Английская Википедия:Brothers Poem

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Black and white photograph of a fragment of papyrus with Greek text
P. Sapph. Obbink: the fragment of papyrus on which the Brothers Poem was discovered

The Brothers Poem or Brothers Song is a series of lines of verse attributed to the archaic Greek poet Sappho (Шаблон:C.Шаблон:C.), which had been lost since antiquity until being rediscovered in 2014. Most of its text, apart from its opening lines, survives. It is known only from a papyrus fragment, comprising one of a series of poems attributed to Sappho. It mentions two of her brothers, Charaxos and Larichos; the only known mention of their names in Sappho's writings, though they are known from other sources. These references, and aspects of the language and style, have been used to establish her authorship.

The poem is structured as an address – possibly by Sappho herself – to an unknown person. The speaker chastises the addressee for saying repeatedly that Charaxos will return (possibly from a trading voyage), maintaining that his safety is in the hands of the gods and offering to pray to Hera for his return. The narrative then switches focus from Charaxos to Larichos, who the speaker hopes will relieve the family of their troubles when he becomes a man.

Scholars tend to view the poem's significance more in historical rather than in literary terms. Research focuses on the identities of the speaker and the addressee, and their historical groundings. Other writers examine the poem's worth in the corpus of Sappho's poetry, as well as its links with Greek epic, particularly the homecoming stories of the Odyssey. Various reconstructions of the missing opening stanzas have been offered.

Preservation

Sappho is thought to have written around 10,000 lines of poetry, of which only around 650 survive. Only one poem, the Ode to Aphrodite, is known to be complete; many preserve only a single word.Шаблон:Sfn In 2014, Dirk Obbink, Simon Burris, and Jeffrey Fish published five fragments of papyrus, containing nine separate poems by Sappho. Three were previously unknown,Шаблон:Efn and the find amounted to the largest expansion of the surviving corpus of Sappho's work for 92 years.Шаблон:Sfn The most impressive is the Brothers Poem fragment, called P. Sapph. Obbink,Шаблон:Sfn part of a critical edition of Book I of Sappho's poetry.Шаблон:EfnШаблон:Sfn The remaining four fragments, P. GC. inv. 105 frr. 1–4, are written in the same hand, and have the same line-spacing.Шаблон:Sfn

P. Sapph. Obbink measures 176 mm × 111 mm.Шаблон:Sfn Carbon-dating places it as between the first and third centuries AD,Шаблон:Sfn which is consistent with the third century AD handwriting.Шаблон:Sfn The roll of which P. Sapph. Obbink was part would have been produced in Alexandria, and likely taken to Fayum.Шаблон:Sfn There is evidence that the roll was damaged and repaired; it was later reused as cartonnage – a material similar to papier-mâché made with linen and papyrus – which Obbink suggests was used as a book cover.Шаблон:EfnШаблон:Sfn P. Sapph. Obbink preserves 20 lines of the Brothers Poem, followed by 9 lines of another work by Sappho, the Kypris Poem.Шаблон:Sfn It is, according to author and scholar James Romm, the best-preserved extant Sappho papyrus.Шаблон:Sfn A second papyrus, Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 2289, published by Edgar Lobel in 1951, preserves enough of the Brothers Poem to show that at least one stanza preceded the well-preserved portion.Шаблон:Sfn

Provenance

Soon after the discovery of P. Sapph. Obbink was made public in January 2014, scholars began to raise questions about the provenance. The initial version of Obbink's article announcing the discovery said that the papyrus was in a private collection, but contained no discussion of its origin or ownership history, as would be usual when reporting on a newly-discovered ancient artefact; C. Michael Sampson describes this absence as "anomalous and suspicious".Шаблон:Sfn Archaeologists immediately criticised this lack of transparency, and the initial version of Obbink's article was soon taken down.Шаблон:Sfn Since then, several contradictory claims have been made about the history of P. Sapph. Obbink.

The earliest discussions of the provenance began shortly after the announcement of the discovery in January 2014. In an article in the Sunday Times, Bettany Hughes reported that the papyrus was originally owned by a German officer,Шаблон:Sfn while Obbink wrote in the Times Literary Supplement that it was found in mummy cartonnage.Шаблон:Sfn Obbink later claimed that the German officer mentioned by Hughes was an "imaginative fantasy",Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn and that the original belief that the papyrus had come from mummy cartonnage was due to a misidentification.Шаблон:Sfn Based on information contained in a brochure for a sale of the papyrus compiled by Christie's in 2015, Sampson identifies the German officer mentioned by Hughes as Ranier Kriedel and argues that this initial story was fabricated to cover for defects in the papyrus' true provenance.Шаблон:Sfn

In 2015, Dirk Obbink presented a second account of the provenance in a paper delivered to the Society for Classical Studies. He claimed that the papyrus derived from the collection of David Moore Robinson, who had purchased it in 1954 from an Egyptian dealer, Sultan Maguid Sameda, and on his death left it to the University of Mississippi Library.Шаблон:EfnШаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn Part of the Robinson collection was offered for sale through Christie's in 2011; Obbink reported that P. Sapph. Obbink was included in this sale, and was bought by a collector in London.Шаблон:Sfn It was this anonymous owner who gave Obbink, the head of Oxford University's Oxyrhynchus Papyri project, access to the papyrus and permission to publish it.Шаблон:Sfn However, Dorothy King observed that Christie's description of the papyri in their 2011 sale did not match up with what is known of P. Sapph. Obbink, and argued that it was not in fact part of the 2011 sale.Шаблон:Sfn Sampson notes that the presence of the papyrus in the 2011 sale is unverifiable,Шаблон:Sfn and in an article with Anna Uhlig for Eidolon, observes that no documentation supporting this account has been produced, and that the evidence for it is "principally Obbink's word".Шаблон:Sfn Following the publication of Sampson's 2020 article, in which he concluded that "I doubt [Obbink's 2015 account of the provenance] is true even in part", Anton Bierl and André Lardinois published a retraction to Obbink's chapter in The Newest Sappho which repeated this account, citing the "tainted" provenance, and Obbink's failure to provide a "substantive response" to Sampson's allegations.Шаблон:Sfn

A third possible provenance was reported in 2020, when Brent Nongbri published an email from Mike Holmes, the Director of the Museum of the Bible Scholars Initiative, which revealed evidence that P.GC. inv. 105 had been sourced from Turkish antiquities dealer Yakup Eksioglu.Шаблон:Sfn The Atlantic reported that Eksioglu had corroborated this, and had also claimed that P.Sapph.Obbink came from his collection.Шаблон:Sfn In an article for the Center for Hellenic Studies, Theodore Nash concluded that the papyrus was "almost guaranteed" to be connected to Eksiolgu.Шаблон:Sfn According to Eksioglu, P. Sapph. Obbink and P. GC inv. 105 had been in his family collection for over a century, though he provided no documentation for this.Шаблон:Sfn Brian D. Hyland rejects this as "simply not believable".Шаблон:Sfn

Critics of the lack of transparency around the provenance of the papyrus have suggested that this is to hide a questionable origin. Sampson suggests that the accounts given in 2014 and 2015 were fabricated to conceal an undocumented – or "unmentionable" – true origin.Шаблон:Sfn Theodore Nash argues that "the convoluted cartonnage narrative was simply a red herring to legitimise a recently looted papyrus".Шаблон:Sfn Hyland suggests that the papyri might instead have been smuggled out of Egypt around 2011, during the overthrow of president Mubarak; or that they may have been among the uncatalogued papyri excavated by Grenfell and Hunt at Oxyrhynchus.Шаблон:Sfn

Poem

Content

Mosaic of a woman's head and shoulders
A Roman-era mosaic of Sappho from Sparta

The poem is 20 lines (five stanzas) long and written in Sapphic stanzas,Шаблон:Sfn a metre named after Sappho, which is composed of three long lines followed by one shorter line.Шаблон:Sfn The beginning of the poem is lost, but it is estimated that the complete work was probably between one and three stanzas longer.Шаблон:Sfn It lies within the genre of homecoming prayers;Шаблон:Sfn others of Sappho's works on this theme include fragments 5, 15 and 17.Шаблон:Sfn

The narrative consists of an address to an unnamed listener, structured in two parallel sections, concerning two of Sappho's brothers, Charaxos and Larichos.Шаблон:Sfn The speaker hopes that Charaxos will return successfully from a trading voyage, and that Larichos will grow into manhood,Шаблон:Sfn and take up his position among the elites of society in Lesbos.Шаблон:Sfn

The first two extant stanzas detail Charaxos' arrival. In the first, the speaker reproaches the addressee for repeatedly saying that Charaxos will return "with his ship full",[1]Шаблон:Sfn that only gods can know such things,[2] and that the addressee should send her to pray to Hera for Charaxos' safe return.Шаблон:Sfn The third and fourth stanzas develop into a more general examination of human dependence on gods. The speaker asserts that while human fortunes are changeable ("fair winds swiftly follow harsh gales")[3] Zeus gives good fortune to those he favours. In the final stanza, the speaker hopes that Larichos will "[lift] his head high"[4] and "become an ανερ [man] in all senses", as Obbink puts it,Шаблон:Sfn and release the family from its troubles.Шаблон:Sfn

Authorship

When Obbink published the poem in 2014, he attributed it to Sappho based on its metre, dialect (Aeolic), and mentions of Charaxos and Larichos, both of whom are identified in other sources as her brothers.Шаблон:Sfn It is possible that the text is an ancient forgery; though the song was included in at least some Hellenistic editions of Sappho (from which P. Sapph. Obbink and P. Oxy. 2289 derive), a classical imitation of Sappho is still possible.Шаблон:Sfn Nonetheless, evidence provided by Herodotus indicates that Charaxos was mentioned in poems that were attributed to Sappho during the fifth century BC; therefore it is likely to be at least authentically from archaic Lesbos.Шаблон:Sfn

Characters

Файл:Pais (Médaillon central) – Coupe – peintre de la Cage – MSR – Rituels Grecs – AGER inv G 133.jpg
Youth pouring wine, illustrated on a red-figure cup by the Cage Painter. According to Athenaeus, Larichos was Sappho's brother, and a wine-pourer in his youth.

Neither of the two characters is named.Шаблон:Sfn Whether the speaker can be identified with Sappho herself is central to its interpretation.Шаблон:Sfn André Lardinois observes that most of the identified speakers in Sappho's poetry are female.Шаблон:Sfn Melissa Mueller identifies the speaker as Sappho,Шаблон:Sfn and the poem has generally been interpreted as being autobiographical.Шаблон:Sfn Not all scholars have identified the speaker with the historical Sappho; Bär and Eva Stehle both argue that the speaker is a fictionalised or literary version of Sappho.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn If the speaker is to be identified as Sappho, Obbink suggests that she is to be read as a young woman: her brother Larichos (who can only be six or so years younger than her, as that is how old she was when her father died, in a biographical tradition preserved in Ovid's Heroides) is shortly to come of age (Obbink puts him at around twelve); Sappho-the-speaker is therefore still a teenager herself.Шаблон:Sfn

The addressee of the poem is unnamed in the surviving text,Шаблон:Sfn but many suggestions have been made as to their identity – Camillo Neri lists eleven possible candidates.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Efn Obbink suggests the most likely candidates are Rhodopis or Doricha, described in ancient sources as the lover of Charaxos,Шаблон:Efn and Sappho's mother, to whom Sappho addressed other poems.Шаблон:Sfn Most scholars agree that the addressee is some concerned friend or relative of Charaxos. Many (including Martin L. West, Franco Ferrari, Camillo Neri, and Leslie Kurke) select Sappho's mother as the most likely option.Шаблон:Sfn Giambattista d'Alessio draws parallels with other fragments of Sappho which mention a mother, particularly fragment 9, which also appears to mention a mother in association with religious ritual.Шаблон:Sfn

This is not universally agreed upon. The classical historian Anton Bierl argues that the central dispute of the poem is between masculine and feminine ideologies. He suggests that the speaker's offer to pray to Hera is a "solution appropriate to her gender",Шаблон:Sfn and contrasts with the masculine belief that the family's problems can be solved through Charaxos' pursuit of wealth. He therefore suggests that the addressee is a male relative of Sappho.Шаблон:Sfn Lardinois also believes that the addressee is a man: he argues that Sappho's mother could have gone to pray to Hera herself, and therefore it does not make sense for her to send Sappho on her behalf.Шаблон:Sfn In contrast, Mueller and Leslie Kurke both argue that the addressee is probably meant to be female, based on Sappho's use of the word Шаблон:Lang ("chattering" or "babbling") to describe their speech. The word has negative connotations that would make Sappho unlikely to use it to address a man.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn Anja Bettenworth has argued that the addressee is of a lower social status than Sappho, again based on the use of Шаблон:Lang,Шаблон:Sfn but Kurke argues they are likely to be in a position of authority over Sappho, as she expects them to send her to pray to Hera.Шаблон:Sfn

The final two characters, Charaxos and Larichos, are identified as Sappho's brothers in ancient sources.Шаблон:Sfn Charaxos is first mentioned by Herodotus, who describes his love for the courtesan Rhodopis; Strabo and Athenaeus say that he was a wine trader.Шаблон:Sfn The earliest mention of Larichos comes from Athenaeus, who says that in his youth he was a wine-pourer in the prytaneion (town hall) in Mytilene.Шаблон:Sfn Modern scholars are uncertain whether either was Sappho's actual brother.Шаблон:Sfn For instance, Lardinois sees Charaxos and Larichos as fictional characters: he draws comparisons to the poetry of Archilochus about Lycambes and his daughters, generally considered to be fictionalised.Шаблон:Sfn

Context

Sappho's poetry from the first book of the Alexandrian edition appears to have been about either the family and religious or cultic practices, or about passion and love.Шаблон:Sfn The Brothers Poem focuses on her family.Шаблон:Sfn Its original performance context is uncertain, but most scholars consider that it was intended for monodic performance – that is, by a single singer, rather than a chorus.Шаблон:Sfn As with all of Sappho's poetry the melody that would have accompanied the poem does not survive.Шаблон:Sfn Aristoxenus reports that Sappho used the mixolydian mode, and in antiquity she was associated with the barbitos (a stringed instrument similar to the lyre); based on this information, Armand D'Angour has set the poem to music in an attempt to reconstruct what it might have sounded like in antiquity.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn

Brotherhood was a frequent theme of archaic Greek poetry,Шаблон:Sfn and the relationship between brothers was often used to explore conceptions of proper behaviour.Шаблон:Sfn The Brothers Poem seems to have been one of several about Charaxos and Larichos.Шаблон:Sfn Eva Stehle suggests that it may have been part of a "series of 'brothers poems'",Шаблон:Sfn though David Gribble notes that the fragments of Sappho's work which do survive are insufficient to conclude that she composed a series telling the story of Charaxos' relationship with Doricha.Шаблон:Sfn

Sappho portrays Charaxos as irresponsible, with Larichos as his more respectable foil.Шаблон:Sfn Unlike in the versions of this trope in Homer and Hesiod, Sappho inserts a third, female, figure into the relationship. In this scheme, the figure with moral authority is unable to be the moral example to the wayward Charaxos due to her gender; she must rely on Larichos who still has the potential to become an upstanding adult.Шаблон:Sfn Thus, Laura Swift sees the poem as an example of Sappho reworking established epic tropes from a female perspective – as she also does in fragment 16.Шаблон:Sfn

Anton Bierl identifies seven other fragments of Sappho that seem to have dealt with Charaxos or Doricha.Шаблон:Sfn Like the Brothers Poem, fragments 5, 15, and 17 focus on homecomings;Шаблон:Sfn fragments 5 and 15 are both likely to be about Charaxos,Шаблон:Sfn and Bierl suggests that fragment 17, a cultic hymn referring to Menelaus' visit to Lesbos on his way home from Troy, may be a prayer for a safe journey for Charaxos.Шаблон:Sfn Four other surviving fragments of Sappho, 3, 7, 9, and 20, may all have been connected with the story of Charaxos and Doricha.Шаблон:Sfn

The Brothers Poem follows shortly after fragment 5 in the edition of Sappho preserved by P. Sapph. Obbink, with probably only one column of text between them. Silvio Bär argues that the poem was deliberately positioned here because it was seen as a sort of continuation of that fragment by the editor of the Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poetry.Шаблон:Sfn He suggests that it acts to correct the views put forward in fragment 5: there, Sappho prays to the Nereids, not just for the safe return of her brother but that "whatever his heart desires be fulfilled";[5] in the Brothers Poem she recognises that such a broad request is out of the competence of the Nereids and should more properly be addressed to the goddess Hera.Шаблон:Sfn

A woman sitting on a chair on a balcony
The role of the speaker (possibly Sappho herself) in the Brothers Poem has been compared to that of Penelope in the Odyssey; she awaits the return of Charaxos just as Penelope (depicted here by Heva Coomans) waits for her husband Odysseus.

Links between Homer's Odyssey and the Brothers Poem have been observed by many scholars.Шаблон:Sfn Bär describes the epic as a "crucial intertext" for the Brothers Poem.Шаблон:Sfn The relationship in the poem between the speaker, Charaxos, and Larichos parallels that of Penelope, Odysseus, and Telemachus in Homer:Шаблон:Sfn in the Brothers Poem, the speaker awaits Charaxos' return from overseas and Larichos' coming-of-age; in the Odyssey, Penelope awaits Odysseus' return and Telemachus' coming-of-age.Шаблон:Sfn Additionally, Anton Bierl suggests that the context of Charaxos' being away in Egypt – according to Herodotus, in love with the courtesan Rhodopis – parallels Odysseus' entrapment by Calypso and Circe.Шаблон:Sfn A specific parallel to the Odyssean homecoming narrative is found in line 9 [13]. Sappho uses the adjective Шаблон:Lang ("safe"), which occurs only once in the Odyssey, at 13.43, where Odysseus hopes that he will return to Ithaca to find his family safe – just as the speaker hopes in the third stanza of the Brothers Poem that Charaxos will return to Lesbos to find his family safe.Шаблон:Sfn

Mueller suggests that the Brothers Poem is a deliberate reworking of the Homeric story, focusing on the fraternal relationship between Sappho and Charaxos in contrast to the conjugal one between Odysseus and Penelope.Шаблон:Sfn According to Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi, this should be seen in the context of an archaic Greek tradition of domestic – and specifically sisterly – discourses.Шаблон:Sfn

Along with stories of Odysseus' homecoming in the epic tradition, the Brothers Poem has similarities to several other genres of archaic Greek poetry. Joel Lidov sees it as being in the tradition of prayers for safe returns;Шаблон:Sfn Richard Martin identifies structural similarities to Archilochus' Cologne Epode (fr.196aШаблон:Efn), a piece of iambic invective;Шаблон:Sfn and Peter O'Connell suggests parallels with songs of welcome, in particular Archilochus fr.24.Шаблон:Sfn

Missing stanzas

How much of the Brothers Poem has been lost is unknown. An overlap between P. Oxy. 2289 and P. Sapph. Obbink, the apparent alphabetic arrangement in the Alexandrian edition of her works, and the implausibility of any poem beginning with the word ἀλλά (meaning "but" or "and yet"), suggest that at least one opening stanza is missing.Шаблон:Sfn Bär has argued against this position, noting that the overlap between the Oxyrhynchus and Obbink papyri is sufficiently small (only six characters) as not to be conclusive.Шаблон:Sfn He argues that there are other known exceptions to the alphabetical ordering of the first Alexandrian edition of Sappho's works, thematic reasons why the Brothers Poem might have been placed out of order to follow closely after fragment 5,Шаблон:Sfn and parallels elsewhere in Greek literature for an inceptive ἀλλά.Шаблон:Sfn

Despite Bär's arguments, most authors conclude that the Brothers Poem is missing at least one, and perhaps as many as three stanzas.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn Gauthier Liberman suggests that it was originally seven stanzas long;Шаблон:Sfn Kurke argues it is likely that only one stanza is missing.Шаблон:Sfn There are a variety of theories around the content of the missing stanzas. Mueller suggests that they may have revealed the identity of the addressee.Шаблон:Sfn Joel Lidov proposes that the latterly passive addressee actually speaks in the missing stanzas.Шаблон:Sfn

Obbink provides a reconstruction of a single initial stanza of the poem.Шаблон:Sfn He argues that the mention of Larichos in the later stanza appears too suddenly, and therefore he had probably been mentioned in earlier, now missing, lines.Шаблон:Sfn Athenaeus notes how Sappho often praised Larichos for being a wine-pourer in the prytaneion at Mytilene; this wine-pouring may have been mentioned here.Шаблон:Sfn Obbink also suggests that the opening lines originally contained a mention of the death of Sappho's father when she was young, which was the source of Ovid's anecdote at Heroides 15.61–62.Шаблон:Sfn Kurke has argued that the missing stanza discussed Charaxos, giving the complete poem a symmetry of three stanzas discussing each of the brothers.Шаблон:Sfn

Reception

The discovery of the Brothers Poem, along with fragments of eight other poems – the largest discovery of new material by Sappho in almost a centuryШаблон:Sfn – was the subject of significant media attention.Шаблон:Sfn James Romm, writing in The Daily Beast, called it "a spectacular literary discovery",Шаблон:Sfn and Tom Payne in The Daily Telegraph said that it was "more exciting than a new album by David Bowie".Шаблон:Sfn Other commentators expressed concern about the provenance of the papyrus, fearing that it had been illegally acquired on the black market, or even that it was a forgery like the Gospel of Jesus' Wife.Шаблон:Sfn Douglas Boin in The New York Times criticised the failure to discuss the papyrus' provenance properly as "disturbingly tone deaf to the legal and ethical issues".Шаблон:Sfn Following reports in 2019 that Obbink had illicitly sold several fragments of papyrus to Hobby Lobby, which were then donated to the Green Collection, further questions about the provenance were raised.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn Charlotte Higgins reported in The Guardian that "there are even doubts as to its authenticity. The latest gossip in classical circles is that it might even be a fake. 'Everything about it seems too good to be true,' one senior Cambridge classicist told me."Шаблон:Sfn

Though classicists considered it the "most spectacular" of the 2014 finds,Шаблон:Sfn it is not considered one of Sappho's best works. Martin West originally considered the work to be "very poor stuff" and "frigid juvenilia", though he later toned down his criticism.Шаблон:Sfn Liberman wrote that the poem is clumsy, displaying signs of hasty composition.Шаблон:Sfn Richard Rawles suggested that part of the reason that the poem was initially considered disappointing was because it was not about sexuality or eroticism – a factor that he predicted would make the fragment of greater interest in the future.Шаблон:Sfn Some commentators have been more positive. Though Loukas Papadimitropoulos said that his initial impression was that it was simplistic, he concluded that the meaning of the poem was "perhaps the most profound in all of Sappho's extant work",Шаблон:Sfn and that the poem turns the "simple[...] into something highly significant".Шаблон:Sfn

Despite scholars' disappointment over its quality, the Brothers Poem is valuable for the historical and biographical information it contains.Шаблон:Sfn It is the first fragment of Sappho discovered to mention the names "Charaxos" and "Larichos", both described as Sappho's brothers by ancient sources but not in any of her previously known writings.Шаблон:Sfn Before the poem was found, scholars had doubted that Sappho ever mentioned Charaxos.Шаблон:Sfn

Notes

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References

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Works cited

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External links

Шаблон:Sappho Шаблон:Featured article

  1. Sappho, Brothers Poem, l.2. trans. Шаблон:Harvnb
  2. Sappho, Brothers Poem, ll.2–4. trans. Шаблон:Harvnb
  3. Sappho, Brothers Poem, ll.11–12. trans. Шаблон:Harvnb
  4. Sappho, Brothers Poem, l.17. trans. Шаблон:Harvnb
  5. Sappho, 5.3–4. trans. Шаблон:Harvnb