Page:The Poems of Sappho (1924).djvu/29

Rh view, be safely disregarded. As will be seen later, this epistle of Ovid attracted some attention among English writers, but as far as Sappho is concerned their contributions to the subject are unimportant. To Dionysus of Halicarnassus our gratitude is due for the transmission to posterity of the Hymn of Invocation to Aphrodite, for it is only in his writings that this has been handed down in its entirety. His comment is sufficiently appreciative to cause astonishment that he did not think it worth while to preserve for us something else, and by so doing to magnify our indebtedness to him. Time, neglect, and ignorance have combined almost completely to annihilate the nine books of lyrics known to have been in existence at one period, except for the series of fragments which have been collected and published by various editors and commentators. The series begins with the hymn to Aphrodite in its complete perfection and ends with a collection of fragments consisting often of a word or two quoted by some prolix grammarian to illustrate a point of syntax or a dialectic peculiarity. During the past few years the Egypt Exploration Society has sent indefatigable workers to the delta of the Nile, and among other treasure trove there occurs a number, tantalizingly small it is true, of most interesting fragments from second and third century papyri of Sappho’s works. These recovered fragments have been deciphered, translated, and from time to time published.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the