[73.] Countless translations have been made. Among a few, I mention Philips (1711), Herbert (1713), Akenside’s paraphrase (1745), Fawkes (1760), Merivale (1833), Elton (1814), Egerton (1815), Edinburgh Review (1832), Palgrave (1854), Arnold (1869), Higginson (1871), Walhouse (1877), Symonds (at least two versions), Swinburne, Thomas Davidson, Marion Mills Miller (in The Classics and also in his play The Return of Odysseus, p. 82), Appleton, Fairclough (The Raven, V, 1904, p. 120), Easby Smith, Stobart (The Glory that was Greece, p. 119), Lawton, Tucker, Petersen, Lawrence (Classical Review, XXXVI, 1922, p. 2), Edmonds, William A. Drake (Sewanee Review, April 1923).
[74.] στροῦθοι in l. 10 are birds of Venus, swans, or better doves, rather than the dirty chatterers of our city streets, who never appear in Greek art. Cf. Throop, Wash. Univ. Studies, IX 282 (1922); Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 723 f.; Statius, Silvae, I. 2. Edmonds p. 183 reads the dual and translates “thy two swans.” For swans drawing Aphrodite’s or Cupid’s car, cf. Reinach, Répertoire des Vases Peints, I, pp. 57, 271.
[75.] Dem., 38.
[76.] Iliad, X. 90-95. Cf. also Od., XVII. 518-521. For Homer’s influence on Sappho cf. Smyth, p. 230; H. L. Ebeling, in The Classical Weekly, XVI. 195 ff. (1923).
[77.] III. 152-158.
[78.] Edmonds, pp. 186-7, makes the ingenious but very uncertain suggestion that in line 7 a proper noun, Brocheo or Brochea, corresponding to Catullus’ Lesbia, should be read and now translates: “When I look on you, Brocheo, my speech comes short or fails me quite.” Formerly he thought that the poem was sent by the banished Sappho at the age of eighteen to some beloved girl friend soon after her arrival in Sicily in 596 B.C., but Sappho was older than eighteen in 596, and Edmonds now makes an entirely different emendation of the last line, “but now that I am poor, I must fain be content ...” meaning “beggars can’t be choosers.” But the reading is uncertain and I do not believe that Sappho was poor, nor do I agree with Miss Patrick that the words do not describe love at all.
[79.] For such head-cloths cf. the Latin word struppus and the festival at Falerii, called struppearia, Dion. Hal., XI. 39 and Poulsen, Etruscan Tomb Paintings, p. 23. Edmonds’ new reading is very uncertain; for his previous reading and poetical version cf. Sappho in the Added Light of the New Fragments, p. 28.
[80.] I keep Bergk’s reading, “Foolish woman, pride not thyself on a ring.” Edmonds changes the text and translates, “But come, be not so proud of a ring.”