[94] German and Austrian scholars have failed to see the lovely lyrical literature in this delightful ballad. Aly considers it only the beginning of a longer ode; and I cannot agree with him that it does not fit in with what we know of Sappho who often expresses her loneliness in the absence of her companions. Even if the thought is of love, we must not expect consistency in a high-strung Aeolian woman. Fragments such as E. 152, 159, 167 may have been in a totally different context. But I do not mean to say that the ballad certainly refers to Sappho herself. The context is gone and it is not even definitely assigned to Sappho. Some of the editions seem to have contained it, but much anonymous literature has been included in the Sapphic _corpus_ as in that of Plato or Hippocrates. However, as it is one of the prettiest and most perfect pieces and quite in Sappho’s style and metre and thought, I consider it genuine. Ovid (_Sappho to Phaon_, 155 ff.) seems to know the lines. Ruthlessly to insert a negative in the text (“Alone I do not sleep”) as does Lunák (_Wiener Studien_, XL, 1918, p. 98) spoils the literary quality and makes it insipid. How much suggestive concision in those seventeen words in four verses (four of them small particles), but what vast and profound humanity; silence, solitude, obscurity, waiting, anxiety, sympathy of nature. How the strong and rapid description catches our deepest thoughts. Such things disprove the arguments against its genuineness by Wilamowitz, _Textgeschichte_, p. 33; and _Sappho und Simonides_, p. 75. Cf. Münscher, _Hermes_, LIV. 29, 4 (1919). [95] _Scribner’s Magazine_, September 1905, p. 304. [96] On the whole tradition of the wedding song cf. Mangelsdorff, _Das lyrische Hochzeitsgedicht bei den Griechen und Römern_, 1913; Reitzenstein, _Hermes_, XXXV. 95 ff. (1900); Croiset, _Journal des Savants_, July 1914; Girard, _Le Mariage de Hector_, _Comptes-rendus Ac. des Sc. et Belles-lettres_, 1914, pp. 658-9. [97] I. 4. [98] Cf. Robinson, _The Classical Weekly_, V. 68 (1911). [99] In this account of Sappho’s wedding-songs I am much indebted to Koechly, _Akademische Vorträge und Reden_, Zürich, 1859, pp. 153-217. [100] For Usener’s interesting conjecture about Lesbian marriage customs based on this fragment cf. _Kleine Schriften_, IV, pp. 308 ff. [101] An excellent modern musical version will be found in A. A. Stanley, _Greek Themes in Modern Musical Settings_. [102] For the history of dialogue in Greek epigrams and examples of stones speaking with the passer-by and for sepulchral symbolism as in the Pelagon epigram cf., D. M. Robinson, “Two Epitaphs from Sardis,” in _Anatolian Studies presented to Sir William Mitchell Ramsay_, Manchester, 1923, pp. 341-353. [103] For a bronze in the British Museum supposed to represent the reclining Sappho cf. Walters, _Cat. of Bronzes_, London, 1899, 203. [104] Pollux, IX. 84.