Sappho

A New Translation of the Complete Works

Second edition Diane J. Rayor and André Lardinois

Sappho, the earliest and most famous Greek woman poet, sang her songs around 600 BCE on the island of Lesbos. Of what survives from the approximately nine papyrus scrolls collected in antiquity, all is translated here: substantial poems and fragments, including three poems discovered in the last two decades. The power of Sappho’s poetry – her direct style, rich imagery, and passion – is apparent even in these remnants. Diane Rayor’s translations of Greek poetry are graceful, modern in diction yet faithful to the originals. Sappho’s voice is heard in these poems about love, friendship, rivalry, and family. In the introduction and notes, André Lardinois plausibly reconstructs Sappho’s life and work, the performance of her songs, and how these fragments survived. This second edition incorporates thirty-two more fragments primarily based on Camillo Neri’s 2021 Greek edition and revisions of over seventy fragments.

Diane J. Rayor is Professor Emerita of Classics at Grand Valley State University,

Michigan, where she received the Niemeyer Outstanding Faculty Award for excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service, and the Women’s Impact

Award. She was granted the Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship for translating Euripides’ Helen and served as the University of Colorado’s Roe

Green Visiting Theatre Artist for Euripides’ Hecuba. Her published translations include Euripides’ ‘Medea’ (Cambridge, 2013); Sophocles’ ‘Antigone’ (Cambridge, 2011); Homeric Hymns (2nd ed. 2014); Sappho’s Lyre: Archaic Lyric and Women Poets of Ancient Greece (1991); and Callimachus (with S. Lombardo, 1988). She is coeditor of Latin Lyric and Elegiac Poetry (2nd ed. 2018).

André Lardinois is Professor of Greek Language and Literature at Radboud

Universiteit Nijmegen. He has published extensively on Sappho and other

Greek poetry. He is co-author of Tragic Ambiguity: Philosophy and Sophocles’

‘Antigone’ (1987) and co-editor of Making Silence Speak: Women’s Voices in Greek Literature and Society (2001), Solon of Athens: New Historical and

Philological Approaches (2005), Sacred Words: Orality, Literacy and Religion (2011), The Look of Lyric: Greek Song and the Visual and The Newest Sappho: P.

Sapph. Obbink and P.GC inv. 105, frs. 1-4 (2016).

Reviews of the first edition

‘This is the best version of Sappho in English.’ Thomas L. Cooksey, Library Journal ‘Diane J. Rayor captures the distinctively plainspoken quality of Sappho’s Greek, which, for all the poet’s naked emotionality and love of luxe, is never overwrought or baroque.’ Daniel Mendelsohn, The New Yorker

S A P P H O

A NEW TRANSLATION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS

DIANE J. RAYOR ANDRÉ LARDINOIS

UK publication February 2023 US publication February 2023

218 pages 9781108926973 Paperback

£12.99 | $16.95 USD | $19.95 CAD

At a glance

• Gives readers access to the most complete collection yet of Sappho’s poetry in English, eloquently translated to speak to the modern audience whilst remaining accurate to the original Greek • The thorough Introduction and notes provide all the contextual information and detailed explanations required for the reader to engage with the poems effectively • Professional recordings of the poems are freely available for readers to enjoy at www.cambridge.org/sappho