as each reconstruction reflects a particular interpretation, the problem is, at a certain level, intractable: whether the doublet originally contained an exhortation (as West would have it), or a values-statement by the poem’s first-person persona (as elsewhere in Sappho—so Gronewald/Daniel and Yatromanolakis) depends upon individual scholars’ perceptions and projections of Sappho and her work. For a poet whose corpus was said in antiquity to have totaled nine books (AP 7.17; see further Prauscello 2021), even reasonable inferences are based on only the small sample that survives. Such hazards are inherent to papyrological work and the study of lyric. The most recent edition by Neri-Cinti (2017) conservatively declines to supplement the Greek text.
Figure 7.10 P.Köln inv. 21351 fr.a. The last four lines preserve the beginning of the “Tithonus Song” or “Old Age Song” (fr. 58). (© Institut für Altertumskunde an der Universität zu Köln. Used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.)
[× ‒ ⏑ ⏑ ‒ ‒ ἰ]ο̣κ[ό]λ̣πων κάλα δῶρα, παῖδ⌊εϲ⌋,
[× ‒ ⏑ ⏑ ‒ ‒] ̣ φιλάοιδον λιγύραν ⌊χελύνναν⌋ ·
(For an up-to-date critical apparatus of this poem see Benelli 2017: 2.268, and for discussion of the interpretive possibilities 2.278–81).
Marginal Notes, Sigla, and Corrections
In addition to the text itself, lyric papyri occasionally contain additional material of practical and exegetical value: critical symbols such as the paragraphus or the diplē; punctuation; diacritical signs (i.e., breathings, accents); marginalia (including corrections or annotations); and metrical, stichometrical, or colometrical marks (Figure 7.11). Some are the work of the original scribe, while others were added later by one or more users. Accents assist in reading, scansion, as well as the analysis of dialect (as in P.Fouad inv. 239, above; see further, Dialect and Meter, below). Critical symbols, by contrast, tend to mark a division of one sort or another: in lyric papyri one finds especially the asterisk (※), paragraphus ( ⸏ ) coronis (⸎, essentially a paragraphus with decorative curlicue), and diplē obelismenē (˒–, or “forked paragraphus”) (Figure 7.12). The coronis and asterisk most commonly mark the end of a poem, but can do so in conjunction both with one another and with other symbols, which are predominately used for metrical divisions (i.e., distinguishing stanzas or triads). Other sigla can indicate textual variants, omissions, or marginal notes, though their purpose is sometimes opaque.
Figure 7.11 P.Köln 2.59 (= Alcaeus fr. 298), with accents as well as long and short quantities marked. (© Institut für Altertumskunde an der Universität zu Köln. Used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.)
Figure 7.12 P.Oxy. 26.2441 (= Pindar, Paeans 14-15 S-M), with accents, marginal comments, coronis, and asterisk. (Courtesy of The Egypt Exploration Society and the University of Oxford Imaging Papyri Project.)
Sometimes practical aids have exegetical value, too. Thanks to the stichometrical indicator ΧΗΗΗΔΔ in the colophon of one fragment of P.Oxy. 10.1231 (Figure 7.13), we know that the first book of the Alexandrian edition of Sappho contained 1,320 verses (= 330 Sapphic stanzas); the numeral Ν (= 13) in the margin of P.Oxy. 33.2617 similarly marks the 1,300th line of Stesichorus’ Geryoneis, a scale of narrative that confirms the ancient attribution of multi-volume works to his oeuvre (see Finglass, this volume). Other marginalia are significant for providing a glimpse of ancient scholarship (Figure 7.14). Such research was originally produced as independent hypomnemata (= commentaries), but was subsequently incorporated into texts by users in the form of notes. Sometimes, as was previously mentioned, textual variants or omissions are marked, but twenty-first-century students of lyric will appreciate that there were aspects of the poetry which required commentary and exegesis in antiquity, as well—especially technical matters (e.g., dialect, meter) and interpretive ones (e.g., historical context). All such ancient scholarship preserved on papyrus is now in the process of being collected in the multi-volume Commentaria et lexica Graeca in papyris reperta (= CLGP). To date, the scholarship on Alcaeus, Alcman, Anacreon, and Bacchylides has been published; that on Pindar, Simonides, Stesichorus, and lyric adespota is expected in future volumes.
Figure 7.13 P.Oxy. 10.1231, fr. 56 (= Sappho fr. 30), now in the Bodleian Library MS. Gr. Class. c. 76. This fragment preserves the final column of the first book of the Alexandrian edition of Sappho, with coronis and stichometrical colophon. (Courtesy of The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford.)
Dialect and Meter
Lyric poetry admits a variety of dialectal forms: depending on the poet, a poem’s genre, or its meter, Doric, Aeolic, or Ionic features might predominate over one another. The emergence of a lyric koinē, furthermore, means that the relationship between a poet’s vernacular and Kunstsprache is neither obvious nor straightforward (see de Kreij, this volume). For the papyrologist’s purposes, dialect is a particularly important basis for attribution: in the case of the first fragment of P.Oxy. 35.2735, for example, dialect and Doric accentuation alone are sufficient to whittle the authorial possibilities to two—Stesichorus or Ibycus (Finglass 2017c: 21) (Figure 7.15).
Figure 7.14 P.Oxy. 21.2295, frr. 18 and 28 (= Alcaeus frr. 157 and 167), with marginalia, including metrical observations (fr. 18.3) and a variant reading (fr. 18.8) from the grammarian Apion. (Courtesy of The Egypt Exploration Society and the University of Oxford Imaging Papyri Project.)
Figure 7.15 P.Oxy. 35.2735, fr. 1 (= Ibycus fr. 282A), with Doric accentuation. (Courtesy of The Egypt Exploration Society and the University of Oxford Imaging Papyri Project.)
Conclusions regarding dialect are often buttressed or refined by analyses of diction and of meter, but certainty on all fronts is uncommon. The combination of Ionic dialect and meter in P.Oxy. 22.2321 (Figure 7.16), for example, means that ascription to Anacreon “will hardly be disputed” (in the words of its editor, Edgar Lobel), even though there is no exact parallel in his extant oeuvre for its particular metrical arrangement—three-line stanzas in varieties of anaclastic ionics. The previously mentioned supplements to P.Fouad inv. 239, similarly, build upon that fragment’s Aeolic dialect by way of a metrical hypothesis, namely, that the poem’s meter was a glyconic with dactylic expansion (gl2d). Since the second book of the Alexandrian edition of Sappho consisted of poems in this meter, and since the line-beginnings in the papyrus’ second column are also consistent with