Above the lowly grave of Pelagon, Ill-fated fisher lad, Meniscus’ son, His father placed as sign of storm and strife The weel and oar, memorial of his life.
The two elegiac couplets on _The Dust of Timas_, who died before her wedding day, are rather flat and hardly worthy of Sappho’s genius (E. 144); but if Edmonds’ restoration of one of Sappho’s fragments as referring to Timas is correct (p. 60 above), it may be genuine and in that case one of the very few surviving early metrical epitaphs. I give you the recent rendering by one of our best modern American poets, Edwin Arlington Robinson:
This dust was Timas; and they say That almost on her wedding day She found her bridal home to be The dark house of Persephone. And many maidens, knowing then That she would not come back again, Unbound their curls; and all in tears, They cut them off with sharpened shears.
The high regard of the ancients and moderns for Sappho appears especially in art. In olden days she was honored in town-hall and library. Many a statue and bust of her was erected and she was one of the few historical characters who were painted on Greek vases, which even quote her verses. She was sculptured also in terra-cotta and bronze.[103] It is well established[104] that her image was engraved on coins of Eresus and Mytilene,—a unique honor in early Greek days. Many (Pl. 10, 11) in the British Museum, in Paris, and elsewhere[105] bear representations sometimes of her head on the obverse with the lyre on the reverse, and sometimes her full figure standing or sitting. They differ much in the manner of the arrangement of her coiffure, some even showing the hair covered by a kerchief, a fashion still prevalent in modern Lesbus. They may be traced back to different types. Those which bear her name date from Roman Imperial times. In general Furtwängler[106] is right in contending that it was not the custom to honor distinguished persons in such a manner before the days of Alexander. But the beautiful head which appears on early Greek coins of Mytilene of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. may easily be Sappho and not her patron Aphrodite, even in cases where the type is adapted to that of the goddess of love. The lyre on the reverse and the individual features which resemble some of the busts of Sappho point that way. The beautiful face on the old coins was copied from some statue, perhaps one that was even earlier than that of Silanion. Farnell well says:[107] “the later hero cults of Homer at Smyrna, Sappho at Lesbus, and Aristotle at Stageira reveal the deep conviction of the Hellenic spirit that science and art are divine powers.” If the head on these Mytilenaean coins is really Sappho, it is a silent but eloquent testimony to the reverence her name acquired after her death and to the perfection of her living work.