Chapter X: Miscellaneous 152 (5)

[1] Prof. Domenico Comparetti has lately (1876) published an essay on the
authenticity of this Epistle and on its value in elucidating the
history of Sappho. After minutely examining all the evidence against
it, he concludes that it is the genuine work of Ovid. And in 1885 De
Vries brought out an elaborate dissertation on the same subject; he
proves, almost to a certainty, that Ovid wrote the Epistle in
question. But the fact remains that it is absent from all the oldest
and best MSS., and was only given its present place in Ovid's _Heroic
Epistles_ by Heinsius in 1629. Even if it be genuine, we may safely
aver that in Ovid's day it was far more difficult to estimate Sappho's
character rightly than it is now. The Romans, we can well believe,
were likely to regard her in no other light than that in which she had
been portrayed by the facile and unscrupulous comedians of Athens.

[2] The exact site of Naucr[)a]tis was unknown until December 1884, when
Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie, acting as agent for the Egypt Exploration
Fund, discovered it at Nebireh, or rather close to El Gaief, a modern
Arab village on the Rosetta mouth of the Nile, about forty miles from
the present sea-coast. It is near the edge of the Delta, some six
miles N.E. of Tel-el-Barûd, a railway station nearly midway between
Alexandria and Cairo. Before Mr. Petrie's explorations, Naucr[)a]tis
had been sought for several miles nearer the sea than it actually lay,
and its identification had been despaired of. For centuries it was the
only city in Egypt in which the Greeks were permitted to settle and
carry on commerce unmolested. Ionians, Dorians, and Aeolians there
united in a sort of Hanseatic league, with special representatives and
a common sanctuary, the Panhell[=e]nion--which served as a tie among
them. This rich colony remained in faithful connection with the
mother-country, contributed to public works in Hellas, received
political fugitives from that home as guests, and made life fair for
them, as for its own children, after the Greek model. The women and
the flower-garlands of Naucr[)a]tis were unsurpassed in beauty.

[3] Psammetichus flourished about 588 B.C. He was the Pharaoh-hophra
mentioned by the prophet Jeremiah (xliv. 30), whose house in Tahpanhes
has been recently discovered by Mr. Petrie.

[4] Such light as can be thrown upon the legend from Comparative
Mythology, and from the possible etymologies of the names of Sappho
and Phaon, has been, I fear rather inconclusively, gathered by
Leonello Modona in his _La Saffo storica_ (Florence, 1878). Human
nature, however, varies so little from age to age, that I think it
better to judge the story as it has come down to us, than to resort to
the most erudite guessing.

[5] Sappho's riddle is translated in full by Colonel Higginson in his
_Atlantic Essays_, p. 321.

[6] A quaint mediæval commentator on Horace, quoted by Professor
Comparetti, says this passage (_querentem Sappho puellis de
popularibus_) refers to Sappho's complaining, even in Hades, of her
Lesbian fellow-maidens for not loving the youth with whom she was
herself so much in love.

[7] [Greek: poikilothron'] = richly worked throne, is by some read [Greek:
poikilophron] = full of various wiles, subtle-minded.

[8] When _Fatima_ was first published (1832) this motto was prefixed--

[Greek: Phainetai moi kênos isos theoisin]
[Greek: emmen anêr],

showing Tennyson's acknowledgments to Sappho.

[9] Line 19, 'quas _non_ sine crimine amavi,' which Pope translates thus,
is read in many old texts 'quas _hic_ sine crimine amavi' = whom here
I blamelessly loved; and even if the former reading be adopted, it
must be remembered that crimen means 'an accusation' more often than
it does 'a crime.'

[10] Anne Lefèvre, daughter of Tanneguy Lefèvre [Tanaquillus Faber], born
at Saumur about 1654, married André Dacier in 1683 and died at the
Louvre, 1720.