Brothers Poem

Brothers Poem

The Brothers Poem is one of a series of poems attributed to Sappho. It mentions two of her brothers, Charaxos and Larichos. The poem is structured as an address to an unknown person. Sappho is thought to have written around 10,000 lines of poetry.

About Brothers Poem in brief

Summary Brothers PoemThe Brothers Poem is one of a series of poems attributed to Sappho. It mentions two of her brothers, Charaxos and Larichos. Most of its text, apart from its opening lines, survives. The poem is structured as an address to an unknown person. Sappho is thought to have written around 10,000 lines of poetry, of which roughly 650 survive. The beginning of the poem is lost, but it is estimated that it was probably between one and three stanzas longer. It lies within the genre of homecoming prayers of the Greek epic, particularly the homecoming stories of the Odyssey. In 2014, Dirk Obbink, Simon Burris, and Jeffrey Fish published five fragments of papyrus, containing nine separate poems. Three were previously unknown, and the find amounted to the largest expansion of the surviving corpus of Sappho’s work for 92 years. The most impressive is the \”Brothers Poem\” fragment, called P.  Sapph. Obbink. It measures 176 by 111 millimetres. Carbon-dating places it in the period from the first to third centuries AD, which is consistent with the third century AD handwriting. Only one poem, the Ode to Aphrodite, is known to be complete; many preserve only a single word. It was originally performed to music, though the melody does not survive. Aristoxenus reports that Sappho used the mix of baritone and baritone mode, and in antiquity she was associated with the barbitos ; Armolyd D’Angourd has set the poem to music in an attempt to reconstruct what it might have sounded like in antiquity.

As with all of Sapp Ho’s poetry, the Brotherspoem was originally performing to music. It is estimated it was between one. and three Stanzas long, but that it is probably the complete work of Sapphho, which was composed of three long lines followed by one shorter line. There is evidence that the roll was damaged and repaired; it was later reused as cartonnage—a material similar to papier-mâché made with linen and papyrus. The roll would have been produced in Alexandria, and likely taken to Fayum. It had been part of David Moore Robinson’s collection, left to the University of Mississippi Library. In 1954, Robinson purchased the fragment in 1954 from an Egyptian dealer, Sultan Maguid Sameda, the owner of an art gallery in Cairo. After the library had deaccessioned the papyrus,. it was sold at auction in 2011 to a collector in London. The next nine lines are known as Sappho’s Kypris poem. A second papyrus was published by Edgar Lobel in 1951, and preserves enough of the BrothersPoem to show that at least one stanza preceded the well-preserved portion. The speaker chastises the addressee for saying repeatedly that Charaxo will return, maintaining that his safety is in the hands of the gods and offering to pray to Hera for his return.