This page has been validated.
TEXT AND TRANSLATIONS
125

Pollux says that Sappho used the word βεῦδος for a woman’s dress.


Phrynichus, the grammarian, says that Sappho calls a woman’s dressing-case where she keeps her scents, γρύτη.


A Parisian manuscript (ed. Cramer) says: “Among the Aeolians ζ is used for δ, as when Sappho says ζαβατον for διάβατον, ‘fordable.’ ”


Choeroboscus says: “Sappho makes the accusative of κίνδυνος, danger, κίνδυν.” Another writer says, κίνδυνα.


Photius, in his Lexicon (ninth century) says: “θάψος is a wood used to dye hair and wool yellow, which Sappho called ξύλον Σκυθικόν, Scythian wood.”


The Fayum fragments in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, brought there in 1879, contain among other things a very small scrap with a very imperfect text on both sides of it. The fragment is considered to be of the eight century A.D., and Professor Blass of Kiel ascribes the text to Sappho, judging by the metre and the dialect. There is a posthumous essay by Bergk on this subject in the fourth edition, 1882, of his “Poetae Lyrici Graeci,” but the text of the fragments is so exceedingly imperfect that attempts at restoration are the merest conjectures.