Monday 6 November 2017

Even gods celebrate marriages

Today we have a Sappho fragment, which may be considered a wedding song, but has a mythical flavor to it, which is what warranted a separate post for this. This is a quote from Athenaeus's Deipnosophistæ, aka "Dinner of the learned". I will not make a critical note, because all I would say is Edmods, Bergk and Campbell each have slightly different versions in verse splitting and text, and I chose like the first one I found out of laziness and I'm stuck with that choice because of the translations and why make a difference from this post to the All Sappho posts for that? So I'll just give you the text I translated back in the days and the translations, without even quoting the Paracritical Note.
Well I will definitely go more in detail about this in its Ψάπφω ἀ Λεσβία video, but here I'll just say I had two versions of the text back in the day. Indeed, the blog versions below are based on one version of the text, the one used in files:
  1. The Latin version appears in blog form in SP3, so it's from between 21/8/10 and 6/9/10, except for:
    • The change Et ambrosiæ -> Atqu'ambrosiæ, which was done in this post on 29/1/18 (no idea why that probably-14:51 edit isn't reported in the Fb posts post);
    • The change ambrosiæ 'llic -> ambrosi' illic; now, this is annotated in SP3, but I ignored the annotation back then, possibly to avoid the i-i clash that ambrosi'illic causes; however, I'm not sure I can prodelide illic like that, so I'm taking the safe route for this post;
    • There is another annotation, which seems to change "adorabant" to "in exorabant", so a very daring (read: silly) switcheroo of "in" with "bibendo", "in bibendo" = "by drinking", I guess; I'm not taking it up now;
  2. The Italian translation also appears in SP3, so same date range; the annotations here are the commas of l. 4, which I take up now, the comma of l. 5, which I took up in S6/7 (thus within 2/11/10), and "E bevver" -> "Libaron", also taken up in S6/7;
  3. The English translation also appears in SP3, this time in blog form.
I don't know what meter I was seeing here exactly, but I do know that on 8/9/10 I took up an alternate l. 3 «Ἔρμαις δ’ ἔλεν ὄλπιν θέοισ’ οἰνοχόησαι», amending it to «Ἔρμαις ἔλεν ὄλπιν δὲ θέοισ’ οἰνοχόησαι», thus making the meter:

x–uu, –x
x–uu, –x
– –uu, – –uu, – –uu, –x
x–uu, –x
x–uu, –x
– –uu, – –uu, –u–x

With that, I reviewed Latin and Italian to fit the new meter, and decided not to bother with English because it had been hard as it was and changing meter was gonna be impossible. It's good to know that even then there were things too crazy for me to try :). Yet, l. 2 is "was stirred in there" in one version and "was stirred up in there" in SPN. And ll. 3 and 6 also change: seems I changed my mind when copying that extract of SPN with the computer. That's within 13/9/10. It seems I forgot to review l. 3 of the Latin, which doesn't scan in those SPN versions. I call them thus because they're tucked away in SPN1, in the Paracritical Note, that is. Seems I also reviewed ll. 2 and 5 of the Greek.
κῆ δ᾽ ἀμβροσίας μὲν
κράτηρ ἐκέκρατ',
Ἔρμαις δ᾽ ἔλων ὄλπιν θέοισ’ ἐοινοχόησε.
κῆνοι δ’ ἄρα πάντες
5 καρχάσι’ ἦχον
κἄλειβον· ἀράσαντο δὲ πάμπαν ἔσλα
τῷ γάμβρῳ.


D’ambrosia ivi
Crater si mesceva,
Che presa l’olpe Ermes a’ de͜i com’ vin versòe.
E tutti, giulivi,
Carchesî avevan,
Libaron; bene͜ ognora ognun pregòe
Pel sposo.
Ātqu' āmbrŏsĭ' īllīc
Crātēr părātūst.
Hērmēsquĕ prēns’ ōlpē dĕīs fūdīt t’ ĕă vīnă.
Īllīquĕ tŭm ōmnēs
Cārchēsĭ’ īllû̆m
Bĭbēnd’ ădōrābānt bŏnă tōtă pr’ īllō
Spōnsō.


Ambrosia͜ in a crater
Was stirred in there,
Hermes took the olpe and did pour that wine to th’ Gods
And they all there did
Carchesia bear,
And drinking they prayed to ask for all the goods
For th’ husband.
κῆ δ᾽ ἀμβροσίας μὲν
κράτηρ ἐκέκρατο,
Ἔρμαις ἔλεν ὄλπιν δὲ θέοισ’ οἰνοχόησαι.
κῆνοι δ’ ἄρα πάντες
5 καρχάσιά τ’ ἦχον
κἄλειβον· ἀράσαντο δὲ πάμπαν ἔσλα
τῷ γάμβρῳ.


D’ambrosia ivi
Crater si mesceva,
Ch’Ermes presa l’olpe agli de͜i com’ vin versòe.
E tutti giulivi
Carchesî avevan
Bevver; bene sempre͜ allora͜ ognun pregòe
Pel sposo.
Ātqu' āmbrŏsĭ' īllīc
Crātēr părātūst.
Hērmēsquĕ prēns’ ōlpē dĕīs fūdīt t’ ĕă vīnă.
Īllīquĕ tŭm ōmnēs
Cārchēsĭ’ īllû̆m
Bĭbēnd’ ădōrābānt bŏnă tōtă pr’ īllō
Spōnsō.


Ambrosia͜ in a crater
Was stirred up in there,
And Hermes took the olpe and poured that wine to the Gods
And they all there did
Carchesia bear,
And drank; and they did pray to ask all the goods
For th’ husband.


References
Note: these are all the references I ever used for Sappho as of now. I may not have used all of these in the present post.

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