do not carry me
Which once were swift to dance, like young fawns.
I often bemoan this, but what can I do?
Be ageless? That, a mortal cannot become.
For, they said of Tithonus that Dawn, with her pink arms,
Was once smitten with love and took him off to the ends of the earth
As he was fair and young – but in time, grey old age seized him
Though he had a wife who was immortal
…
Sappho, Cologne Papyrus, first published
and restored in 2004
Apatorios to Leanax… I have had my goods plundered by Heracleides son of Eotheris. It is in your power to see that I do not lose the goods. For I said the goods are yours and Menon said that you entrusted them to him… and he also said that the goods in my possession are yours. So, if you present the documents written on hides (probably, leather)to Heracleides and Thathaie, your goods [will be recovered… ?]
…
A Greek letter written in Ionic script on lead by Apatorios (an Ionian name)
c.
500 BC and found up at Olbia, the site of a Milesian Greek settlement on the northern coast of the Black Sea (to date, only five other Greek letters on lead, datable
c.
540–500 BC , are known; this one was first published in 2004)
Across the Aegean, on the coast of western Asia and the nearby islands, the eastern Greeks have strong claims to be the cultural leaders of the archaic Greek world. Many modern histories of Greece do not give that impression: the Greeks of Ionia have even been classed as ‘followers’, not leaders. One reason is that their sites have been much less explored by archaeology and, as they often lie in modern Turkey, they have been less at the centre for modern ‘philhellenes’ and their embassies and schools based in Athens.
In my view, Ionia and the eastern Greeks in the eighth to sixth centuries would have made mainland Greece seem decidedly drab and unsophisticated. Their use of language was far superior. In poetry, they had produced some of Homer’s oral forerunners (or so his traditional dialect suggests) and almost certainly Homer himself. They had exported the poetic genre of elegy back to Greece and invented many of the metres and genres of lyric poetry too. The metres used by two island geniuses, the noble Alcaeus and the lady-poet Sappho, gave a new rhythm and polish to lyrics, as the poets of Rome and, later, England tried to imitate in their ‘Sapphic’ and ‘Alcaic’ stanzas. When texts began to be written down in prose (
c.
520 BC ), it was the Ionian Greek dialect which showed the way. Ionians also have their own fine tribute in Greek poetry, by the unknown author of the Hymn to Apollo on Delos (arguably,
c.
670–650 BC ), who was probably an Ionian himself. In their long, trailing robes, he tells us, Ionians would come with their ‘children and modest wives’ and commemorate Apollo, with their ‘boxing and dancing and song’ at one of their competitions on Delos. 1 ‘Anyone who met them, then, when they were gathered together, would say they were immortal and would never grow old,’ and ‘he would delight his heart while gazing at their men and fair-girdled women, at their swift ships and many possessions’. At that time, the Athenians would have been a much less impressive sight, let alone the Spartans. It is the most beautiful tribute; the Ionian visits to Delos are a poetic picture which still delights our mind’s eye.
Not that these eastern Greeks were soft. On the mainland, the broad plains of Asia were very well suited to cavalry and it was there, in the seventh and sixth centuries, that some of the finest Greek horsemen could be seen. On land, Ionian ‘men of bronze’, hoplites therefore, had already been helping in Egypt by
c.
665: eastern Greekswere the first to adopt the new tactics and the ‘hoplite revolution’. 2 They were surely on the forefront of trireme-warfare too. The earliest surviving use of the word happens to be east Greek in the 540s BC , and although islanders kept on using the older ‘fifty-oared’
Which once were swift to dance, like young fawns.
I often bemoan this, but what can I do?
Be ageless? That, a mortal cannot become.
For, they said of Tithonus that Dawn, with her pink arms,
Was once smitten with love and took him off to the ends of the earth
As he was fair and young – but in time, grey old age seized him
Though he had a wife who was immortal
…
Sappho, Cologne Papyrus, first published
and restored in 2004
Apatorios to Leanax… I have had my goods plundered by Heracleides son of Eotheris. It is in your power to see that I do not lose the goods. For I said the goods are yours and Menon said that you entrusted them to him… and he also said that the goods in my possession are yours. So, if you present the documents written on hides (probably, leather)to Heracleides and Thathaie, your goods [will be recovered… ?]
…
A Greek letter written in Ionic script on lead by Apatorios (an Ionian name)
c.
500 BC and found up at Olbia, the site of a Milesian Greek settlement on the northern coast of the Black Sea (to date, only five other Greek letters on lead, datable
c.
540–500 BC , are known; this one was first published in 2004)
Across the Aegean, on the coast of western Asia and the nearby islands, the eastern Greeks have strong claims to be the cultural leaders of the archaic Greek world. Many modern histories of Greece do not give that impression: the Greeks of Ionia have even been classed as ‘followers’, not leaders. One reason is that their sites have been much less explored by archaeology and, as they often lie in modern Turkey, they have been less at the centre for modern ‘philhellenes’ and their embassies and schools based in Athens.
In my view, Ionia and the eastern Greeks in the eighth to sixth centuries would have made mainland Greece seem decidedly drab and unsophisticated. Their use of language was far superior. In poetry, they had produced some of Homer’s oral forerunners (or so his traditional dialect suggests) and almost certainly Homer himself. They had exported the poetic genre of elegy back to Greece and invented many of the metres and genres of lyric poetry too. The metres used by two island geniuses, the noble Alcaeus and the lady-poet Sappho, gave a new rhythm and polish to lyrics, as the poets of Rome and, later, England tried to imitate in their ‘Sapphic’ and ‘Alcaic’ stanzas. When texts began to be written down in prose (
c.
520 BC ), it was the Ionian Greek dialect which showed the way. Ionians also have their own fine tribute in Greek poetry, by the unknown author of the Hymn to Apollo on Delos (arguably,
c.
670–650 BC ), who was probably an Ionian himself. In their long, trailing robes, he tells us, Ionians would come with their ‘children and modest wives’ and commemorate Apollo, with their ‘boxing and dancing and song’ at one of their competitions on Delos. 1 ‘Anyone who met them, then, when they were gathered together, would say they were immortal and would never grow old,’ and ‘he would delight his heart while gazing at their men and fair-girdled women, at their swift ships and many possessions’. At that time, the Athenians would have been a much less impressive sight, let alone the Spartans. It is the most beautiful tribute; the Ionian visits to Delos are a poetic picture which still delights our mind’s eye.
Not that these eastern Greeks were soft. On the mainland, the broad plains of Asia were very well suited to cavalry and it was there, in the seventh and sixth centuries, that some of the finest Greek horsemen could be seen. On land, Ionian ‘men of bronze’, hoplites therefore, had already been helping in Egypt by
c.
665: eastern Greekswere the first to adopt the new tactics and the ‘hoplite revolution’. 2 They were surely on the forefront of trireme-warfare too. The earliest surviving use of the word happens to be east Greek in the 540s BC , and although islanders kept on using the older ‘fifty-oared’
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