ElAnt v1n1 - Sappho 55 (Voigt): Going, Going, Gone

SAPPHO 55 (VOIGT): GOING, GOING, GONE (1)

Jenny Strauss Clay,
Department of Classics,
University of Virginia,
Charlottesville,
Virginia 22903,
U.S.A.
e-mail: jsc2t@faraday.clas.virginia.edu

katathanoisa de keise'i, oude pota mnamosuna sethen
esset' oude *pok* husteron. ou gar pedeche'is brodo'n
to'n ek Pierias, all' aphane's kan Aida domo'i
phoitase'is ped' amauro'n nekuo'n ekpepotamena.

In 1904 Bucherer printed oude potha eis husteron in line 2; nine years later, Wilamowitz, noting that a second noun was required, made the same suggestion; and Campbell now prints it in his Loeb edition.(2) Unquestionably, the emendation gives good sense, but it is additionally guaranteed by the alliterative soundplay, which has not, to the best of my knowledge, been noticed: pota (verse 1), potha (verse 2) (3), ekpepotamena .

FOOT NOTES

(1) I owe my title to a suggestion of my student, Karen E. Cox.

(2) F. Bucherer, Anthologie aus den griechischen Lyriken (Gotha, 1904), p. 106; U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Sappho und Simonides (Berlin, 1913), p. 88 n. 2, and David A. Campbell, Greek Lyric , Vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass., 1982).

(3) For word play involving aspirated and unaspirated consonants, see Sappho Fr. 104a (Voigt) and my note 'Sappho's Hesperus and Hesiod's Dawn', Philologus 124 (1980), pp. 302-305.

Jenny Srauss Clay
e-mail: jsc2t@faraday.clas.virginia.edu

Electronic Antiquity Vol. 1 Issue 1 - June 1993
edited by Peter Toohey and Ian Worthington
antiquity-editor@classics.Server.edu.au
ISSN 1320-3606