Οἰ μὲν ἰππήων στρότον οἰ δὲ πέσδων οἰ δὲ νάων φαῖσ᾽ ἐπὶ γᾶν μέλαιναν ἔμμεναι κάλλιστον...
I've been trying to read Sappho. So far this is the only poem I can completely make out, and only because it was in my Greek textbook last year.
Δέδυκε μεν ἀ σελάννα
καὶ Πληΐαδεσ, μέσαι δὲ
νύκτεσ πάρα δ᾽ ἔρχετ᾽ ὤρα,
ἔγω δὲ μόνα κατεύδω.
The moon has set,
And the Pleiades. It is the middle
Of the night, time passes,
And I sleep alone.
Sappho's Aeolian Greek is very different from the Attic Greek I've been studying all this time, and poetry is in general more difficult to translate than prose. I persist with my efforts, however, because she was SO FREAKING BRILLIANT. The Ancient Greeks were certainly not known for respecting women as artists or even as people, but Sappho was widely considered to be the best lyric poet ever to live, just as Homer was the best epic poet, because she was just THAT GOOD. The Romans thought she was amazing, too. Catullus was pretty much in love with her and arguably hijacked her style to found the uniquely Latin poetic genre of love elegy.
Unfortunately the bulk of her work was lost during the middle ages. There is a story about some Byzantine pope ordering all of her poems to be burned, which may or may not be true. Other less histrionically inclined individuals suggest that people just stopped reading her because no one spoke Aeolian Greek anymore. Either way, it fucking sucks.
Personally, I love her FOREVER. You can tell even from the English translations of her poems, which pale in comparison to the Greek, that she was a genius.
Some say cavalry and others claim
infantry or a fleet of long oars
is the supreme sight on the black earth.
I say it is
the one you love. And easily proved.
Didn't Helen, who far surpassed all
mortals in beauty, desert the best
of men, her king,
and sail off to Troy and forget
her daughter and her dear parents? Merely
Aphrodite's gaze made her readily bend
and led her far
from her path. These tales remind me now
of Anaktoria who isn't here,
yet I
for one
would rather see her warm supple step
and the sparkle of her face than watch all
the chariots in Lydia and footsoldiers armored
in glittering bronze.
Δέδυκε μεν ἀ σελάννα
καὶ Πληΐαδεσ, μέσαι δὲ
νύκτεσ πάρα δ᾽ ἔρχετ᾽ ὤρα,
ἔγω δὲ μόνα κατεύδω.
The moon has set,
And the Pleiades. It is the middle
Of the night, time passes,
And I sleep alone.
Sappho's Aeolian Greek is very different from the Attic Greek I've been studying all this time, and poetry is in general more difficult to translate than prose. I persist with my efforts, however, because she was SO FREAKING BRILLIANT. The Ancient Greeks were certainly not known for respecting women as artists or even as people, but Sappho was widely considered to be the best lyric poet ever to live, just as Homer was the best epic poet, because she was just THAT GOOD. The Romans thought she was amazing, too. Catullus was pretty much in love with her and arguably hijacked her style to found the uniquely Latin poetic genre of love elegy.
Unfortunately the bulk of her work was lost during the middle ages. There is a story about some Byzantine pope ordering all of her poems to be burned, which may or may not be true. Other less histrionically inclined individuals suggest that people just stopped reading her because no one spoke Aeolian Greek anymore. Either way, it fucking sucks.
Personally, I love her FOREVER. You can tell even from the English translations of her poems, which pale in comparison to the Greek, that she was a genius.
Some say cavalry and others claim
infantry or a fleet of long oars
is the supreme sight on the black earth.
I say it is
the one you love. And easily proved.
Didn't Helen, who far surpassed all
mortals in beauty, desert the best
of men, her king,
and sail off to Troy and forget
her daughter and her dear parents? Merely
Aphrodite's gaze made her readily bend
and led her far
from her path. These tales remind me now
of Anaktoria who isn't here,
yet I
for one
would rather see her warm supple step
and the sparkle of her face than watch all
the chariots in Lydia and footsoldiers armored
in glittering bronze.