June 27, 2005
New Sappho discovery
A newly found poem by Sappho . . . is published for the first time today. . .From the Guardian.Sappho's pre-eminent reputation as an artist of lyricism and love is based on only three complete poems, 63 complete single lines and up to 264 fragments. . .
The poem which is now her fourth to survive had a tortuous and not unromantic discovery. It was found in the cartonnage of an Egyptian mummy . . .
Researchers realised that parts of one poem corresponded with fragments found in 1922 in one of the great treasure troves of modern classical scholarship - the ancient rubbish tips of the Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus.
The completed jigsaw is today published in an 1,500- word article with commentary and translation in the Times Literary Supplement
The referenced TLS article is available here, minus the original Greek.
Posted by David on June 27, 2005 12:06 AM
Glaukopidos has a couple of posts on this, one of which gives the Greek (scroll down). If it doesn't come out right on your screen, she also links to a JPEG.
If you're wondering about the meter, it's Ionic. With - for long syllables, v for short, and x for anceps (may be long or short), the pattern is:
x - v v - - v v - - v v - v - x
Posted by: Michael Hendry on June 28, 2005 1:10 PM
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