Chapter 1. Introduction Marilyn B. Skinner Papyrological finds, no matter how momentous for papyrologists and other specialists studying the ancient world, ordinarily do not make international headlines. Yet M. L. West’s 2005 article in the Times Literary Supplement announcing the apparent recovery of a virtually intact poem by Sappho, only the fourth to have survived almost complete, was quickly picked up by newspapers on both sides… Read more
Chapter 2. Sappho Fragments 58–59: Text, Apparatus Criticus, and Translation Dirk Obbink “The New Sappho” actually comprises a group of papyrus fragments, quotations, and testimonia for Sappho’s poetry dating back more than two millennia. Scholars who were amazed to learn that Sappho had “composed a new poem” when Edgar Lobel published it a half-century ago—she had, after all, been dead for over 2600 years—would have been… Read more
Chapter 3. The Cologne Sappho: Its Discovery and Textual Constitution Jürgen Hammerstaedt Discovery and Acquisition In 2002 a group of more than 20 papyri was on the market. They belonged to a private collector outside Egypt. We do not know how and when the papyri became his property. But only after acquisition by the Cologne Papyrus Collection could these ancient documents of inestimable cultural value… Read more
Chapter 4. The New Sappho Poem (P.Köln 21351 and 21376): Key to the Old Fragments André Lardinois The Egyptian desert continues to reveal to us its treasures. The most spectacular find in recent years is probably the Milan papyrus, containing over one hundred new epigrams of the Hellenistic poet Posidippus, published in 2001. [1] No less spectacular is the… Read more
Part 3. Athens Chapter 8. Arete and Nausicaa {338|341} §3.1 Odyssey 3 brings together two figures, Nestor and Athena, whose functions are related in the story of Odysseus’s return: Nestor is the “homebringer” who ten years earlier failed to bring Odysseus back from Troy; Athena is the goddess who has now undertaken to free Odysseus from Calypso’s island and bring about his long delayed return home. Read more
Chapter 9. The City Goddess of Athens {391|393} §3.39 The Phaeacian king and queen are the key to the relationship between Athena Polias and Erechtheus as it once was. Aspects of this relationship, like Athena’s change from virgin goddess to mother goddess in the context of the Plynteria, can be reconstructed only indirectly from the Phaeacian parallel and must therefore remain obscure; other aspects of the relationship… Read more
Endnotes, Part 3 EN3.1 (Endnote to n3.16) {486|487} Cults of Damia and Auxesia had elements in common with cults of Demeter and Kore; Pausanias, who saw and sacrificed to the images of Damia and Auxesia in Aegina, says that their sacrifice was like that in Eleusis (εἶδόν τε τὰ ἀγάλματα καὶ ἔθυσά σφισι κατὰ <τὰ> αὐτὰ καθὰ δὴ καὶ Ἐλευσῖνι θύειν νομίζουσιν, Pausanias 2.30.4). Herodotus too… Read more
Part 4. Ionia Chapter 10. The Panionic League {511|515} §4.1 Nestor, as discussed in Part 2 above, plays an extensive role beneath the surface of the Homeric poems; this role is based on Nestor’s twin myth, which is itself kept hidden from view in the poems. Nestor’s brother Periklymenos, who is mentioned but once in the poems, is Nestor’s partner in this old myth, which is… Read more
Chapter 11. The Festival of the Panionia and the Homeric Poems {550|551} §4.20 The Phaeacians, as argued earlier, represent the Ionians in the one context in which they were a single people, namely the celebration of the Panionia. With their love of songs, dances, and banquets, the Phaeacians bring out the festive side of the Ionians, and this is for good reason if they are meant to… Read more
Endnotes, Part 4 EN4.1 (Endnote to n4.22) {620|621} I agree with the viewpoint expressed by Cook 1975:784–785 that Athens cannot be removed from the Ionian migration, but I think that he claims too much for Athens’ role, as in the case of Colophon: “Many modern scholars have contended that this claim [that Athens was the main focus of emigration] was invented by the Athenians in the… Read more
