des directly translated her
poems. But of all this we have only two poems which may be said to be in
any way complete: a considerable portion of the ode to her brother
Charaxus, already quoted, and somewhat over a hundred and fifty
fragments, the total comprising not more than three hundred lines.
Within the last few months, Doctor Schubart, of the Egyptian Section of
the Royal Museum in Berlin, has discovered in papyri, recently added to
its collection, several hitherto unknown poems of Sappho.

"Few, indeed, but those roses," as says Meleager, in the Anthology, are
the precious verses spared to us in spite of the unholy zeal of
antipaganism. And, strange to relate, we are indebted for what we have
to the quotations of grammarians and lexicographers, who preserved the
verses, not usually for their poetic beauty, but to illustrate a point
in syntax or metre. But, though so few and fragmentary, they are, as
Professor Palgrave says, "grains of golden sand which the torrent of
Time has carried down to us."

Sappho wrote in the AEolic dialect, noted for the soft quality of its
vowel sounds; and her poems were undoubtedly written for recitation to
the accompaniment of the lyre, being the earliest specimens of the song
or ballad so popular in modern times.

Predecessors of the melic poetry of Sappho are to be found in the chants
and hymns in honor of Apollo prevalent throughout Greece, in the popular
songs of Hellas, and in the songs sung in the home and at religious
festivals by Lesbian men and women,--children's rhymes, songs at vintage
festivals, plaints of shepherds expressive of rustic love, epithalamia
or bridal songs, dirges, threnodies and laments for Adonis, typifying
the passing of spring and summer.

The form and melody of Sappho's poems are due to the fact that they were
to accompany vocal and instrumental music, which, thanks to the
innovations of Terpander of Lesbos, was at that time exquisitely adapted
to the purposes of the lyric. Terpander introduced the seven-stringed
lyre, or cithara, with its compass of a diapason, or Greek octave, and
this became the peculiar instrument of Sappho and her school. The choice
of the musical measure determined the tone of the poem. Terpander united
the music of Asia Minor with that of Greece proper, and the resulting
product of AEolian poetry was the union of Oriental voluptuousness with
Greek self-restraint and art. Of Sappho's numerous songs, two odes alone
are presente