Sappho 31 is a poem by Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

 poet Sappho

Sappho

Sappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life...

 of Lesbos. It is also known as phainetai moi (φαίνεταί μοι) after the opening words of its first line, or Lobel-Page 31, Voigt 31, Gallavotti 2, Diehl 2, Bergk 2, after the location of the poem in various editions containing the collected works of Sappho. Possibly an epithalamion - a wedding poem, intended to be sung to the bride

Bride

A bride is a woman about to be married or newlywed.The word may come from the Proto-Germanic verb root *brū-, meaning 'to cook, brew, or make a broth' which was the role of the daughter-in-law in primitive families...

 at the entrance to her nuptial chamber - or an enkomion - a poem of praise. It is perhaps Sappho's most famous poem.

Sappho 31 was one of the two substantially complete poems by Sappho to survive from ancient times, written in Sappho's vernacular form of Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

, the Lesbian-Aeolic dialect

Aeolic Greek

Aeolic Greek is a linguistic term used to describe a set of dialects of Ancient Greek spoken mainly in Boeotia , Thessaly, and in the Aegean island of Lesbos and the Greek colonies of Asia Minor ....

. More fragments have been found in recent years, particularly in the Oxyrhynchus papyri

Oxyrhynchus Papyri

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a very numerous group of manuscripts discovered by archaeologists including Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt at an ancient rubbish dump near Oxyrhynchus in Egypt . The manuscripts date from the 1st to the 6th century AD. They include thousands of Greek and...

. Sappho adopts her usual metrical form

Meter (poetry)

In poetry, metre is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study of metres and forms of versification is known as prosody...

, the Sapphic meter of four lines: three lines of eleven syllable

Syllable

A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...

s, and a fourth line of five syllables. Four strophe

Strophe

A strophe forms the first part of the ode in Ancient Greek tragedy, followed by the antistrophe and epode. In its original Greek setting, "strophe, antistrophe and epode were a kind of stanza framed only for the music," as John Milton wrote in the preface to Samson Agonistes, with the strophe...

s survive, plus a fragment of a fifth verse or concluding line. Sappho's poems were designed to be sung, and use direct and emotional language. The author starts by praising the beauty of the bridegroom, likening him to a god, but then describes her jealousy and the physical manifestations of her distress upon seeing a young woman whom she loves with her new husband, the epiphany bringing her to a symbolic death. The word choice, with alliteration

Alliteration

In language, alliteration refers to the repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of Three or more words or phrases. Alliteration has historically developed largely through poetry, in which it more narrowly refers to the repetition of a consonant in any syllables that, according to...

 and assonance

Assonance

Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences, and together with alliteration and consonance serves as one of the building blocks of verse. For example, in the phrase "Do you like blue?", the is repeated within the sentence and is...

, and repetition of short clauses - particularly the conjunction "δέ" - build up a rhythmic effect similar to a ritual incantation.

Longinus

Longinus (literature)

Longinus is the conventional name of the author of the treatise, On the Sublime , a work which focuses on the effect of good writing. Longinus, sometimes referred to as Pseudo-Longinus because his real name is unknown, was a Greek teacher of rhetoric or a literary critic who may have lived in the...

's treatise On the Sublime (Περὶ ὕψους, Perì hýpsous) selects the poem as an example of the sublime

Sublime (literary)

The sublime is a form of expression in literature in which the author refers to things in nature or art that affect the mind with a sense of overwhelming grandeur or irresistible power. It is calculated to inspire awe, deep reverence, or lofty emotion, by reason of its beauty, vastness, or grandeur...

 for the intensity of its passionate emotions. It was quoted in Plutarch

Plutarch

Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

's "Dialogue on Love" (Έρωτικός, Erotikos)) in his Moralia

Moralia

The Moralia of the 1st-century Greek scholar Plutarch of Chaeronea is an eclectic collection of 78 essays and transcribed speeches. They give an insight into Roman and Greek life, but often are also fascinating timeless observations in their own right...

(a Latin translation of the original Greek title, Ἠθικά, Ethika, Ethics).

The opening words of the poem - "he appears to me, that one, equal to the gods..." - are almost identical to the opening of Sappho 165, with the pronoun changed ("her" in Sappho 165 rather than "me" in Sappho 31).

The poem was adapted by Roman poet Catullus

Catullus

Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:...

, and addressed his muse Lesbia

Lesbia

Lesbia was the literary pseudonym of the great love of Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus .She was a poet in her own right, included with Catullus in a list of famous poets whose lovers "often" helped them write their verses....

, in his erotic poem Catullus 51

Catullus 51

Catullus 51 is a poem by the Roman famous love poet Gaius Valerius Catullus . It is an adaptation of one of Sappho's fragmentary lyric poems, Sappho 31. Catullus replaces Sappho's beloved with his own beloved Lesbia. Unlike the majority of Catullus' poems, the meter of this poem is the sapphic...

, which begins "Ille mi par esse deo videtur" ("He seems to me to be equal to a god").

Text

Original Greek (stoa)	English Transliteration	Literal translation by Gregory Nagy (date unknown)
φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θέοισιν ἔμμεν' ὤνηρ, ὄττις ἐνάντιός τοι ἰσδάνει καὶ πλάσιον ἆδυ φονεί- σας ὐπακούει καὶ γελαίσας ἰμέροεν, τό μ' ἦ μὰν καρδίαν ἐν στήθεσιν ἐπτόαισεν· ὠς γὰρ ἔς σ' ἴδω βρόχε', ὤς με φώναί- σ' οὐδ' ἒν ἔτ' εἴκει, ἀλλά κὰμ μὲν γλῶσσα †ἔαγε†, λέπτον δ' αὔτικα χρῷ πῦρ ὐπαδεδρόμηκεν, ὀππάτεσσι δ' οὐδ' ἒν ὄρημμ', ἐπιρρόμ- βεισι δ' ἄκουαι, κὰδ' δέ ἴδρως κακχέεται, τρόμος δὲ παῖσαν ἄγρει, χλωροτέρα δὲ ποίας ἔμμι, τεθνάκην δ' ὀλίγω 'πιδεύης φαίνομ' ἔμ' αὔτᾳ. ἀλλὰ τὰν τόλματον, ἐπεὶ †καὶ πένητα†...	phainetai moi kênos îsos theoisin emmen’ ônêr ottis enantios toi isdanei kai plâsion âdu phonei- sâs upakouei kai gelaisâs îmeroen to m’ ê mân kardiân en stêthesin eptoaisen. ôs gar es s’ idô brokhe’ os me phônai- s’ oud’ en et’ eikei, alla kam men glôssa eâge lepton d’ autika khrôi pur upadedromâken oppatessi d’ oud’en orêmm’ epirom- beisi d’ akouai, kad de m’ idrôs kakkheetai tromos de paisan agrei khlôrotera de poiâs emmi tethnakên d’ oligô ‘pideuês phainom’ em’ autai. Alla tan tolmaton , [epei kai penêta] ...	He appears to me, that one, equal to the gods, the man who, facing you, is seated and, up close, that sweet voice of yours he listens to And how you laugh your charming laugh. Why it makes my heart flutter within my breast, because the moment I look at you, right then, for me, to make any sound at all won’t work any more. My tongue has a breakdown and a delicate — all of a sudden — fire rushes under my skin. With my eyes I see not a thing, and there is a roar that my ears make. Sweat pours down me and a trembling seizes all of me; paler than grass am I, and a little short of death do I appear to me.

External links

• 28 translations and paraphrases
• Sappho: Fragment 31, William S. Annis, Aoidoi.org, July 18, 2004