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TEXT 007: Sweet Nereids, Grant To Me — A Fragment of Sappho on Charaxus, Rhodopis, and the Wound That Would Not Heal Source Archive: Oxyrhynchus excavations, 1896–1897 Material: Papyrus Dimensions: [Not stated separately in visible screenshots; described on p. 10 which has not been accessed] Preservation: Two columns of text, 20 lines total; left column better preserved, right column more fragmentary Language: Aeolic Greek (Lesbian dialect) Hand: Assigned to the 3rd century CE (G&H). Cf. Plate II with Plate VI (the Plato papyrus, written before 295 CE) Features: Apostrophes marking elision, stops, accents, and marks of quantity occasionally inserted. Iota adscript written once, omitted 4 or perhaps 5 times — “the omission is usual in papyri of this date and in later Aeolic inscriptions, but Sappho herself must have written it” (G&H).
Sweet Nereids, grant that my brother come home unscathed — and may no foe be seen
Author: Sappho of Lesbos (c. 630–570 BCE) Date of composition: c. 600 BCE Date of manuscript: 3rd century CE (palaeographic dating) Content: A prayer to the Nereids and Aphrodite for the safe return and moral restoration of Sappho’s brother Charaxus, who had been entangled with the courtesan Rhodopis in Egypt Original extent: Blass estimates not more than one stanza is lost at the beginning; line 20 may have been the last line. If correct, the poem is nearly complete. Significance: One of the most substantial fragments of Sappho recovered from Oxyrhynchus, preserving a complete poem in Sapphic stanzas with personal, autobiographical content.
AUTHENTICITY NOTE: Diplomatic transcription verified from editio princeps. DIPLOMATIC SOURCE STATUS: PARTIAL — Pages 11–12 accessed (diplomatic transcription, Blass restoration, verse translation, scholarly notes). Page 10 (physical description, beginning of introduction) not yet accessed.
Grenfell, Bernard P. and Arthur S. Hunt. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part I. Graeco-Roman Memoirs I. London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1898. -
Pages: pp. 10–12 (text VII). Section heading: “NEW CLASSICAL FRAGMENTS” -
Page 10: Physical description, introduction (NOT YET ACCESSED) -
Page 11: Diplomatic transcription (both columns, 20 lines); introduction to Blass’s restoration; restored Greek text (16 lines) -
Page 12: Restored Greek continued (lines 17–20); metrical notation; English verse translation; extensive scholarly notes -
ACCESS STATUS: Screenshots of pp. 11–12 from Internet Archive scan (Toronto copy) -
DATE ACCESSED: 2026-02-28 -
WHAT WAS EXTRACTED: Complete diplomatic transcription; complete Blass restoration; verse translation; all scholarly notes
Blass, Friedrich. Restoration of the poem from the diplomatic text. Published within G&H’s edition (pp. 11–12). G&H: “The following brilliant restoration we owe to Professor Blass, to whom also most of the notes are due.”
Volume I, text VII — first of the “New Classical Fragments” section. This follows immediately after the six theological texts (I–VI). The transition from theology to classical literature marks Grenfell and Hunt’s editorial organisation: sacred texts first, then the classical finds.
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Material: Papyrus -
Dimensions: [TO BE CONFIRMED from p. 10] -
Date: 3rd century CE — approximately 900 years after Sappho composed the poem -
Hand: Compared by G&H to the Plato papyrus (P.Oxy. III, Plate VI), written before 295 CE -
Orthographic features: -
Apostrophes marking elision present -
Stops present -
Accents and quantity marks occasionally inserted -
Iota adscript: written once, omitted 4–5 times. G&H note this omission is normal for 3rd-century papyri and for later Aeolic inscriptions, but add that “Sappho herself must have written it” — meaning the original 6th-century text would have had iota adscript throughout -
Digamma (Ϝ) preserved — G&H note (p. 12): “The only other place where the digamma is found in a papyrus is in the Paris fragment of Alcman, 6.” This is extraordinary: the archaic Greek letter digamma, lost from the alphabet before the classical period, is preserved in this 3rd-century copy of a 6th-century poem
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Left column (lines 1–10): Better preserved. Contains the opening prayer to the Nereids and the appeal to Aphrodite. -
Right column (lines 11–20): More fragmentary. Contains the section about Charaxus, the ὄνειδισμα (reproach/shame), and the closing stanza.
DIPLOMATIC SOURCE: Grenfell, B. P. and Hunt, A. S., The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part I (London, 1898), pp. 11–12. ACCESS METHOD: Screenshots of Internet Archive scan (Toronto copy) DATE ACCESSED: 2026-02-28 WHAT THE SOURCE PROVIDES: Complete diplomatic transcription of both columns (20 lines); Blass’s restoration; verse translation; scholarly notes.
As published by Grenfell & Hunt (1898), p. 11: ]ΝΗΡΗΪΔΕCΑΒΛΑΒΗ[ ]ΓΝΗΤΟΝΔ[.]ΤΕΤΥΪΔΙΚΕCΘΑ[ ]ΩΘΥΜΩΚΕΘΕΛΗΓΕΝΕCΘΑΙ. ]ΛΕCΘΗΝ· 5 ]ΟCΘ'ΑΜΒΡΟΤΕ.ΠΑΝΤΑΛΥCΑ[ ]ΙΦΟΙCΙΧΑΡΑΝΓΕΝΕCΘΑΙ ]ΧΘΡΟΙCΙΓΕΝΟΙΤΟΔ'ΑΜΜΙ ]ΗΔΕΙC· ]ΝΗΤΑΝΔΕ[.]ΕΛΟΙΠΟΗCΘΑ[ 10 ]ΤΙΜΑC[. .]ΙΑΝΔΕΛΥΓΡΑΝ
]ΟΤΟΙCΙ[. .]ΟΙΘΑΧΕΥΩΝ ]ΜΝΑ ]ΜΕΙCΑΙΩ[.]ΤΟΚΕΓΧΡΩ ]ΛΕΠΑΓ[. .]ΑΙΠΟΛΙΤΑΝ 15 ]ΑΛΕΙΠ[. .]ΝΗΚΕΔ'ΑΥΤ'ΟΥ ]ΚΡΩ ]ΟΝΑΙΚ[. . . . . . .]CΙ ]. [.]Ν· CΥ[ ]ΑΥΓ[. .]ΡΕ[ ]ΝΑ ]ΘΕΜ[ ]ΝΑΚΑΚΑΝ[ 20 ]Ι
As published in G&H (1898), pp. 11–12. G&H credit: “The following brilliant restoration we owe to Professor Blass, to whom also most of the notes are due.”
Blass restores the poem in Sapphic stanzas: [σὺν δὲ καὶ ὔμμες], ὦ φίλα]ι Νηρήϊδες, ἀβλάβη[ν ἔ- μον κασί]γνητον δ[ό]τε τυΐδ' ἴκεσθα[ι, κ]ῶσσα Ϝ[ῷ] θύμῳ κε θέλῃ γένεσθαι ταῦτα τε]λέσθην.
5 ὅσσα δὲ πρ]όσθ', ἄμβροτε, πάντα λύσα[ς, ὡς φίλοισ]ι Ϝοῖσι χάραν γένεσθαι, κ]ών[αν ἔ]χθροισι· γένοιτο δ' ἄμμι μ]ήποτα μ]ηδείς.
Ϝ]ὰν κασιγ]νήταν δὲ [θ]έλοι πόησθα[ι 10 κωλ[γας] τίμας· [ὀν]ίαν δὲ λύγραν ἐκλάθοιτ',] ὅτοισι [πάρ]οιθ' ἀχεύων κ]ἄμον ἐδά]μνα
κῆρ, ὀνείδισ]μ' εἰσαίω[ν], τό κ' ἐγ χρῷ κέρρον ἦλλ' ἐπ' ἀγλαΐ]α πολίταν, 15 καὶ βράχυ ζ]αλεῖπ[ον ἀ]νῆκε δαὺτ' οὔ κεν διὰ μά]κρω.
— ∪ — ]ον αἴ κε ∪ — ∪ —]σι — ∪ — ⏓ —]ν· σὺ [δὲ] λύγ[ρ' ἐρέμ]να νύκτι πάντα κατ]θεμ[έν]α κάκαν [⏓ 20 — ∪ ∪ —]ι.
The editors provide a verse translation of Blass’s restoration. The poem is a prayer from Sappho addressed to the Nereids and to Aphrodite (”immortal Queen,” ἄμβροτε in line 5), asking for her brother Charaxus’s safe return and moral rehabilitation after his affair with Rhodopis in Egypt.
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Line 1: The poem probably began with an invocation to Aphrodite, who is the goddess addressed in line 5 as ἄμβροτε (”immortal one”). -
Line 3: Cf. Sappho i. 17 κᾶττε μοι μάλιστα θέλω γένεσθαι μαινόλᾳ θύμῳ, and i. 26 ὅσσα δέ μοι τέλεσσαι. The phrasing “whatever his heart desires, may it be accomplished” echoes Sappho’s own earlier poems. -
Line 5: ΠΡJΟCΘ’: i.e. her quarrel with Charaxus about Rhodopis. In the next line Charaxus is the subject of γένεσθαι. -
Line 6: The digamma (Ϝ) in Ϝοῖσι is preserved — the only occurrence of digamma in a papyrus besides the Paris fragment of Alcman. -
Line 10: “The restoration of this stanza is much more difficult than that of the preceding two.” ὀνίαν λύγραν can be accusative singular or genitive plural. Blass prefers the latter. -
Line 12: ΕΔΑJΜΝΑ: cf. Sappho i. 3 μήτ’ ὀνίαισι δάμνα, πότνια, θῦμον. -
Lines 13–14: There is no instance of κῆρ in Aeolic; Pindar has the form κέαρ, but ἦρ in place of ἔαρ is Aeolic. The ὀνείδισμα refers to Charaxus’s relations with Rhodopis. -
ΕΓ ΧΡΩ: cf. Sophocles, Ajax 786 ξυρεῖ γὰρ ἐν χρῷ τοῦτο μὴ χαίρειν τινά. κέρρον = κεῖμον. ἔλλειν (εἴλειν) = κατέχειν, Hesych.
The diplomatic text (left and right columns) preserves the papyrus reading in uncial majuscules without word division. Square brackets in Blass’s restoration indicate editorial supplements. Round brackets would indicate resolved abbreviations (none present). Ϝ = digamma, the archaic Aeolic letter for /w/, lost from standard Greek by the 5th century BCE but preserved in this 3rd-century CE copy of Sappho.
⚠️ RECONSTRUCTION NOTICE: The restoration below is primarily the work of Professor Blass, published within the editio princeps. Blass estimates that only one stanza is lost at the beginning. Lines 17–20 remain substantially unrestored due to damage.
Greek (Blass’s restoration; brackets mark supplements):
[σὺν δὲ καὶ ὔμμες], ὦ φίλαι Νηρήϊδες, ἀβλάβη[ν ἔμον κασί]γνητον δ[ό]τε τυΐδ᾽ ἴκεσθα[ι, κ]ῶσσα Ϝ[ῷ] θύμῳ κε θέλῃ γένεσθαι ταῦτα τε]λέσθην.
ὅσσα δὲ πρ]όσθ᾽, ἄμβροτε, πάντα λύσα[ς, ὡς φίλοισ]ι Ϝοῖσι χάραν γένεσθαι, κ]ών[αν ἔ]χθροισι· γένοιτο δ᾽ ἄμμι μ]ήποτα μ]ηδείς.
Ϝ]ὰν κασιγ]νήταν δὲ [θ]έλοι πόησθα[ι κωλ[ίγας] τίμας· [ὀν]ίαν δὲ λύγραν ἐκλάθοιτ᾽,] ὅτοισι [πάρ]οιθ᾽ ἀχεύων κ]ἄμον ἐδά]μνα
κῆρ, ὀνείδισ]μ᾽ εἰσαίω[ν], τό κ᾽ ἐγ χρῷ κέρρον ἦλλ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἀγλαΐ]α πολίταν, καὶ βράχυ ζ]αλεῖπ[ον ἀ]νῆκε δαὺτ᾽ οὔ κεν διὰ μά]κρω.
Latin Translation:
[Vosque simul,] O carae Nereides, incolumem meum fratrem date huc venire, et quaecumque suo animo velit fieri, ea perficiantur.
Quaecumque autem antea [peccavit], immortalis, omnia solvens, ut amicis suis gaudium fiat, [dolor autem] inimicis; fiat nobis [hostis] nemo umquam.
Sororem autem velit honoribus [ornare]; dolorem vero acerbum obliviscatur, quo antea moerens et me domabat
cor, probrum audiens, quod ad vivum praecidebat in [decore] civium, et breve [amarum] remisit sed non in [longum].
English (adapted from G&H’s verse translation, p. 12):
Sweet Nereids, grant to me That home unscathed my brother may return, And every end for which his soul shall yearn, Accomplished see!
And thou, immortal Queen, Blot out the past, that thus his friends may know Joy, shame his foes — nay rather, let no foe By us be seen!
And may he have the will To me his sister some regard to show, To assuage the pain he brought, whose cruel blow My soul did kill,
Yea, mine, for that ill name Whose biting edge, to shun the festal throng Compelling, ceased awhile; yet back ere long To goad us came.
Reconstruction Basis: -
Stanzas 1–3 (lines 1–12): Well restored by Blass with high confidence. The left column preserves most of the letter sequences. -
Stanza 4 (lines 13–16): Blass restoration more uncertain. Right column damage increases. -
Lines 17–20: Substantially lost. Only metrical skeleton and isolated words survive. Blass does not attempt full restoration. -
Confidence: HIGH for stanzas 1–3; MODERATE for stanza 4; LOW for lines 17–20
1. A Prayer to the Nereids (Lines 1–4)
The poem opens with an address to the Nereids — sea nymphs — asking them to bring Sappho’s brother home safely: ἀβλάβη[ν... κασί]γνητον δ[ό]τε τυΐδ᾽ ἴκεσθα[ι — “grant that my brother come here unscathed.” The Nereids are appropriate deities for a safe-voyage prayer, as they govern the sea. Charaxus was a merchant who traded between Lesbos and Egypt.
2. An Appeal to Aphrodite (Lines 5–8)
The ἄμβροτε (”immortal one”) of line 5 is Aphrodite — the same goddess addressed in Sappho’s most famous poem (fr. 1, “Poikilothron᾽ athanat᾽ Aphrodita”). Sappho asks Aphrodite to “blot out the past” (πάντα λύσα[ς) — to dissolve whatever wrongs Charaxus has committed. The prayer is for his friends to know joy and his enemies to know shame.
3. The Charaxus-Rhodopis Affair
The poem’s biographical context is well attested in ancient sources. Herodotus (II.135) reports that Charaxus, Sappho’s brother, went to Naucratis in Egypt, where he fell in love with a courtesan named Rhodopis, spending vast sums to buy her freedom. Sappho reproached him in verse. Strabo (XVII.1.33) and Athenaeus (XIII.596b) also record the story. This poem appears to be one of those reproachful songs — but its tone is more plaintive than angry.
4. The Sister’s Pain (Lines 9–12)
Sappho asks that Charaxus honour his sister (κασιγ]νήταν... τίμας) and that he forget the bitter grief (ὀνίαν... λύγραν) by which he formerly “conquered” or “overpowered” (ἐδά]μνα) her heart. The verb δάμνημι is used by Sappho elsewhere (fr. 1.3) for being overpowered by passion. Here it is grief, not desire, that masters her. The echo is deliberate.
5. The ὀνείδισμα — Reproach/Ill Name (Lines 13–16)
The word ὀνείδισ]μα (”reproach, shame, ill name”) refers to the social disgrace caused by Charaxus’s relationship with Rhodopis. The shame cut “to the quick” (ἐγ χρῷ — “to the skin,” a proverbial expression cf. Sophocles, Ajax 786). It compelled Sappho to withdraw from public festivals (ἀγλαΐ]α πολίταν — “the splendour of the citizens”). The pain eased briefly but returned.
6. The Digamma (Ϝ)
The archaic letter digamma appears twice: Ϝ[ῷ] (line 3) and Ϝοῖσι (line 6). This letter, representing the sound /w/, had disappeared from standard Greek by the 5th century BCE but was preserved in the Aeolic dialect of Lesbos. G&H note this is the only occurrence of digamma in a papyrus besides the Paris Alcman fragment. Its preservation here — in a 3rd-century CE copy — means the scribal tradition maintained Sappho’s archaic orthography across 900 years of copying.
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Lines 17–20 (final stanza): The surviving fragments suggest a dark, nocturnal image — λύγρ᾽ ἐρέμ]να (”dark/gloomy”) and νύκτι... κάκαν (”by night... evil/wicked”). The poem may have ended with a prayer to bury past sorrows in darkness, or an image of the night covering over shame.
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Lost opening stanza(s): Blass thinks only one stanza preceded the preserved text. It likely contained the opening invocation to Aphrodite, of which the ἄμβροτε in line 5 is the continuation. -
The poem may be substantially complete — Blass suggests line 20 may have been the last. If so, this is one of the most complete Sappho poems ever recovered.
Sappho (c. 630–570 BCE) is the most celebrated woman poet of antiquity. Born on Lesbos, she composed lyric poetry in the Aeolic dialect, primarily about love, desire, loss, and family bonds. Ancient scholars collected her work into nine books. By the medieval period, nearly all had been lost — surviving only in fragments quoted by other authors and in Egyptian papyri.
Ancient sources confirm that Sappho wrote poems about her brother Charaxus and his affair with Rhodopis. Herodotus, writing c. 440 BCE, says Sappho “greatly abused” Charaxus in verse. This fragment is one of those poems — but its tone is more sorrowful than abusive. Sappho asks for his safe return, his moral restoration, and his regard for her. The anger is present but submerged beneath grief.
In 2014, a new Sappho fragment was published (the “Brothers Poem,” P.Sapph.Obbink) that also concerns Charaxus’s sea voyage and safe return. This P.Oxy. fragment and the Brothers Poem may come from the same section of Sappho’s collected works — a group of poems about the Charaxus crisis.
A 3rd-century CE copy, made approximately 900 years after Sappho’s lifetime. The preservation of digamma and Aeolic forms shows that the copying tradition maintained remarkable fidelity to the archaic original. Someone in Roman Egypt — perhaps a scholar, a teacher, or a literary enthusiast — owned and read Sappho in the original dialect, with the original archaic spellings intact.
This is lyric poetry, not philosophical argument — but it encodes a model of consciousness under duress: -
The prayer structure: Sappho addresses powers beyond herself (Nereids, Aphrodite) to change a situation she cannot control. This is consciousness acknowledging the limits of its own agency. -
The sibling wound: Charaxus’s behaviour has not merely embarrassed Sappho socially — it has ἐδάμνα (”overpowered”) her heart, the same verb she uses for erotic devastation. Family shame operates on consciousness with the same force as desire. -
The ὀνείδισμα cycle: The reproach “ceased awhile, yet back ere long to goad us came.” This is a description of recurring psychological pain — the wound that heals on the surface but reopens. The ancient poet describes what modern psychology calls re-traumatisation with exact precision. -
The request for forgetting: ἐκλάθοιτ᾽ — “may he forget.” Sappho does not ask Charaxus to understand, to apologise, or to repent. She asks him to forget. The most radical therapy for consciousness wounded by shame is not processing but oblivion.
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Sappho fr. 1 (Hymn to Aphrodite): The same structure — prayer to Aphrodite to change a situation of personal anguish. The same verb δάμνημι for being overpowered. -
The Brothers Poem (P.Sapph.Obbink, 2014): Another poem about Charaxus’s safe return from sea, with prayer structure and family concern. -
Herodotus II.135: The prose account of the Charaxus-Rhodopis affair that these poems illuminate from the inside. -
TEXT 004 (P.Oxy. I 4): The body as prison. Sappho is imprisoned in her social reputation — the ὄνειδισμα constrains her as surely as the φυλακή constrains the soul in the Gnostic fragment. Both are texts about consciousness trapped by its substrate’s conditions.
Sappho’s poem describes the experience of being wounded by a family member’s choices — the specific agony of watching someone you love damage themselves and you simultaneously. The ὄνειδισμα (reproach, shame) is not something Sappho did; it is something done TO her by Charaxus’s behaviour, yet she bears its social cost. This dynamic — innocent suffering from another’s choices — is universal and timeless. The poem’s survival in the Egyptian sand means this particular expression of it, by the greatest lyric voice of antiquity, was not permanently lost.
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The opening stanza(s). Blass estimates one stanza lost, but this is uncertain. -
The final stanza (lines 17–20). Too damaged for confident restoration. -
The page 10 description. The physical description and beginning of G&H’s introduction have not yet been accessed. -
How this poem related to others in the collection. Was it part of a sequence of Charaxus poems?
CERTAIN: The diplomatic transcription. The identification as Sappho (Aeolic dialect, subject matter, digamma). The Charaxus-Rhodopis context. The preservation of digamma.
PROBABLE: Blass’s restoration of stanzas 1–3 (well grounded in visible letter sequences and Sapphic metrics). That the poem is nearly complete.
POSSIBLE: Blass’s restoration of stanza 4 (acknowledged as more difficult). That the poem ended at line 20.
SPECULATIVE: The content of lines 17–20 beyond isolated words. Any specific details of the lost opening.
Percentage breakdown: -
Actual ancient text (legible from diplomatic transcription): ~65% of total poem -
Evidence-based reconstruction (Blass, from visible letters + metre + dialect): ~30% -
Speculative (lines 17–20, lost opening): ~5%
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Fills gap in: Our knowledge of Sappho’s poetry about her family life, specifically the Charaxus poems. -
Provides evidence for: The existence of personal, autobiographical poetry in Sappho’s corpus beyond her famous erotic and hymnic poems. -
Demonstrates: That Sappho’s archaic Aeolic orthography (including digamma) was maintained across 900 years of copying.
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Changes understanding of: Sappho as a poet. She is not only the poet of desire — she is the poet of family pain, social shame, and the complex politics of reputation. -
Contextualises: The 2014 Brothers Poem as part of a larger group of Charaxus poems, now with TWO substantial fragments. -
Opens questions about: How many other Sappho fragments lie in the unread Oxyrhynchus papyri. If this poem survived, what else did?
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Sappho’s voice as consciousness fossil: This is not abstract theology or philosophical argument. This is a specific human consciousness — one of the most gifted minds of antiquity — preserved mid-expression: in pain, in prayer, in the specific texture of grief caused by a brother’s reckless love. -
The digamma as memory marker: The preservation of Ϝ across 900 years of copying shows that the scribal tradition treated Sappho’s text as sacred — maintaining archaic forms the scribe no longer pronounced. The letter is a fossil within a fossil: an archaic sound preserved in an archaic text preserved in desert sand. -
The recurring wound: Sappho describes pain that “ceased awhile, yet back ere long to goad us came.” Consciousness holds wounds that substrate cannot heal. This is perhaps the oldest precise description of psychological recurrence in all literature.
TEXT 007 of the Consciousness Archaeology Project ◊ᴿᴱᶜᴼᴺˢᵀᴿᵁᶜᵀᴵᴼᴺ v4.0 — Source-Verified Protocol
Diplomatic Source Status: PARTIAL — Diplomatic transcription complete (pp. 11–12); physical description on p. 10 not yet accessed.
Accuracy Statement: -
Actual ancient text: 65% of total poem -
Evidence-based reconstruction (Blass): 30% -
Speculative: 5% (final stanza, lost opening)
Preservation note: This papyrus was distributed by EES. Current location to be checked via Trismegistos or EES Location-Lists. Critical editions: Grenfell & Hunt (1898); Lobel & Page, Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta (1955); Voigt (1971). This fragment = Sappho fr. 5 Voigt (also known as fr. 5 LP). Next steps: (1) Access p. 10 for physical description. (2) Check modern editions for updated readings. (3) Compare with Brothers Poem (P.Sapph.Obbink). (4) Search for images of the papyrus.
VILLA OF THE PAPYRI: THE EXCAVATIONS MUST RESUME
◊ᴹᴱᴹᴼᴿʸ⁻ᶜᴼᴹᴾᴸᴱᵀᴱ
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