CONTENTS
| Page | ||
| Preface to Third Edition | [v] | |
| Preface to Second Edition | [ix] | |
| Preface to First Edition | [xv] | |
| In Memoriam | [xxiii] | |
| Life of Sappho | [1] | |
| I. | In Sapphic Metre | [49] |
| II. | In Dactylic Metre | [87] |
| III. | In Alcaic Metre | [88] |
| IV. | In Mixed Glyconic and Alcaic Metre | [89] |
| V. | In Choriambic Metre | [90] |
| VI. | In Various Metres | [125] |
| VII. | In the Ionic "A Minore" Metre | [127] |
| VIII. | Epithalamia, Bridal Songs | [130] |
| IX. | Epigrams | [149] |
| X. | Miscellaneous | [152] |
| The Fayum Fragments | [181] | |
| Sappho to Phaon | [187] | |
| Bibliography | [199] | |
ILLUSTRATIONS
| Sappho | Frontispiece | |
| Engraved by Mr. John Cother Webb, from a picture by Sir L. Alma Tadema, R.A. | ||
| Mitylene | To face page | [1] |
| The Fayum Fragments | " | [181] |
LIFE OF SAPPHO
Sappho, the one great woman poet of the world, who called herself Psappha in her own Aeolic dialect (in fragments 1 and 59), is said to have been at the zenith of her fame about the year 610 B.C.
During her lifetime Jeremiah first began to prophesy (628 B.C.), Daniel was carried away to Babylon (606 B.C.), Nebuchadnezzar besieged and captured Jerusalem (587 B.C.), Solon was legislating at Athens, and Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth king, is said to have been reigning over Rome. She lived before the birth of Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, the religion now professed by perhaps almost a third of the whole population of the globe.
Two centuries have sufficed to obscure most of the events in the life of Shakspere; it can hardly be expected that the lapse of twenty-five centuries should have left many authentic records of the history of Sappho. Little even of that internal evidence, upon which biography may rely, can be gathered from her extant poems, in such fragmentary form have they come down to us. Save for the quotations of grammarians and lexicographers, no word of hers would have survived. Yet her writings seem to have been preserved intact till at least the third century of our era, for Athenaeus, who wrote about that time, applies to himself the words of the Athenian comic poet Epicrates in his Anti-Laïs (about 360 B.C.), saying that he too—
Had learned by heart completely all the songs,