Let's sing for the couple!

Today we have a poem in Sapphic stanzas which comes from two papyrus fragments, both from Oxyrhynchus, namely P.Oxy. 1231 fr. 56, and P.Oxy. 2166(a) fr. 6a, which join together as can be seen in this picture of both. Bergk doesn't have it, Edmonds only had 1231, so my text, as deduced from the papyri (one is in an image, one is from the addenda of P.Oxy. XXI), will look like Campbell's, with perhaps some restorations from Edmonds. This is, in fact, a wedding song, but I isolated it since I thought it deserved its own post, being two full stanzas as opposed to scattered holey lines. Note: I "glitched" my way out of a display problem by exploiting the fact that ı (dotless i) and ι (iota) look identical in the blog's font to substitute ι̣ (iota with dot below) with ı̣ (dotless i with dot below), which displays, as you saw, the dot under the letter and not 1km to the left. Keep that in mind in case you copypaste. [Future me goes WTF, has the font changed since? Because now the iota and dotless i look different, and the display problem doesn't exist…] I can't figure out why the left column is all a few pixels further up than the right one. «Tu͞um cănānt [spōn]sǣ vĭŏlǣquĕ sīnū» has the -que in the wrong place and sīnū is actually sĭnū (the long-i variant being another word). Let me cheat my way to a viōlæ and fix both problems. 8/7/19 23:57. This was certainly done by 2/5/11, at least the Italian version which features in a file from that date. Let's get to it!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . νύκτ[. . . ]. [ ] πάρθενοι δ[ὲ ταίσδεσι πρὸς θύραισιν] παννυχίσδοι[σ]α̣̣ι[, πολύολβε γάμβρε,] σὰν ἀείδοιε̣ν φ[ιλότατα καὶ νύμ-] φας ἰοκόλπω. ἀλλ᾽ ἐγέρθε̣ı̣ς, ἠϊθ[έοις ἐταίροις] στεῖχε σοὶς ὐμάλικ̣[ας, ὠς ἐλάσσω] ἤπερ ὄσσον ἀ λιγ̣ύφω̣[νος ὄρνις] ὔπνον [ἴ]δωμ̣εν. [–u–x–uu–u–x –u–x–uu–u–x –u–x–uu–u–x Notte [u–x] Che fanci͜ulle cantino [di͜anzi͜ a queste Porte, sposo molto felice,] deste Tutta notte sta[n]do, l’a[mor che veste] Te͜ e la tua sposa Sen di viola; desto, da͜i non s[posati] Tuo͜i co͜etan[e͜i] va’, [ché minor s]i͜an dati Sonni͜ a no͜i, o quanti [all’uccel] son dati Vo[ce]͜ armoniosa.

[–u–x–uu–u–x –u–x–uu–u–x –u–x–uu–u–x] Nōct[uu–x] [Iānŭīs hīs āntĕ quĭdēm] pŭēllǣ Nōctĕ, [ō lǣtīssĭmĕ spōnsĕ,] tōtā Tu͞um cănānt [spōn]sǣquĕ sĭnū vĭōlǣ [Māgnŭm] ă[mōrĕm]. Ēxcĭtūs sĕd ī [cŏmĭtēs] tŭōs ăd Ānn’ ĕōrū[nd’] āc sĭnĕ [mūljĕr’, ūt nōs] Quāntŭm [āvīs] dūlcĭcă[nēns, mĭnōrĕm] Sōmn’ [h]ăbĕāmŭs. [–u–x–uu–u– –u–x–uu–u– –u–x–uu–u– Night [uu–] And may maidens, [happiest groom, here stay ’Fore these doors] all night, get to sing they may Of your vi͞olet-bosomèd [bri]de today [And th’ love you share]. But, awoken, to ev’ry same-a[ge friend] Who n[o wife has] go, so that Sleep may [l]end Us as long or [less] than the [birds] doth mend Which sweet vo[ice] bear.

References

• Grenfell and Hunt on Oxyrhynchus papyri;
• Edmonds' edition of Sappho;
• Campbell's edition of Sappho;
• Bergk's edition of Sappho;
• Diehls' Supplementum Lyricum;
• Greek Wikisource;
• Other Greek Wikisource link;
• Wharton's edition of Sappho;
• SaffoComm1.doc;
• safopoemas;
• S.B. Palmer's The Complete Poems Of Sappho;
• Bibliotheca Augustana;
• Carson's edition of Sappho (not available online).

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.