Sappho 104

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jeidsath
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Sappho 104

Post by jeidsath »

Reading to my kids, we came across the following:

Image

The next morning my youngest repeated the second line from memory, obviously impressed by poetry about sheep, goats, and children. Unfortunately, when I went to look it up in Greek, I was a bit disappointed:

Ἔσπερε πάντα φέρων ὄσα φαίνολις ἐσκέδασ’ Αὔως,
†φέρεις ὄιν, φέρεις αἶγα, φέρεις ἄπυ† μάτερι παῖδα.

Looking through the sources, here's my best attempt at fixing this into something I can read aloud to them, but I'm very disappointed to have lost the poor sheep, and hoping someone can do better, hopefully with an ὄιν in there:

Ἔσπερε πάντα φέρεις ὄσα φαίνολις ἐσκέδασ’ Αὔως,
αἶγα φέρεις οἶκόνδε φέρεις καὶ μάτερι παῖδα

Best I can do keeping the sheep:

οἶν τε φέρεις καί τ' αἶγα φέρεις καὶ μάτερι παῖδα

Like the one source I saw (scholiast, I think?) I really like the φέρεις...φέρεις...φέρεις sound.

L-P gives sources as φέρεις οἶνον φέρεις αἶγα φέρεις ματέρι παῖδα and separately φέρεις οἶον φέρεις οἶνον φέρεις αἶγα φέρεις ἄποιον μητέρι παῖδα
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

Joel Eidsath -- jeidsath@gmail.com

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