[In the following essay, Sider discusses multiple poetic meanings of the term “ôra” in the Sapphic fragment designated as 168B Voight.]

Δέδυχε μὲν ἀ Σελάννα
χαὶ Πληiαδεs· μέσαι δὲ
νύχτεs, παϱὰ δ' ἔϱχετ' Ὤϱα,
ἔγω δὲ μόνα χατεύδω.(1)

Recent discussion of this poem has concentrated on the meaning of ôra, scholars as usual arguing for only one of the possible meanings the word may have: (i) hour of the night, i.e., the night itself (“nottata”);² (ii) fixed time (for meeting one's lover);³ (iii) indefinite period of time, i.e., “time passes;”⁴ (iv) ἥβη, flos aetatis, referring to Sappho's own life;⁵ (v) φυλαaή, a watch in the night.⁶ Rather surprisingly, nobody has argued for the word's basic meaning, season of the year (hôra is cognate with year/Jahr), although, as I shall show, two learned poets have so interpreted the poem (see below, n. 13). The approach to the problem has been a somewhat circular one: to survey Greek (and other) literature for situations said to be parallel to the one described here in order to determine which meaning is most appropriate.⁷ But all that has been demonstrated by this discussion and disagreement is that no meaning is obviously inapplicable or inappropriate. My approach will differ from earlier ones in that I shall begin with the poem itself, noting its development clause by clause, in order to show that it is the poem itself rather than the rest of Greek literature that determines the range of meanings connoted by ôra.

In the first line we learn that the moon has set for the night; with the next two words we also learn that “the Pleiades have set.” But the latter phrase, in one form or another, appears frequently in the sense that the Pleiades have had their cosmical setting in November, hereby marking the end of the sailing season and the onset of winter.⁸ This sense is so prevalent that we are very artfully led by this syllepsis to feel that the Pleiades have both set for the night and set for the season. An ancient reader would know immediately that it was midwinter,⁹ for as the time of the Pleiades' setting below the horizon before sunrise occurs earlier and earlier every day after the cosmical setting, it will not be before late January or early February that Sappho can say at midnight that the Pleiades have set, in both senses.

From the first two and a half lines, therefore, we learn that the sky is dark¹⁰ and that the night is cold. Surely this weather report cannot be entirely objective: Sappho's remarks upon the external darkness and cold must derive from and reflect a feeling of a more subjective gloom. Some proof that this is indeed the case may be found both in the use of δύω, which often appears as a metaphor for human life,¹¹ and in the fact that it is female deities who are said to have passed from their position of glory in the sky.¹²

From these three senses of δέδυχε derive three equivalent senses of ôra: (a) the time of the night (δ. with Selanna), (b) the season of the year (δ. with Pleiades),¹³ and (c) the passing of Sappho's life (the metaphorical sense of δ.). It is ôra in this last sense in fact that both crystallizes the inchoate personal feelings underlying the first three lines and acts as a glide between the astronomical description of the poem's beginning and its intensely personal last line. After some (few?) nights of sleeping alone, Sapho sees her life passing; perhaps, given μέσαι δὲ νύaτεs, having passed its midpoint.¹⁴

I conclude, therefore, that all three meanings discussed here are called forth in the poem.

Notes

1. Fr. 94 Diehl = fr. 52 Bergk. Although I regard the poem as Sappho's, whether it was in fact written by her is not of concern here, and hardly (see below, n. 10) affects the argument. For a review of the controversy over authorship, see M. Treu, Sappho (Munich 1968) 211 f.; D. Clay, “Fragmentum Adespotum 976,” TAPA 101 (1970) 119-129; B. Marzullo, Gnomon 50 (1978) 711 f. Lobel and Page did not admit it into Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta (cf. Page JHS 78 [1958] 84 f.), but they seem to have made few converts; the poem has since appeared in E.-M. Voight, Sappho et Alcaeus (Amsterdam 1971).

2. P. Lunák, “De Sapphus Fragm. 52 Commentariolum,” WS 40 (1918) 97-102 (whose sense of the poem is destroyed by his insertion of οὐ before aατεύδω); B. Marzullo, Studi di poesia eolica (Florence 1958) 41 ff.; P. Berrettoni, “Per una lettura linguistica di un frammento di poesia eolica,” SCO 19-20 (1970) 254-269 (who cannot decide between this meaning and (iii) below); Clay 128.

3. V. Longo, “Aristofane e un'interpretazione di Saffo,” Maia 6 (1953) 220-223; H. Hoffmann-Loss, “Die Bedeutung von Ὤϱα in Δέδυχε μὲν ἀ σελάννα,” Mnemosyne 21 (1968) 347-356.

4. L. Massa Positano, Saffo (Naples 1967) 164 f.

5. B. Lavagnini, Nuova antologia dei frammenti della lirica greca (Torino 1932) 184 ff.

6. P. Maas, “Zum griechischen Wortschatz,” Mélanges Émile Boisacq 2 = AIPhO 6 (1938) 131 f., identifies the word as Ὤϱα (A) in LSJ, a variant of the stem found in οὖϱοs = φύλαξ; cf. EM 117, 18. Treu translates as Warten, but argues in his commentary as though for (ii) above in the sense of aαιϱόs—a lack of clarity he admits apud Hoffmann-Loss 350 n. 2.

7. E.g., Longo argues for “appointed time” largely on the basis of the similarity to Sappho 168B of A.P. 5.150 (Asclepiades X Gow-Page): Niko promised to come this night but has not, φυλαaὴ δὲ παϱοίχεται.

8. A constellation is said to set when it is seen to set for the first time that year at sunrise; cf. M. L. West, Hesiod. Works and Days (Oxford 1978) 379 f. The Pleiades “rise” in mid-May, marking the beginning of the sailing season. That the dates of their rising and setting were known to all hardly calls for demonstration; I refer only to Hes. Op. 383 f., with West's notes ad loc.

9. See the last note, and compare the way in which Theocritus implies the season of the year at 7.52 ff. (with Gow's note). Berrettoni 256 infers from the poem's beginning that “la notte è serena” (in contrast to the last line, where “l'animo è turbato”), but it should be noted that the setting of the Pleiades was traditionally associated with rain and wintry storms; cf. Hes. Op. 319 ff., Democr. B 14.3 (VS 2.143), Antipater Thess. XXXVII Gow-Page (A.P. 11.31).

10. If the moon set not long before midnight, the night would have been illuminated by only a half moon—a fact worth noting also because thrice among Sappho's exiguous remains beautiful girls are likened to the full moon: (i) fr. 34 σελάννα … ὄπποτα πλήθοισα, (ii) fr. 154 πλήϱηs … ἀ σελάννα, and (iii) fr. 96.6 ff.

    νῦν δὲ Λύδαισιν ἐμπϱέπεται γυναί-
    χεσσν Ὤs ποτ' ἀελίω
    δύντοs ἀ βϱοδοδάχτυλοs σελάννα [Schubart μήνα ms.]
    πάντα πεϱϱέχοιοσ' ἄστϱαέ,

    where the moon seen first at sunset is a full moon, which also helps to explain the ποτε that has puzzled the commentators looking for a nightly occurrence. For an explanation of the moon's reddish appearance when first rising, see. I. Waern, “Flora Sapphica,” Eranos 70 (1972) 4.

    Note the converse to Sappho 168B: Housman, Last Poems 26, “The half-moon westers low, my love,” entails that the time of speaking is approximately midnight.

11. Aesch. Ag. 1123 βίου δύντοs αὐγαῖs, Arist. Poet. 1457b25 τò γῆϱαs έσπέϱαν βίου e δυσμὰs βίου, Pl. Laws 770a, 781c, Callim. Ep. 20.1-2.

12. Selanna with article presents fewer problems in Aeolic if it is regarded as a proper noun, as Aeolic permits this construction elsewhere: Sappho fr. 168, Alcaeus fr. 338, 349; cf. E. Lobel, 'Αλχαίου Μέλη (Oxford 1927) lxxxvii f.; T. Clay 123 f; McEvilley, “Sapphic Imagery and Fr. 96,” Hermes 101 (1973) 262. Note that in one of his renderings of this poem, Housman, More Poems 11, introduces the male Orion: “The rainy Pleiads wester, / Orion plunges prone, / The stroke of midnight ceases, / And I lie down alone.” For the Pleiades and Orion's setting signalling the onset of winter's storms, cf. Hes Op. 619-21 (cf. above, n. 9).

13. This seems to have been understood not only by Housman (see last note) but also by Asclepiades XLII Gow-Page (A.P. 5.189) νὺξ μαχϱὴχαὶ χεῖμα, †μέσην δ' ἐπὶ Πλειάδα δύνει (χεῖμα μέσον, Πλειὰs δὲ δέδυχεν Ludwig Gnomon 38 [1966] 23; Ludwig recognizes that this line implies that “es is um Mitternacht”).

14. Thus we can answer Treu's question (212), warum soll die [sc. Jugendblüte] gerade nach Mitternacht schwinden? Similarly, Marzullo 35 f., who objects to Lavagnini's interpretation on the grounds that a mere description of the heavens would not lead to Ὤϱα = ἥβη, and who wants to see the first sign of personal concern in ἔγω.