Alcaeus

Alcaeus came from a rich family of Mytilene, the chief city of Lesbos. His fragments and other evidence put his activity around 600 BC.^[1] His chronology is hard to fix, but many of his songs can safely be placed between c. 600 and 580.^[2] He was a contemporary of Sappho and of his political rival Pittacus.^[3] Alcaeus and Sappho are “the two Lesbian musicians” through whom alone we know the Aeolian tradition of Greek verse.^[4]

A life read from the poems. The Alexandrian edition had ten books or more, and a life-story framed them. There were poems on his childhood and his old age, and on his exile in a Lesbian sanctuary. Others told of his brother’s return from fighting in the Near East, and of his own fighting against the Athenians in the Troad.^[5] The Peripatetic Aristoxenus quipped that Alcaeus treated his books as his companions.^[5]

Herodotus tells how Alcaeus lost his shield in the war for Sigeum. The shield was then hung in Athena’s temple there. Alcaeus told the story in a song sent to his friend Melanippus.^[6]

Two warnings apply. Modern accounts of his life are often built by “emplotment”: heavily supplemented fragments are joined into continuous plots.^[7] And the lyric “I” cannot always be turned into literal biography.^[8]

Family. Strabo paraphrases a lost poem about Alcaeus’ brother Antimenidas. In it Antimenidas fights on the side of the Babylonians and kills a warrior of giant size. Aristotle names Antimenidas and Alcaeus as the leaders of the exiles whom Pittacus was elected to deal with.^[9] Fr. 350 welcomes Antimenidas home from service with the Babylonian army.^[10]

Disputed: the link with Nebuchadnezzar’s campaign is a modern conjecture. There is no other evidence of Greek mercenaries in Babylonian service. Fantalkin and Lytle suggest that Antimenidas was rather among the Greek mercenaries of Egypt at Askelon. Strabo may have mistaken which side he was on.^[11]

Alcaeus belonged, or claimed to belong, to the old aristocracy of Mytilene.^[12] His songs appeal to his fathers and forefathers against the “base-born” Pittacus.^[13]

A musical island. His metre and dialect imply a long tradition before him.^[5] Earlier Lesbian poets were remembered. A kitharode sang to his own kithara, the large concert lyre. The kitharodes Terpander and Arion left Lesbos for the Peloponnese; Lesches is a shadowy figure. “The Lesbian singer” was proverbial.^[14] The island’s writers of Panhellenic stature include Terpander, Lesches, Arion, Hellanicus, Theophrastus and Phaenias.^[15]

Language. His songs, like Sappho’s, are transmitted in the East Aeolic dialect, which is often simply called Lesbian. Epic has a limited influence on them, mostly in the fragments in dactylic metres. How far this poetic language reflects the speech of sixth-century Lesbos is hard to establish.^[16] The dialect is described on the Lesbian Aeolic page.

Later readers. In Aristophanes’ Wasps, at an Athenian symposium, Philocleon adapts Alcaeus’ warning about Pittacus and turns it against Cleon.^[5] Around 25 BC his poems mattered to Horace.^[17] Dionysius of Halicarnassus set an “austere” style, like Pindar’s, against a “smooth” style, like Sappho’s. He counted Alcaeus, with Homer, among the poets who achieve a “blend” of the two.^[18]

For the politics of Mytilene around 600 BC we depend heavily on Alcaeus’ poems, which are one-sided and often vitriolic.^[1] His faction is almost the only one whose activities and point of view we hear.^[2]

The rulers. Mytilene was deeply unsettled at the end of the seventh century and the beginning of the sixth. Alcaeus opposed in turn the tyrants Melanchros and Myrsilos, and then Pittacus. After Myrsilos’ death Pittacus was chosen aisymnētēs. An aisymnētēs was a ruler elected by the citizens. Pittacus was later counted among the Seven Sages.^[3] Clans such as the Penthilids, the Cleanactids, the Archeanactids and Alcaeus’ own struggled for control.^[4]

Pittacus had joined Alcaeus in expelling Myrsilus, and then he turned against him. He married into the Penthilids, the leading clan (an alliance that also figures in Sappho’s poems).^[5] He may have had a Thracian father.^[1] Alcaeus called him “tyrant” and “base-born”, yet admits that the people chose him (fr. 348). The abuse can be read as that of the party with most to lose, in a city that was beginning to be ruled by offices rather than by birth.^[6] When Myrsilus died, Alcaeus sang that now one must get drunk (fr. 332).^[7]

Oath and exile. Members of the faction seem to have gone into exile more than once.^[2] An ancient commentary speaks of his “second exile” and “third return” (test. 9c).^[8]

In fr. 129 Alcaeus prays at the common sanctuary of the Lesbians to be saved from exile. He calls the Erinys down on Pittacus for breaking the oath that the companions had once sworn there. In fr. 130b he is at the sanctuary again, alone, cut off from his friends.^[9] The sanctuary stood at Messon, in the middle of the island, and its cities shared it. The three gods worshipped there make a unique group: Zeus, Hera as “the Aeolian goddess”, and Dionysus.^[10]

In fr. 298 the Greeks would have done better to stone Locrian Ajax for his sacrilege against Athena. The lesson is turned on Pittacus, whom the community should kill.^[11] Fr. 129 is scanned on the works page.

Mytilene abroad. The poems also show a city looking outward.^[12] One fragment tells of two thousand staters that the Lydians gave to Alcaeus’ side, and of Pittacus’ fox-like cunning (fr. 69). Lydian money was at work in Mytilene’s strife.^[13]

Mytilene fought Athens for Sigeum on the Hellespont. There Pittacus was said to have killed the Athenian leader Phrynon in single combat.^[14] Alcaeus mentions Phrynon, and the presence of Alcaeus and Pittacus fixes the episode in time.^[15] The wealth and honours that men such as Alcaeus’ brother Antimenidas won abroad may have unsettled the old families at home.^[16]

Allegory. Ship-of-state allegories occur in several fragments.^[17] For an island audience the storm metaphors had natural force.^[18]

Reading the political songs. The sources differ in emphasis. Yatromanolakis warns that the songs have often been read as plain records of a faction’s history. The reconstructions, he adds, rest on so many emendations and supplements that some must mislead.^[19] Thomas finds that the references to Lydian money, Babylon and Askelon point to something more specific than generic themes.^[20] Yet Alcaeus’ style “does not spell things out” for those who did not already know.^[21]

Pittacus remembered. Later tradition made Pittacus a sage and lawgiver. As Aristotle noted, he wrote laws but no constitution. Wise sayings were attributed to him.^[22]

Who heard them. Most of Alcaeus’ poems, perhaps all, appear to have been written for a single singer. They were sung at the private drinking-parties of his hetaireia. A hetaireia was an aristocratic club with a political purpose. The poems express the faction’s ideology, and they probably helped to hold it together.^[1] Scholars generally assume this setting.^[2] The group was an all-male club that agitated and fought for political goals in the social form of the time, the symposium.^[3]

The songs were one of the means by which the club worked out its ideas about political action. The audience was the group itself, so the “I” and the “we” of the poems merge. Some songs could have been sung by the whole group together.^[4]

Range. Seeing Alcaeus only as a political poet hides the variety of his work.^[5] The fragments include hymns, of which only the openings survive, and erotic and drinking songs. There is a lament in the voice of a woman (fr. 10 V). There is the old theme of the poet who throws away his shield, and there are many proverbs and traditional images.^[6] Fr. 140 describes a hall gleaming with bronze arms, and the companions’ unwavering dedication to their cause.^[1]

Fr. 119 is an earthy metaphor of vines and unripe grapes. Its author, Alcaeus or Sappho, is not certain. Against the allegorical readings, Spelman argues that it is more probably erotic than political.^[7]

Myth. Alcaeus told traditional stories as parallels for present concerns, as lessons from the past, and sometimes for their own sake.^[8] Greek lyric often uses a three-part shape: a present situation, a tale from the past, and a lesson linking the two. Fr. 298 can be read in this shape.^[9] Two fragments make Helen the cause of the Trojans’ destruction (frr. 42, 283).^[10]

Alcaeus and Hesiod. Authorities differ. Fr. 347 recasts the summer scene of Hesiod’s Works and Days (582–589). Both have the thistle, the cicada, women at their most wanton, men at their weakest, and the Dog Star parching head and knees. Page found nothing so close in Greek poetry outside deliberate parody. Some scholars derive both passages from a common source, or from a shared store of traditional language. Spelman argues that so much verbal agreement makes allusion to a fixed text of Hesiod the likelier explanation.^[11] The poem is scanned on the works page.

Re-performance. Many of his songs came to be heard as skolia, drinking songs. Aristotle calls fr. 348 a skolion. A shortened version of fr. 249 entered a collection of skolia preserved by Athenaeus. Aristophanes refers to the singing of skolia of Alcaeus and Anacreon at drinking-parties.^[12]

The collection’s version of fr. 249 can be set beside the papyrus. In the collection, the four lines have been cut loose from their poem and from Alcaeus’ dialect. They stand beside solidly democratic songs, far from his own politics.^[13] Music may have been central to the early popularity and transmission of his songs.^[14]

Since antiquity Alcaeus and Sappho have been treated as contemporaries.^[1]

The vase. A red-figure kalathos of about 480–470 BC shows the two poets, named, each with a barbitos. It is attributed to the Brygos or the Dokimasia Painter. Alcaeus sings with his head lowered, and Sappho listens.^[2] The vase was painted a century after the poets lived. It shows not a historical meeting but the fact that they were contemporaries and close in their art.^[1] It is also evidence that their poetry was closely linked in Athens, and perhaps reperformed together there.^[3]

A dialogue and a greeting. Aristotle’s Rhetoric quotes an exchange between the two poets. Alcaeus wishes to say something, but shame prevents him. Sappho replies that if his desire were noble, shame would not hold his eyes (fr. 137). Rösler thinks the two cannot have composed it together. In his view a poem for two speakers, perhaps by Sappho, was later relabelled “Alcaeus” and “Sappho”.^[4] A number of editors give it to Sappho.^[5]

Hephaestion quotes a single line as his example of the “Alcaic dodecasyllable”:^[6]

The ι of ἰόπλοκ- (ioplok-; from ἴον, ion, “violet”) is short,^[7] though it stands in an anceps position. The ο is long by position before πλ (pl), as is normal in Lesbian verse.^[8] Voigt analyses the line as ia ∧hipp (Conspectus C 2 a).

If the line is Alcaeus’, it may show his regard for Sappho.^[9] But its reading is contested.^[10] Spelman thinks both pieces of evidence for direct contact between the poets problematic.^[11]

Where might they have met? Page judged that they certainly lived part of their lives in the same city, probably in the same aristocratic circle.^[12] Rösler argues for the common sanctuary at Messon. Alcaeus, in exile there, mentions the women’s gatherings and their annual beauty contest (fr. 130B). Sappho’s fr. 17, newly supplemented from papyrus, concerns the festival there. So both poets may have performed at it.^[13] Rösler admits that there can be no certainty.^[14] He regards Nagy’s “staged musical event” at Messon as part of a trend to fictionalise lyric.^[15]

Poems in conversation? Alcaeus fr. 283 condemns Paris and the “crazed” Helen, and counts the Trojan dead. Sappho fr. 16 tells of Helen leaving everything, without reproach. It does so to show that the most beautiful thing is whatever one desires. Alcaeus fr. 42 sets the blameless Thetis against Helen.

Rösler suggests, as a hypothesis, that frr. 41 and 42 come from one poem of ten Sapphic stanzas addressed to Aphrodite. He concludes that the three poems seem to have been composed in mutual awareness, even in artistic interaction.^[16]

The romance. Later tradition made Alcaeus and Anacreon rivals for Sappho’s attention.^[17] Alcaeus is one of the four poets most often linked with her as lovers.^[18]

Whose fragment? The two poets used the same dialect, so it is sometimes impossible to say which of them a scrap belongs to. Editions have a section of “uncertain fragments of either poet”. Lardinois suspects that editors, ancient and modern, gave “feminine” lines to Sappho and “male” topics to Alcaeus.^[3] Two of the twenty-four Sappho papyri may contain Alcaeus.^[19]

P.Fouad inv. 239 (Sappho fr. 44A) is a disputed case. Lobel and Page tentatively gave it to Alcaeus, and many editors since have given it to Sappho. It carries an asterisk that makes the case for Sappho problematic.^[20] De Kreij concludes that, if no change of metre follows the asterisk, the papyrus most naturally belongs to an Aristarchean edition of Alcaeus.^[21] The case for Alcaeus’ authorship of fr. 119 is usually taken to be the stronger.^[22] Hephaestion already doubted whose invention the Sapphic stanza was.^[23]

Alcaeus shares Sappho’s prosody. Lesbian verse admits no resolution of a long into two shorts, and no contraction of two shorts into a long. So every line has a fixed number of syllables. Its cola are related to those of Vedic poetry. Some of them begin with the free “aeolic base” of two positions, in which both syllables are rarely short. Hiatus is the meeting of two vowels across a word-end. Lesbian verse avoids it altogether: it elides the first vowel or runs the two together.^[1]

In normal Lesbian lyric a syllable is not left short even before a stop + liquid at the start of a word.^[2] There are two oddities. At fr. 366, in a proverb, a single καί is shortened before a vowel; this shortening is called correption. At fr. 10.7 υ is written for a digamma between vowels, in ἀυάτα (auata), scanned ⏑ ⏑ —.^[3]

The Alcaic stanza

The stanza can be analysed as three periods on the pattern aaA:^[4]

A bridge (⁀) is a place where word-end is avoided.^[5] The third period has two bridges: between positions 4 and 5, and between 8 and 9. West prints no label against this period. He has described the third Sapphic period as a stretched-out version of the first two, and he introduces the Alcaic with a bare “similarly”.^[4]

Voigt labels the three periods ia ∧gl ‖ ia ∧gl ‖ 2ia ∧hippᵈ |||. She marks word-end after the ninth position of the third period as constant; it is missing only at fr. 75.12 f. (Conspectus A 1). The whole third period runs to nineteen syllables without a pause, and it is one of the parallels for very long verses.^[6]

In antiquity the third period was written as two lines, divided after the ninth position. That is why Horace’s Alcaics have four lines, and why modern editions print four.^[7] Read in this way, the stanza has four lines, AABC. The first two mix a slow iambic opening with a faster double-short centre and a blunt close. The nine-syllable third line slows the rhythm “as if gathering force” for the dactylic finale.^[8]

Hephaestion uses his own terms. He calls the eleven-syllable line an “epionic trimeter catalectic from the greater ionic”: an iambic syzygy, an ionic a maiore or second paeon, a trochee and an indifferent syllable. He allows it four variants.^[9] He calls the closing ten-syllable line a “logaoedic dactylic”.^[10]

A whole stanza, fr. 338.5–8, shows the shape. The Greek follows the old teaching edition, with normalized accentuation and editorial signs.^[11] Each syllable stands over its position in West’s scheme.

kabballe ton cheimōn’, epi men titheis / pyr, en de kernais oinon apheideōs / melichron, autar amphi korsāi / malthakon amphi[balōn] gnophallon

“Beat down the storm: pile on the fire, mix the honey-sweet wine without stint, and about your temples [put] a soft cushion of fleece.”

The supplied βάλων, giving ἀμφι[βάλων] (amphibalōn), “putting around”, is printed in the old edition.^[11] It gives the scansion shown. In μέλιχρον (melichron), “honey-sweet”, the stop + liquid χρ makes -λιχ- long. Line 7 keeps West’s pattern exactly. Word-end falls after position 3 (μέλιχρον) and position 9 (κόρσᾳ (korsāi), “temple”). There is none across the bridges, which fall inside αὐ|τὰρ (autar) (positions 4–5) and κόρ|σᾳ (8–9). The poem is scanned in full on the works page.

The other strophes and lines that Hephaestion quotes from Alcaeus are on the next tab.

Nearly all Lesbian verse was strophic, in stanzas of two, three or four verses.^[1] Besides the Alcaic stanza, Alcaeus used the Sapphic stanza (Voigt, Conspectus A 2);^[2] fr. 34 on the works page is an example.

Fr. 140 describes a hall full of armour.^[3] Its strophe is a single verse of twenty syllables, 2gl ia, without a metrical pause (Voigt C 6, who notes that the papyri set it out as hipp / ∧gl ia).^[4] Fr. 10B (Voigt lists it as fr. 10) combines ionics in a three-verse strophe, 3io ‖ 3io ‖ 4io ||| (Voigt A 10).

The gl²ᵈ filled Sappho’s second book, but it was not hers alone. Alcaeus frr. 141, 365 and probably 38 are in it too. This goes against Treu’s claim that he never used it (Voigt C 3 a).^[5] Sappho’s “aiolikon” is the ∧hipp²ᶜ. There is no firm evidence that Alcaeus used it.^[6]

Lines quoted by Hephaestion

Hephaestion preserves lines of Alcaeus in a wide range of forms. The labels below are in West’s notation, and each assignment agrees with Voigt’s conspectus.

Some translations run on beyond the line quoted. For 383 the digitised Consbruch text has Ἣ for ἦ.

Three observations follow.

First, Hephaestion says that the sixteen-syllable gl²ᶜ is the metre of the whole of Sappho’s third book “and many songs of Alcaeus”.^[7] Voigt assigns frr. 343, 346 and 347 to it, among others (C 3 d). So the drinking-songs 346 and 347 on the works page are gl²ᶜ.

Second, in 368 (κέλο-) and 387 (Κρονί-) both syllables of the base are short. This licence is uncommon in the Lesbian poets, and later poets avoided it almost completely.^[8]

Third, 383 joins a dactylic colon to an iambic one. Asynarteta, “unconnected” verses, are lines made of two such different cola. Hephaestion treats 383 in his chapter on asynarteta, and Voigt lists it under “asynarteta” (D). West’s general view is that such “disconnection” is period-end between cola written on one line.^[9]

The corpus. The Alexandrian edition had ten books,^[1] “or more”.^[2] About four hundred fragments survive.^[3]

Voigt’s inventory. Voigt’s edition has a conspectus, a table of each poet’s metres. Her conspectus of Alcaeus’ metres has 39 entries. There are 11 kinds of strophe (A 1–11), besides three fragments in strophes she cannot identify. There are 8 lines repeated κατὰ μέτρον (kata metron), that is, line after line in the same metre (B). There are 19 aeolic lines (C), and one asynartete (D, fr. 383).^[4] For Sappho the same conspectus has 49 entries.^[5]

For the gl²ᶜ pieces Voigt gives the number of lines. None has more than five (frr. 346, 347), and most have one or two (C 3 d). The count of 11 to 22 Sapphic-stanza fragments in Alcaeus follows Voigt’s list.^[3]

The Sapphic hendecasyllable in Alcaeus and in Sappho. Ten certain Sapphic fragments of Alcaeus (61 lines) and seven probable ones (22 lines) could be analysed. They can be set against 384 certain lines of Sappho.^[3]

The fourth position of the line is an anceps. In it Alcaeus has a heavy syllable in 83.93% of cases (82.61% with the doubtful lines), and Sappho in 68.24%. At line-end the figures are 90.48% (90.32%) and 80.79%.^[6]

Alcaeus’ samples are small: 56 anceps positions and 21 line-ends.^[7] Fewer than ten of his Sapphic stanzas are well preserved.^[8] With that caution, he favours heavy syllables in the free positions more than Sappho does.^[9] His fr. 361, which Voigt places only “perhaps” in a Sapphic stanza, is a rare line with both free positions light.^[10]

Long verses. The third period of the Alcaic stanza runs to nineteen syllables without a pause. Fr. 140 has a one-verse strophe of twenty.^[11] In the third Alcaic period Voigt finds word-end after the ninth position in every case but one, fr. 75.12 f. (A 1).

Written from the start? Authorities differ. There are three positions. Alcaeus may have written or dictated his poems around 600 BC. The poems may have existed only orally and been written down much later. Or we cannot know.^[1]

Spelman argues for early writing. Short oral songs are not passed on word for word, yet the poems show little of the repetition typical of oral poetry. A long and specific song such as fr. 298 had no ritual setting to preserve it. The fine linguistic detail of the texts, such as the rare old form καταήσσατο (kataēssato), ties them to one time and place. Herodotus treats one poem as a letter. And quotations older than the Alexandrian edition differ little from its text.^[2]

Yatromanolakis, by contrast, holds that oral transmission was at first the most common and the most resilient. Still, Alcaeus’ companions and later Lesbians may have kept some songs in writing. A fourth-century researcher, Agenor of Mytilene, probably worked from written texts.^[3] Prauscello thinks that local written copies at Mytilene were a primary source of the Alexandrian editions.^[4]

The Alexandrian edition. Alcaeus’ ten books were arranged by content, at least partly to fit a chronology of his life.^[5] Both Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus edited him. Hephaestion reports how their editions marked the poems. Aristophanes put an asterisk only where the next poem changed metre; Aristarchus put one at the end of every poem.^[6]

A paragraphos is a short stroke in the left margin of a papyrus. Most of Alcaeus’ books were not ordered by metre, so his papyri normally use paragraphoi to show the length of the metrical units.^[7] Ancient interest in his chronology survives in a papyrus discussion based on his poems (P.Oxy. 2506).^[8]

On papyrus. Alcaeus is not securely attested on papyrus after the third century AD, whereas Sappho was copied until the seventh.^[9] Ancient commentary on Alcaeus is much better represented on papyrus than commentary on Sappho.^[10] The commentaries on his poems have been published in the Commentaria et lexica Graeca in papyris reperta.^[11]

Papyri can be densely annotated. P.Köln 2.59 (fr. 298) marks accents and long and short quantities. P.Oxy. 2295 has metrical notes and a variant reading from the grammarian Apion.^[12] An obelos is a dash in the margin that marks a line as suspect. Obeloi in the Cologne papyrus may show that lines 25–31 of fr. 298 were thought spurious in antiquity.^[13]

The Alexandrian spelling. All the lyric poets, Alcaeus among them, passed through the Alexandrian normalisation of spelling. The editors spelt by dialect rules that they had worked out themselves. The result contains forms that comparative linguistics shows to be impossible. These forms are called “hyperaeolicisms”. Even in most papyri we read Sappho’s language through the Alexandrian idea of sixth-century Lesbian, and the same normalisation applied to all the lyric poets.^[14]

The spelling σδ (sd) for ζ (z) is probably a later intrusion, made when ζ was no longer pronounced [zd]. Example: πέσδων (pesdōn), “of foot-soldiers”, for Attic πεζῶν (pezōn).^[15] The papyri sometimes write βρ- (br-) for an original ϝρ- (wr-), as in βρόδον (brodon), “rose”.^[16]

Quotations. A large share of what survives comes from quotation in later authors.^[17] A quotation is not a neutral witness. Later authors did not always reproduce an original exactly, and dialect forms were liable to be normalised or misunderstood in copying.^[14] Athenaeus quotes a collection of drinking-songs, and it keeps a version of fr. 249 that has lost Alcaeus’ dialect and context.^[18]

Fr. 249 and the Attic skolion. A skolion is a drinking-song sung at a symposium. Fr. 249 is the textbook example of how a song could change in transmission. Its four lines advise watching for a good voyage from land, and running with the conditions once at sea. In Athenaeus they stand as an Athenian drinking-song (PMG 891), mostly in Attic or Ionic. On a Hellenistic papyrus (P.Oxy. 2298) they are part of a longer poem of Alcaeus in Lesbian, with a different verb (προΐδην (proïdēn), “to foresee”, for κατίδην (katidēn), “to look out for”).

The case shows that lyric poems were easily excerpted and their dialect changed. So the “original” dialect should not be restored in quotations. Olson’s Loeb Athenaeus re-Aeolicises its quotations of Sappho and Alcaeus and imports Voigt’s reconstructions, so that what Athenaeus wrote can no longer be seen.^[19] These lines also serve to illustrate how unstable early transmission was.^[20]

In the Peripatos, the school of Aristotle, Dicaearchus wrote a monograph On Alcaeus. It filled a gap that Chamaeleon’s series had left.^[21]

Quotations. Much of Alcaeus survives because later writers quoted him. The metrician Hephaestion is one of the richest sources. He cites Alcaeus for many lines: the iambic tetrameter, the “Aeolic” dactylic line, the Alcaic decasyllable, the asclepiad, the sixteen-syllable glyconic, a twenty-syllable “pentameter”, a line of ionics, the Sapphic hendecasyllable, both the Alcaic hendecasyllable and the dodecasyllable, and the encomiologic.^[1] These lines are scanned on the Other forms tab. Athenaeus quotes three of his seasonal invitations to drink, frr. 338, 347 and 367.^[2]

Modern editions. Lobel and Page’s Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta (1955, corrected 1963) set Alcaeus beside Sappho. It has a section for fragments that could belong to either poet.^[3] Voigt’s edition of both poets (1971) prints the testimonia as well as the fragments. It has three apparatus: for the sources, for parallels and for bibliography.^[4] Campbell’s Loeb volume contains Sappho, Alcaeus and the fragments of either, with an English translation.^[5]

Liberman’s text with commentary (1999) is excellent, but its format necessarily limits it. A full commentary based on a fresh inspection of the papyri would meet a real need. Page’s Sappho and Alcaeus (1955) remains fundamental, and Rösler (1980) is the best monograph on Alcaeus.^[6] The editions contain so many interventions, emendations and reconstructions from prose paraphrase that at least a few must mislead.^[7]

Numbering. Editions differ. Scholars cite Sappho and Alcaeus from either Lobel–Page or Voigt.^[8] De Kreij uses Voigt for most fragments of both poets.^[9] Spelman and the Cambridge Companion to Sappho use Campbell’s numbers.^[10] For some fragments the numbering differs: Spelman’s fr. 347a is Voigt’s fr. 347.

On this site. Fragment numbers follow Voigt (“V”). Where we cite a scholar who uses Campbell’s numbers, we give the number as he or she gives it. For lines quoted from Hephaestion we also give the number printed beside them in Consbruch’s edition, so that a reader can find the passage in the handbook.