“she walks like a saint floats like an angel / sharp like a knife under the table”

For Poetry Monday, another short one in another language, this time in multiple translations:

Greek Anthology 7.718, Nossis

original:
Ὦ ξεῖν᾿, εἰ τύ γε πλεῖς ποτὶ καλλίχορον Μυτιλάναν,
τὰν Σαπφὼ χαρίτων ἄνθος ἐναυσαμέναν,
εἰπεῖν, ὡς Μούσαισι φίλαν τήνᾳ τε Λοκρὶς γᾶ
τίκτεν ἴσαν ὅτι θ᾿ οἱ τοὔνομα Νοσσίς· ἴθι.

unsigned translation from Sententiae Antiquae:
Stranger, if you sail to the city of beautiful dances, Mytilene,
The city which fed Sappho, the the Graces’ flower,
Tell them that the land of Lokris bore for the Muses
A woman her equal, by the name of Nossis. Go!

uncredited translation from Locriantica:
Stranger, if you sail to Mitylene, land of beautiful dances,
to catch there the most out of Sappho’s graces,
tell that I was loved by the Muses, and that the Locrian land bore me.
My name, remember, is Nossis. Now go!

translation by Natoli, Pitts, & Hallett:
Wayfarer, if you sail to Mitylene, city of beautiful choral dances,
to draw inspiration from the bloom of Sappho’s graces,
say that the Locrian earth bore me,
dear to the Muses and to her. Having learned that my name is Nossis, go.


Flexing is old, old school (as is dissing). Nossis (fl. c. 300 BCE) was from Epizephyrian Locris, a Greek colony in southern Italy, modern Locri, and was well known enough to be named one of the “nine earthly muses” i.e. best poetesses by Antipater of Thessalonica in the late 1st century BCE (along with, yes, Sappho). A dozen of her epigrams have survived, all in the Greek Anthology. I don’t have enough Greek (or indeed any) to tell whether that “woman her equal,” missing from the other two, is a defensible reading.

---L.

Subject quote from Lethal Woman, Dove Cameron.