Click to copy, then share by pasting into your messages, comments, social media posts and websites.
Click to copy, then add into your webpages so users can view and engage with this video from your site.
Report Content
We also accept reports via email. Please see the Guidelines Enforcement Process for instructions on how to make a request via email.
Thank you for submitting your report
We will investigate and take the appropriate action.
Sappho’s poem on old age, in ancient Greek (Fragment 58, the Tithonus poem, or New Sappho from 2004)
This poem was restored less than twenty years ago, after the discovery of new fragments of papyrus. It is one of the vanishingly few complete poems of Sappho.
My translation is free to copy for any and all purposes under CC-BY-4.0 (attribution only). For the sake of neatness, the Greek text has been presented without any marks of textual restoration.
Line 2, which makes mention of the lyre with a tortoise-shell resonator ("χελύνναν"), would appear to allude to the god Hermes, who invented the instrument. (Furley 2022:24.) The gifts of the _Muses_, then, are placed in antithesis with the gift of _Hermes_. This idea may not be intuitive at first glance, because the lyre is also traditionally associated with the Muses themselves. (e. g., from Pindar's Pythian 1: "Golden lyre! rightful joint possession of Apollo and the violet-haired Muses.")
This poem, I think, is reminiscent of what Longinus says of Fragment 31, or the Ode to a Loved One: that Sappho is sublime because "she chooses the most striking circumstances involved in whatever she is describing, and combines them into one animate whole." We find here the same process at work; it is only that, in the Tithonus fragment, she is concerned with the symptoms of old age, as opposed to those of a lover. The two poems also share a dramatic quality, as though they were monologues excerpted from some tragedy.
Where, however, the Tithonus fragment differs from 31, is in the addition of a philosophical component. It is not merely self-descriptive; the last six lines of the poem being an abstract meditation on the inevitability of ageing. In a gnomic maxim, line 8 summarizes the whole argument; and the fable of Tithonus serves both to emphasize this argument, and to mix pleasure with instruction. I say pleasure, because the fable is a charming story with imagery that is striking and beautiful.
Metre: acephalus hipponactean with double choriambic expansion
× – ᴗ ᴗ – – ᴗ ᴗ – – ᴗ ᴗ – ᴗ – –
Errata: "Σαπφοῦς," in the subtitles, is missing a capital letter. "τρίχες" has a comma next to it.
Transcript:
Cling, my children, to the beautiful gifts of the dark-breasted Muses, and to the shrill-toned, tortoise-timbred lyre, that loves to sing. But as for me, though once my skin was soft, now old age has overtaken it, and my hairs have changed to white from black. My life has grown heavy, and my knees cannot carry me; though once, to be sure, they were as nimble in dance as the little fawns. When I think of what has happened to me, I often sigh; but then, what can I do? To become ageless is impossible for one who is a man. Indeed it is even said of Tithonus, that Dawn, with her rosy forearms, bewildered with love, once carried him to the ends of the earth, while he was beautiful and young. But despite this, even him a grey old age caught up with in time, though he had an immortal spouse!
ὔμμες πεδὰ Μοίσαν ἰοκόλπων κάλα δῶρα, παῖδες,
σπουδάσδετε καὶ τὰν φιλάοιδον λιγύραν χελύνναν·
ἔμοι δ' ἄπαλον πρίν ποτ' ἔοντα χρόα γῆρας ἤδη
ἐπέλλαβε, λεῦκαι δ' ἐγένοντο τρίχες ἐκ μελαίναν·
βάρυς δέ μ' ὀ θῦμος πεπόηται, γόνα δ' οὐ φέροισι,
τὰ δή ποτα λαίψηῥ ἔον ὄρχησθ' ἴσα νεβρίοισι.
τὰ μὲν στεναχίσδω θαμέως· ἀλλὰ τί κεν ποείην;
ἀγήραον ἄνθρωπον ἔοντ' οὐ δύνατον γένεσθαι.
καὶ γάρ ποτα Τίθωνον ἔφαντο βροδόπαχυν Αὔων,
ἔρῳ φυράθεισαν βάμεν' εἰς ἔσχατα γᾶς φέροισαν,
ἔοντα κάλον καὶ νέον, ἀλλ' αὖτον ὔμως ἔμαρψε
χρόνῳ πόλιον γῆρας, ἔχ̣οντ' ἀθανάταν ἄκοιτιν.
Category | Arts & Literature |
Sensitivity | Normal - Content that is suitable for ages 16 and over |
Playing Next
Related Videos
1 year, 1 month ago
Shakespeare's Sonnets 18 and 116, read in a 17th century pronunciation
1 year, 3 months ago
Psalm 114, tr. into Homeric Greek by John Milton
1 year, 4 months ago
Lord Byron's The Maid of Athens (a poem)
1 year, 5 months ago
Warning - This video exceeds your sensitivity preference!
To dismiss this warning and continue to watch the video please click on the button below.
Note - Autoplay has been disabled for this video.