s and others, and whose name, (signifying the victorious Neith)
has been found on the monuments, applied to a queen of the sixth dynasty.
This is a bold conjecture; it adds however to the importance of our
heroine; and without doubt many traditions referring to the one have been
transferred to the other, and vice versa. Herodotus lived so short a time
after Rhodopis, and tells so many exact particulars of her private life
that it is impossible she should have been a mere creation of fiction.
The letter of Darius, given at the end of Vol. II., is intended to
identify the Greek Rhodopis with the mythical builder of the Pyramid. I
would also mention here that she is called Doricha by Sappho. This may
have been her name before she received the title of the "rosy-cheeked
one."

I must apologize for the torrent of verse that appears in the love-scenes
between Sappho and Bartja; it is also incumbent upon me to say a few
words about the love-scenes themselves, which I have altered very
slightly in the new edition, though they have been more severely
criticised than any other portion of the work.

First I will confess that the lines describing the happy love of a
handsome young couple to whom I had myself become warmly attached, flowed
from my pen involuntarily, even against my will (I intended to write a
novel in prose) in the quiet night, by the eternal Nile, among the palms
and roses. The first love-scene has a story of its own to me. I wrote it
in half an hour, almost unconsciously. It may be read in my book that the
Persians always reflected in the morning, when sober, upon the
resolutions formed the night before, while drunk. When I examined in the
sunshine what had come into existence by lamplight, I grew doubtful of
its merits, and was on the point of destroying the love-scenes
altogether, when my dear friend Julius Hammer, the author of "Schau in
Dich, und Schau um Dich," too early summoned to the other world by death,
stayed my hand. Their form was also approved by others, and I tell myself
that the 'poetical' expression of love is very similar in all lands and
ages, while lovers' conversations and modes of intercourse vary according
to time and place. Besides, I have to deal with one of those by no means
rare cases, where poetry can approach nearer the truth than prudent,
watchful prose. Many of my honored critics have censured these scenes;
others, among whom are some whose opinion I specially value, have
lavished t