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We're talking about the Gongyla poem. Campbell has it as sourced by P.Oxy. 1231 frr. 12 and 15. Edmonds separates the two. Also, Edmonds' completion is perfectly fine with Grenfell and Hunt's reading of fr. 15, while Campbell has critical notation that seems to exclude it. So on what basis is Campbell putting them together whereas Edmonds splits them? And if Grenfell and Hunt say e.g. l. 1 of fr. 15 ends with σ[, why does Campbell have an exta uncertain alpha excluding Edmonds' κέλομαί σ' [ὄνελθε? Was something done with the papyrus that revealed more letters?

More details

Here is Grenfell and Hunt's reading:

enter image description here

If I strip Campbell of all completions, accents and spaces, I get:

.].ϵ.[....].[....]ελομαισα̣[
]γγυλα̣[..]α̣νθιλαβοισανα.[
]κτινασ̣σεδηυτεποθοςτ̣.[
αμφιποταται

τανκαλαναγαργατ̣αγωγισαυτα[
επτοαισιδοισανεγωδεχαιρω
καιγ̣αραυτ̣αδηπο̣[.]ε̣μεμφ[
]υπρογεν[

ω̣σαραμα̣[
τουτοτω[
]ολλομα̣[

If I pair up Grenfell-Hunt "restored" version and Campbell's text, I get:

enter image description here

Let's do some compare&contrast, shall we?

  • In l. 1, an uncertain near-start nu magically becomes a certain epsilon (!), and, as pointed out above, σ̣[ at the end of the preserved portion of the line turns to σα̣[;
  • The totally illegible letter at the start of l. 2 suddenly becomes a certain gamma, and an uncertain letter before the lacuna vanishes; also, the lacuna has 2 letters for GH and only 2 are given as a completion by C; the two last letters of Gongyla become certain; an uncertain alpha is conjured up after the lacuna; the μ̣α̣ (both uncertain) turns to να (both certain);
  • A few uncertain letters in l. 3 become certain, and an uncertain nu becomes an uncertain sigma;
  • For the rest, it's mostly uncertain letters becoming certain;
  • But before the lacuna in l. 8, δητ[ is suddenly δηπο̣[`; 'xcuse me? How did a certain tau turn to a certain pi with an uncertain omicron suddenly appearing?
  • And finally, what about [.]α̣σ turning to ω̣σ?

Where did the above changes come from?

New info

The Complete Poems of Sappho, by Sean B. Palmer is the only one to mention another source, P. Oxy. XXI (1951) add. p. 125, 11. Now, I cannot find the volume P.Oxy. XXI on archive.org or elsewhere online, and I cannot seem to find any P.Oxy. XXI images with Sappho (just two commentary fragments I do not really want to transcribe "blind"). So what happened in that source? What does that source give us? What is that source? Is it a papyrus or some kind of scholarly discussion? Is it one of the commentary papyri I found the image of, i.e. 2292 and 2293? And if that's the case, how in the world did they give extra certain letters? Quotations?

Update 2

Just transcribed 2292 as:

 ̩  ̤  ̣‸[...]Ϲ€€ΜΑΚΑΑ̣Τ̣ΑΝΔ[
ϹΑΓΟΡΓωϹΥΝΔΥΓΑ.ΓΙΤΟΥ̣[
§A̤[....]ϹΥΞ̣ΗΠΛ€ΙϹΤỌΔΙΚΗ[
§§§[...]ΗΙΓ[.]ΗΟΙϹΥΝΑΥΞ§€§§[
§Ṭ§€̣[....]Γ̤ΟΓΓΥΛΗϹΟΝ§§ṆΑϹΘΗ§§[
§Ϲ€Υ̣[...]ΟΙΝΟΝΓΑΡΤΟΟ§Ρ̣Θ̣Υ̤[.]§[
§Μ[..]Δ§ΤΑΙΤΙΚΑ̣ΤΑΤΗ  ̣§ ̣  ̣  ̣  ̣  ̣[               TI/H
[.]Ạ§[...]ΤΑ[.]ΥΤΟΟ̤ΙΚΚΗ̣§§§Ν§ω̣§[
[.......]§[...]§§Ι̤Λ̣ΘΗΙ̤€Τ̤§§[.]ϜΥ[               Λ/Ϲ
[............]  ̣ [......]  ̣ ΑṬ ̣ §   ̣ ΟΥΤ§[
[19 letters]Ν  ̣ ΑΝ§[

The § indicate blank spaces in the papyrus, giving an estimate of the number of letters that would fit in the blank. The fact that l. 5 seems to read Γογγύλης ὀνεμνάσθη(ν), I/(s)he have/has been reminded of Gongyla, near the end seems to support the Campbell version of l. 2, so could you guys help me decipher the rest of this?

Update 3

Lobel-Page's apparatus criticus does give some info, as highlighted here, but there are still questions:

  1. Why are the two fragments joined?
  2. How did the extra vestiges and uncertain letters pop up in Lobel-Page's reading?
  3. How does that uncertain nu in l. 1 become an uncertain epsilon?
  4. How does αν̣ turn to αϲ̣ / α[.] in l. 3? And how can it be uncertain whether there is or not a one-letter lacuna there?
  5. How does τ[ turn to πο̣[ in l. 7?
  6. How does l. 9 turn from starting with [.]α̣ϲ to starting with ω̣ϲ?

I can kinda see how the right half of an omega may be taken for an alpha with a hole to the left containing another letter, but all other questions leave me utterly stumped. Any ideas? Perhaps Voigt's edition can help clarify these mysteries?

Update 4

And then Scribd went SURPRISE MOTH… err, ΜΗΤΡΟΣΥΝΟΎΣΙΕ I suppose, presenting me with none other than Voigt's edition of Sappho, online! But the excitement ended there: the apparatus criticus is virtually identical to that of Lobel-Page. It did, however, help me figure out the extra vestige in l. 1 is from fr. 12, which is joined to fr. 12 on who knows what basis, and has 9 lines, the last one fitting into l. 1 of fr. 15.

1 Answer 1

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So here are the questions left:

  1. Why are the two fragments joined?
  2. How did the extra vestiges and uncertain letters pop up in Lobel-Page's reading?
  3. How does that uncertain nu in l. 1 become an uncertain epsilon?
  4. How does αν̣ turn to αϲ̣ / α[.] in l. 3? And how can it be uncertain whether there is or not a one-letter lacuna there?
  5. How does τ[ turn to πο̣[ in l. 7?
  6. How does l. 9 turn from starting with [.]α̣ϲ to starting with ω̣ϲ?

Here are a couple conjectures that help answer some of those.

  1. Either the papyrus of fr. 9 has a blank stretch that reaches the bottom and joins with matching edges of fr. 15, or I have no clue; no argument of "convincing supplements" can be made, as is the case for joining the 2166(a) scraps to fr. 1 col. i, and besides a similarity argument to place the two in the same column, I have no other ideas; perhaps "principle of economy"? But that is just a tad far-fetched IMHO…;
  2. Very faint traces of ink that Grenfell and Hunt just missed but other examiners of the papyrus saw and tried to read?
  3. Weird epsilon with faded middle stroke looking like left half of a nu, plus hole containing supposed second vertical leg of the nu? Then on further examination the faded middle leg came to be barely visible as opposed to completely absent?
  4. Very faint trace of ink right next to a lacuna that could be interpreted as either part of a nu's left leg or the leftmost, almost-vertical part of a sigma, and was reinterpreted as a sigma because the insertion of the Abanthi conjecture created havoc in the grammatical structure and meaning of the text?
  5. Vestige cfr. 2 + the right leg of the pi being precisely a hole in the papyrus?
  6. As written in the question (Update 3), «I can kinda see how the right half of an omega may be taken for an alpha with a hole to the left containing another letter».

And that is pretty much all I can do without an image. These are conjectures that, if verified, would satisfyingly answer the question of WTF happened to the papyrus text from Grenfell-Hunt to Lobel-Page, and then Campbell took up Abanthi and interpreted some vestiges consequently. So that would solve the textual problems here.

UPDATE

Habemus imaginem. Among the fragments at the following link are both of these two:

https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/164/2015/02/33-Fragments-of-poems-Sappho-1.jpg

Here is a zoom-in to the relevant fragments:

enter image description here

So we can finally actually answer at least most of these questions.

  1. The joining still seems a bit conjectural and rejectable to me: no physical joining is apparent in the image, and sense continuation isn't a valid argument with the sorry state of fr. 12;
  2. The extra alpha on l. 1 is totally cut off, so it just is NOT a thing; the only justification for it is an apparent ink trace very close to the border; I read . ΓΥΛΑ̣ ., where the last vestige is just a vertical leg, so it could be a mu, a nu, a beta, a gamma, an eta, a iota, a kappa, a pi, a rho, a tau, an ypsilon, and the first vestige really looks more like a rho or an apostrophe as suggested by Lobel-Page, since it extends vertically; I read ΝΘΙ, with not even the slightest hint of an ink trace before the nu; just look at that cut chopping off almost all of ICA! I would be cautious and read IC̣Ạ . . ., and MA and NA are both possible; I would read KTIN .; the nu turning to a sigma is totally absent, so KTIN . [.] C̣ is my reading; in fact, I wouldn't read the sigma at line end as certain: it could pretty well be an epsilon; though the AE combination can't fit the meter there, so maybe that is the reason of the certainty; the omega in l. 5 is definitely uncertain: it's barely even visible; and in IDOISAN the OI are half chopped away by a lacuna, so uncertain; in AYTA I agree with Campbell that both A are certain; where is that phi though? I will just drop it; KYPROGENEA has certain YP IMO; the following line may well start with an omega, because there is a trace of ink at the top, but it could be apparent, and that would be an alpha, perhaps lone, perhaps TA; and the tau of TOYTO is just half a horizontal line;
  3. We have, in that line, three vestiges: one is an underscore _, one looks like the far bottom of a nu, though it is very lowly slanted and there is no left vertical leg, so that apparent going back up that caused the nu reading is probably just a random thing and this is more like an epsilon, and then there is a little dot; if that is taken as an epsilon, then the underscore is the bottom of a delta or beta, as Lobel-Page suggests; or we can suppose that the low-slanting stroke suddenly bent up and came back down to the right end of the underscore, which is just an accidental letter connection; an unlikely thesis, but still;
  4. We discussed that above: . [.] is what I see, since the alpha is almost entirely faded away, and no more ink is apparent before the hole;
  5. The uncertain omicron is a microscopic vestige which I read ., and the tau/pi is actually doubtful, because the place where the second leg of a pi would be has a bit of no ink and a bit of blue (!) which is probably shadow or some weird damage to the papyrus, so I cannot tell if it is there or not;
  6. Discussed above, [T]<u>A</u>C, <u>A</u>C, <u>ω</u>C are all possible IMO.

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