She is generally thought to have lived in the first half of the fourth century BC, though some ancient traditions have her as a contemporary of Sappho; Telos is generally considered to be her most likely birthplace, but Tenos, Teos, Rhodes, and Lesbos are all also mentioned by ancient sources as her home.
Greek and Latin metre is an overall term used for the various rhythms in which Greek and Latin poems were composed. The individual rhythmical patterns used in Greek and Latin poetry are also known as "metres".
Aeolic verse is a classification of Ancient Greek lyric poetry referring to the distinct verse forms characteristic of the two great poets of Archaic Lesbos, Sappho and Alcaeus, who composed in their native Aeolic dialect. These verse forms were taken up and developed by later Greek and Roman poets and some modern European poets.
Sappho 16 is a fragment of a poem by the archaic Greek lyric poet Sappho. It is from Book I of the Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poetry, and is known from a second-century papyrus discovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt at the beginning of the twentieth century. Sappho 16 is a love poem – the genre for which Sappho was best known – which praises the beauty of the narrator's beloved, Anactoria, and expresses the speaker's desire for her now that she is absent. It makes the case that the most beautiful thing in the world is whatever one desires, using Helen of Troy's elopement with Paris as a mythological exemplum to support this argument. The poem is at least 20 lines long, though it is uncertain whether the poem ends at line 20 or continues for another stanza.
The Ode to Aphrodite is a lyric poem by the archaic Greek poet Sappho, who wrote in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BCE, in which the speaker calls on the help of Aphrodite in the pursuit of a beloved. The poem survives in almost complete form, with only two places of uncertainty in the text, preserved through a quotation from Dionysius of Halicarnassus' treatise On Composition and in fragmentary form in a scrap of papyrus discovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt.
The Midnight poem is a fragment of Greek lyric poetry preserved by the Alexandrian grammarian Hephaestion. It is possibly by the archaic Greek poet Sappho, and is fragment 168 B in Eva-Maria Voigt's edition of her works. It is also sometimes known as PMG fr. adesp. 976 – that is, fragment 976 from Denys Page's Poetae Melici Graeci, not attributed to any author. The poem, four lines describing a woman alone at night, is one of the best-known surviving pieces of Greek lyric poetry. Long thought to have been composed by Sappho, it is one of the most frequently translated and adapted of the works ascribed to her.
The Tithonus poem, also known as the Old age poem or the New Sappho, is a poem by the archaic Greek poet Sappho. It is part of fragment 58 in Eva-Maria Voigt's edition of Sappho. The poem is from Book IV of the Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poetry. It was first published in 1922, after a fragment of papyrus on which it was partially preserved was discovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt; further papyrus fragments published in 2004 almost completed the poem, drawing international media attention. One of very few substantially complete works by Sappho, it deals with the effects of ageing. There is scholarly debate about where the poem ends, as four lines previously thought to have been part of the poem are not found on the 2004 papyrus.
Sappho 94, sometimes known as Sappho's Confession, is a fragment of a poem by the archaic Greek poet Sappho. The poem is written as a conversation between Sappho and a woman who is leaving her, perhaps in order to marry, and describes a series of memories of their time together. It survives on a sixth-century AD scrap of parchment. Scholarship on the poem has focused on whether the initial surviving lines of the poem are spoken by Sappho or the departing woman, and on the interpretation of the eighth stanza, possibly the only mention of homosexual activities in the surviving Sapphic corpus.
Prosody is the theory and practice of versification.
Sappho was an ancient Greek lyric poet from the island of Lesbos. She wrote around 10,000 lines of poetry, only a small fraction of which survives. Only one poem is known to be complete; in some cases as little as a single word survives. Modern editions of Sappho's poetry are the product of centuries of scholarship, first compiling quotations from surviving ancient works, and from the late 19th century rediscovering her works preserved on fragments of ancient papyri and parchment. Along with the poems which can be attributed with confidence to Sappho, a small number of surviving fragments in her Aeolic dialect may be by either her or her contemporary Alcaeus. Modern editions of Sappho also collect ancient "testimonia" which discuss Sappho's life and works.
Sappho 96 is a poem by the archaic Greek lyric poet Sappho. 37 lines of the fragment are preserved on a 6th-century parchment. The first twenty lines describe an imaginary scene in which an unnamed woman is struck by grief remembering an absent companion, Atthis; the remaining 17 lines, possibly originally a separate poem, reflects more generally on the foolishness of trying to compare human and divine beauty. As with other poems by Sappho such as poem 16 and 94, memory is a major theme.
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