Sappho Fr. 96,8 Neri: Why the Moon Lost a Syllable

Abstract

This piece is a fresh take on the crux philologorum in Sappho fr. 96,8, an extended moon simile, where Aeolic σελάννα, a commonplace of Sapphic poetry, easily restituted ex coniectura by W. Schubart in his editio princeps of PBerol. 9722 in 1902, was ousted by an unmetrical, if poetic, μήνα. The author offers an overview of the past and most recent scholarly effort along with an attempt (albeit a speculative one) to approach the issue of the irrational ratio corruptelae from the part of the resonant adjective βροδοδάκτυλος, an altogether uncommon epithet of the moon, paying close attention to the fact that the intruding word is disyllabic. The dactylic feel of the weighty adjective βροδοδάκτυλος is deemed at some point to have prevailed in a scribe’s dictation interne to the result that ἠώς could have landed in the text proper, or could have found its way there gradually from an intrusive marginal gloss left by a learned scribe unable to keep the Homeric clausula ῥοδοδάκτυλος ἠώς to himself. At some point another, no less learned scribe, attentive to the context of the simile, picked up μήνα, not σελήνη, as his remedy of choice, sticking to the number of syllables in the now resident ἠώς.

Keywords:

Sappho, fr. 96,8, moon simile, conjectural criticism