{"id":7009,"date":"2015-02-08T10:35:56","date_gmt":"2015-02-08T17:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7009"},"modified":"2015-02-08T22:26:28","modified_gmt":"2015-02-09T05:26:28","slug":"new-poems-by-sappho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7009","title":{"rendered":"New Poems by Sappho"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Carbonized scroll. (Credit: Salvatore Laporta\/AP)<\/p><\/div>\n

The possibility of deciphering the carbonized papyrus scrolls from the Villa of the Papyri is exciting. <\/a>One friend hopes that some day an Etruscan\/Greek or Etruscan\/Latin dictionary will be discovered. (The Etruscan language<\/a> used Greek letters, but we cannot completely read it, beyond some kings’ names, etc.)<\/p>\n

Me, I hope for a complete edition of Sappho’s<\/a> poetry, with commentaries by some Hellenistic critic.<\/p>\n

That has not shown up, but (how did I miss this?) two unknown apparent poems of hers were discovered a couple of years ago<\/a> in recycled papyrus used as “cartonnage<\/a>,” a sort of papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 used in Egypt for mummy cases and funerary masks.<\/p>\n

In a paper delivered last month at an academic conference (PDF)<\/a>, Dirk Obbink discusses questions of authenticity and text in the two poems. You can find related links at the website of the Reception of Greek Literature 300 BC\u2013AD 800: Traditions of the Fragment Project<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Obbink notes,<\/p>\n

The new fragments show conclusively the alternation in book 1 of poems about family and cult, on the one hand, and personal concerns about love on the other. A cycle of poems concerning sea-faring is revealed, centering on the drama of a mercantile family of wine-traders on 7th-century Lesbos<\/a>. The presence of Dionysus in the trinity of gods in the Pan-Lesbian sanctuary at Mesa on the island is explained, and the whole complex of love, sea-faring, wine, and trade falls neatly into the context of Herodotus\u2019 story (2.135) of how Sappho\u2019s brother Charaxos spent a great deal of money . . . to free his lover the courtesan Rhodopis (aka Doricha), then a slave at Naucratis in Egypt\u2014for which Herodotus claims a pedigree in a poem of Sappho\u2019s. In fragments 5 and 17 and now the \u2018Brothers Poem\u2019 we can see the existence of a song type, a prayer for the safe return of the merchant-gone-to-sea (or going). The prayer may rehearse an occasion leading to the performance of a song (as in the \u2018Brothers Poem\u2019), or its actual performance in the past or present (as in fragment 5). The prayer for safe return, introduced as a matter of concern, then expands to envisage what such a return would mean for the family\u2014wealth, and an enhanced social position in the community. A further connection with the poems involving Aphrodite (who dominates book 1 but is virtually missing elsewhere) is suggested, since she is also typically invoked in seaside cult as a protectress of sailors (as we can see at the end of fragment 5, perhaps associated with prostitutes and hetair ae frequented by Charaxos).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The possibility of deciphering the carbonized papyrus scrolls from the Villa of the Papyri is exciting. One friend hopes that some day an Etruscan\/Greek or Etruscan\/Latin dictionary will be discovered. (The Etruscan language used Greek letters, but we cannot completely read it, beyond some kings’ names, etc.) Me, I hope for a complete edition of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[263,33,232],"class_list":["post-7009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-classics","tag-greece","tag-poetry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1P3","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3378,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3378","url_meta":{"origin":7009,"position":0},"title":"Is This Ancient Image an Etruscan Mother Goddess?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 3, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Archaeologists have found an ancient Etruscan pottery fragment that appears to be the oldest-known image of a woman giving birth. The piece of a large pottery vessel might be 2,600 years old. The Etruscan civilization dominated northern Italy before being eventually absorbed by Rome. They used Greek letters to write\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"Etruscan image of woman giving birth","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/news.discovery.com\/history\/2011\/10\/19\/birth-278.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":70,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=70","url_meta":{"origin":7009,"position":1},"title":"Idol Thoughts","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 27, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"After three days of hearing papers and networking at AAR-SBL, our brains were full, so half a dozen friends and I headed for the traveling Etruscan exhibit at Atlanta's Fernbank Museum. It was wonderful to get away from the convention-hotel district. The exhibit on ancient Etruscan life was organized by\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":559,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=559","url_meta":{"origin":7009,"position":2},"title":"Blog splatI am taking a\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 15, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Blog splatI am taking a break from blogging for the next eight to ten days because I leave on Wednesday for the intellectual carnival that is the American Academy of Religion-Society of Biblical Literature combined annual meeting.It's in Philadelphia this year. Our last meeting there was in 1995, and I\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":852,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=852","url_meta":{"origin":7009,"position":3},"title":"Sex in World Religions & Other Updates","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 12, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 First, here is a better version of the Pagan rosary story, \"'Hail Persephone:' Pagans Retool the Rosary,\" which has a photo and also some of the rosary invocations.Kimberly Winston's article was also mentioned at the GetReligion blog on religion and journalism.\u00b6 My recent post on Carlos Castaneda must have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Islam\"","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=islam"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5982,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5982","url_meta":{"origin":7009,"position":4},"title":"A Pastafarian Prophet","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 28, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"This recent post on Religion Clause describes the victorious struggle of a Texas Pastafarian for the right to wear the sacred pasta strainer in his driver's license photograph. It caught my attention because I had just finished editing an article by Joe \"Vampires\" Leycock, \"wandering anthropologist of the occult,\"\u00a0 for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"A surrealist and a proto-Pastafarian, SE Portland, Oregon. ","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/pastafarian.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":320,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=320","url_meta":{"origin":7009,"position":5},"title":"A Fistfight at the Poets'\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 4, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"A Fistfight at the Poets' Caf\u00e9 When I was about 15, I saw Jean Cocteau's Orf\u00e9e, a film based on the Greek legend of Orpheus the poet, his wife, Eurydice, and their journeys into Hades. Most of it went right by me. 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