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Tithonus Poem
The Tithonus poem, also known as the Old age poem or (with fragments of another poem by Sappho discovered at the same time) the New Sappho, is a poem by the archaic Greek poet Sappho. It is part of fragment 58 in Eva-Maria Voigt's edition of Sappho. The poem is from Book IV of the Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poetry. It was first published in 1922, after a fragment of papyrus on which it was partially preserved was discovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt; further papyrus fragments published in 2004 almost completed the poem, drawing international media attention. One of very few substantially complete works by Sappho, it deals with the effects of ageing. There is scholarly debate about where the poem ends, as four lines previously thought to have been part of the poem are not found on the 2004 papyrus. Preservation Two lines of the poem are preserved in Athenaeus' ''Deipnosophistae''. In addition to this quotation, the poem is known from two papyri: one discovered at Oxyrhy ...
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Brothers Poem
The Brothers Poem or Brothers Song is a series of lines of verse attributed to the Archaic Greece, archaic Greek poet Sappho ( – ), 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 ...
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Orpheus
In Greek mythology, Orpheus (; , classical pronunciation: ) was a Thracians, Thracian bard, legendary musician and prophet. He was also a renowned Ancient Greek poetry, poet and, according to legend, travelled with Jason and the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece, and descended into the Greek underworld, underworld to recover his lost wife, Eurydice. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music (the usual scene in Orpheus mosaics), his attempt to retrieve his wife Eurydice from the underworld, and his death at the hands of the maenads of Dionysus, who got tired of his mourning for his late wife Eurydice. As an archetype of the inspired singer, Orpheus is one of the most significant figures in the classical reception studies, reception of classical mythology in Western culture, portrayed or allusion, alluded to in countless forms of art and popular culture including poetry, film, opera, music, and painting ...
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Syllable Weight
In linguistics, syllable weight is the concept that syllables pattern together according to the number and/or duration of segments in the rime. In classical Indo-European verse, as developed in Greek, Sanskrit, and Latin, distinctions of syllable weight were fundamental to the meter of the line. Linguistics A heavy syllable is a syllable with a branching nucleus or a branching rime, although not all such syllables are heavy in every language. A branching nucleus generally means the syllable has a long vowel or a diphthong; this type of syllable is abbreviated as CVV. A syllable with a branching rime is a ''closed syllable'', that is, one with a coda (one or more consonants at the end of the syllable); this type of syllable is abbreviated CVC. In some languages, both CVV and CVC syllables are heavy, while a syllable with a short vowel as the nucleus and no coda (a CV syllable) is a light syllable. In other languages, only CVV syllables are heavy, while CVC and CV syllables are ...
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Anceps
In languages with quantitative poetic metres, such as Ancient Greek, Latin, Arabic, Sanskrit, and classical Persian, an anceps (plural ''ancipitia'' or ''(syllabae) ancipites'') is a position in a metrical pattern which can be filled by either a long or a short syllable. In general, ''anceps'' syllables in words, such as the first syllable of the Greek words (the Greek god of war) or "bitter", which can be treated by poets as either long or short, can be distinguished from ''anceps'' elements or positions in a metrical pattern, which are positions where either a long syllable or a short syllable can be used. Another distinction can be made between the ordinary ''anceps'' positions at the beginning or middle of a line of verse and the phenomenon of ''brevis in longo'', which is when a short syllable at the end of a line counts as long because of the pause which follows. The word ''anceps'' comes from the Latin ''anceps, ancipitis'', meaning "two-headed, uncertain, unfixed". Th ...
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Hephaestion (grammarian)
Hephaestion ( ''Hēphaistíōn''; fl. 2nd century AD) was a grammarian of Alexandria who flourished in the age of the Antonines. He was the author of a manual (abridged from a larger work in 48 books) of Greek metres, which is most valuable as the only complete treatise on the subject that has been preserved. The concluding chapter discusses the various kinds of poetical composition. It is written in a clear and simple style, and was much used as a school-book. Works * ''Enchiridion de Metris'' (Ἐγχειρίδιον περὶ μέτρων) * ''On Confusions in Poems'' (Περὶ τῶν ἐν ποιήμασι ταραχῶν) * ''Poemata'' (Περί ποιήματος) * ''Solutions in Tragedy'' (Τραγικῶν λύσεων) * ''Solutions to Difficulties in Comedy'' (Κωμικῶν ἀπορημάτων λύσεις) Editions * Thomas Foster Barham: ''The Enkheiridion of Hehfaistiown concerning Metres and Poems. Translated into English, and illustrated by Notes and a ryt ...
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Homeric Hymn
The ''Homeric Hymns'' () are a collection of thirty-three ancient Greek hymns and one epigram. The hymns praise deities of the Greek pantheon and retell mythological stories, often involving a deity's birth, their acceptance among the gods on Mount Olympus, or the establishment of their cult. In antiquity, the hymns were generally, though not universally, attributed to the poet Homer: modern scholarship has established that most date to the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, though some are more recent and the latest, the ''Hymn to Ares'', may have been composed as late as the fifth century CE. The ''Homeric Hymns'' share compositional similarities with the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', also traditionally attributed to Homer. They share the same artificial literary dialect of Greek, are composed in dactylic hexameter, and make use of short, repeated phrases known as formulae. It is unclear how far writing, as opposed to oral composition, was involved in their c ...
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Martin Litchfield West
Martin Litchfield West, (23 September 1937 – 13 July 2015) was a British philologist and classical scholar. In recognition of his contribution to scholarship, he was appointed to the Order of Merit in 2014. West wrote on ancient Greek music, Greek tragedy, Greek lyric poetry, the relations between Greece and the ancient Near East, and the connection between shamanism and early ancient Greek religion, including the Orphic tradition. This work stems from material in Akkadian, Phoenician, Hebrew, Hittite, and Ugaritic, as well as Greek and Latin. West also studied the reconstitution of Indo-European mythology and poetry and its influence on Ancient Greece, notably in the 2007 book ''Indo-European Poetry and Myth'' (''IEPM''). West also produced an edition of Homer's ''Iliad'' for the Bibliotheca Teubneriana, accompanied by a study of its critical tradition and overall philology entitled ''Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad.'' A further volume on ''The Makin ...
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Sappho 16
Sappho 16 is a fragment of a poem by the archaic Greece, archaic Greek lyric poet Sappho. It is from Book I of the Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poetry, and is known from a second-century papyrus discovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt at the beginning of the twentieth century. Sappho 16 is a love poem – the genre for which Sappho was best known – which praises the beauty of the narrator's beloved, Anactoria, and expresses the speaker's desire for her now that she is absent. It makes the case that the most beautiful thing in the world is whatever one desires, using Helen of Troy's elopement with Paris (mythology), Paris as a mythological exemplum to support this argument. The poem is at least 20 lines long, though it is uncertain whether the poem ends at line 20 or continues for another stanza. Preservation Fragment 16 was preserved on Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1231, a second-century manuscript of Book I of an edition of Sappho, published by Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surrid ...
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Tithonus
In Greek mythology, Tithonus ( or ; ) was the lover of Eos, Goddess of the Dawn. He was a prince of Troy, the son of King Laomedon by the Naiad Strymo (). The mythology reflected by the fifth-century vase-painters of Athens envisaged Tithonus as a '' rhapsode'', as attested by the lyre in his hand, on an oinochoe (wine jug) of the Achilles Painter, ''circa'' 470–460 BC. An asteroid (6998) has been named after Tithonus. Etymology Tithonus has been taken by the allegorist to mean ‘a grant of a stretching-out’ (from ''teinō'' and ''ōnė''), a reference to the stretching-out of his life, at Eos’s plea; but it is likely, rather, to have been a masculine form of Eos’s own name, Titonë – from ''titō'', ‘day and onë, ‘queen’ – and to have meant ‘partner of the Queen of Day’. Mythology Eos is said to have taken Tithonus, from the royal house of Troy, to be her lover.''Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite'', 218 ''ff''. The myth of Eos and Tithonus' love was known ...
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Didactic
Didacticism is a philosophy that emphasises instructional and informative qualities in literature, art, and design. In art, design, architecture, and landscape, didacticism is a conceptual approach that is driven by the urgent need to explain. Overview The term has its origin in the Ancient Greek word διδακτικός (''didaktikos''), "pertaining to instruction", and signified learning in a fascinating and intriguing manner. Didactic art was meant both to entertain and to instruct. Didactic plays, for instance, were intended to convey a moral theme or other rich truth to the audience. During the Middle Age, the Roman Catholic chants like the '' Veni Creator Spiritus'', as well as the Eucharistic hymns like the '' Adoro te devote'' and '' Pange lingua'' are used for fixing within prayers the truths of the Roman Catholic faith to preserve them and pass down from a generation to another. In the Renaissance, the church began a syncretism between pagan and the Christian didacti ...
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The Brothers Poem
The Brothers Poem or Brothers Song is a series of lines of verse attributed to the archaic Greek poet Sappho ( – ), 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 speake ...
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Sappho 31
Sappho 31 is a lyric poem by the Archaic Greek poet Sappho of the island of Lesbos. The poem is also known as ''phainetai moi'' ( ) after the opening words of its first line, and as the Ode to Anactoria, based on a conjecture that its subject is Anactoria, a woman mentioned elsewhere by Sappho. It is one of Sappho's most famous poems, describing her love for a young woman. Fragment 31 has been the subject of numerous translations and adaptations from ancient times to the present day. Celebrated for its portrayal of intense emotion, the poem has influenced modern conceptions of lyric poetry, and its depiction of desire continues to influence writers today. Preservation Fragment 31 was one of the few substantial fragments of Sappho to survive from ancient times, preserved in the first-century AD treatise on aesthetics ''On the Sublime''. Four stanzas are well-preserved, followed by part of one more line; this, as well as Catullus' adaptation of the poem, suggests that there was ...
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