V.  FRAGMENTS FROM SAPPHO

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LXIIQuoted by Hephaestion, and presumed to be Sappho’s from a passage in Pausanias, where he says she learnt the name of the mythological personage Oetolĭnus from the poems of Pamphös, a mythical poet of Attica earlier than Homer, and so to her Adonis was just like Oetolĭnus. The Linus-like song was a very ancient dirge or lamentation, of which a version (or rather a late rendering, apparently Alexandrian) has been preserved by a Scholiast on Homer, running thus: “O Linus, honoured by all the gods, for to thee first they gave to sing a song to men in clear sweet sounds. Phoebus in envy slew thee, but the Musers lament thee.” A charming example of what the Linus-song was in the third century B. C., remains for us in Bion’s Lament for Adonis.

Delicate Adonis is dying, Cytherea; what shall we do?  Beat your breasts, maidens, and rend your tunics.