Page:The Poems of Sappho (1924).djvu/131

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

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

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

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

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