Epigrams
All three are preserved only in the Greek Anthology. The authenticity of the last, fr. 120, is doubtful. To none of them does Bergk restore the form of the Aeolic dialect.
118
Παῖδες, ἄφωνος ἐοῖσα τόδ' ἐννεπω, αἴ τις ἔρηται,
φωνὰν ἀκαμάταν κατθεμένα πρὸ ποδῶν·
Αἰθοπίᾳ με κόρᾳ Λατοῦς ἀνέθηκεν Ἀρίστα
Ἑρμοκλειδαία τῶ Σαοναϊάδα,
σὰ πρόπολος, δέσποινα γυναικῶν· ᾇ σὺ χαρεῖσα
πρόφρων ἁμετέραν εὐκλέϊσον γενεάν.
Maidens, dumb as I am, I speak thus, if any ask, and set before your feet a tireless voice: To Leto's daughter Aethopia was I dedicated by Arista daughter of Hermocleides son of Saonaïades, thy servant, O queen of women; whom bless thou, and deign to glorify our house.
On a Priestess of Diana.
Does any ask? I answer from the dead;
A voice that lives is graven o'er my head:
To dark-eyed Dian, ere my days begun,
Aristo vowed me, wife of Saon's son:
Then hear thy priestess, hear, O virgin Power,
And thy best gifts on Saon's lineage shower.
R.
The goddess here invoked as the 'queen of women' appears to have been Artĕmis, the Diana of the Romans.
119
Τιμάδος ἅδε κόνις, τὰν δὴ πρὸ γάμοιο θανοῦσαν
δέξατο Φερσεφόνας κυάνεος θάλαμος,
ἇς καὶ ἀποφθιμένας πᾶσαι νεοθᾶγι σιδάρῳ
ἄλικες ἱμερτὰν κρατὸς ἔθεντο κόμαν.
This is the dust of Timas, whom Persephone's dark chamber received, dead before her wedding; when she perished, all her fellows dressed with sharpened steel the lovely tresses of their heads.
This dust was Timas'; ere her bridal hour
She lies in Proserpina's gloomy bower;
Her virgin playmates from each lovely head
Cut with sharp steel their locks, their strewments for the dead.
Sir Charles A. Elton.
This is the dust of Timas, whom unwed
Persephone locked in her darksome bed:
For her the maids who were her fellows shore
Their curls, and to her tomb this tribute bore.
J. A. Symonds.
120
Τῷ γριπεῖ Πελάγωνι πατὴρ ἐπέθηκε Μενίσκος
κύρτον καὶ κώπαν, μνάμα κακοζοΐας.
Over the fisherman Pelagon his father Meniscus set weel and oar, memorial of a luckless life.
On a Fisherman.
This oar and net and fisher's wickered snare
Meniscus placed above his buried son—
Memorials of the lot in life he bare,
The hard and needy life of Pelagon.
Sir Charles A. Elton.
Here, to the fisher Pelagon, his sire Meniscus laid
A wicker-net and oar, to show his weary life and trade.
Lord Neaves.
Above a fisher's tomb
Were set his withy-basket and his oar,
The tokens of his doom,
Of how in life his labour had been sore:
A father put them up above his son,
Meniscus over luckless Pelagon.
Michael Field, 1889.
Bergk sees no reason to accept the voice of tradition in attributing this epigram to Sappho.
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