Alcaeus Fragment 208 (Z 34): 'The Ship of State'

About the Poem

Alcaeus of Mytilene (born c. 625 BCE) was Sappho’s near-contemporary on the island of Lesbos. An aristocrat embroiled in the violent factional politics of Mytilene, he composed drinking songs, hymns, and intensely political stasiōtika (faction songs) in the dialect and metre that still bear his name — the Alcaic stanza.

Fragment 208 (Lobel-Page numbering; also Z 34 in Voigt) is the most famous “ship of state” poem in antiquity. In it, the polis of Mytilene is figured as a ship battered by a great storm. Horace adapted it as Carmina 1.14 (O navis, referent in mare te novi / fluctus — “O ship, new waves are carrying you back out to sea”).

Only scattered lines survive; the reconstruction below combines the better-preserved fragments (fr. 6, 73, 208) that most scholars assign to this allegorical sequence.

Fragment 6 (Alcaeus — Aeolic Greek, Lobel-Page)

Greek (transliteration)

ἄσυνετήμι τὼν ἀνέμων στάσιν τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἔνθεν κῦμα κυλίνδεται, τὸ δ’ ἔνθεν, ἄμμες δ’ ὂν τὸ μέσσον νᾶϊ φορήμεθα σὺν μελαίνᾳ χείμωνι μόχθεντες μεγάλῳ μάλα· πέρ μὲν γὰρ ἄντλος ἰστοπέδαν ἔχει, λαῖφος δὲ πὰν ζάδηλον ἤδη, καὶ λάκιδες μεγάλαι κὰτ αὖτο…

English (Edgar Lobel & J. M. Edmonds, adapted — public domain)

I cannot understand the strife of winds. One wave rolls from this side, another from that, and we in the middle are carried along in our black ship, labouring sorely in the great storm. The bilge is up to the mast-step; already the sail shows gaping holes, and great tears run along it…

Fragment 73 (continuation, uncertain)

Greek (transliteration, fragmentary)

[—] ταῖσδε πρόφρων ἐπι[ ναύων δ’ ὀλεσθ[ε]ι[— …μεγά[λ]ας ὀπάσ[—

(The text is too broken for confident translation; the nautical imagery continues.)

Horace’s Latin Imitation (Carmina 1.14, excerpt)

For comparison, Horace’s late-republican political reading of this genre (c. 30 BCE):

Latin

O navis, referent in mare te novi fluctus! O quid agis? fortiter occupa portum! nonne vides, ut nudum remigio latus, et malus celeri saucius Africo antemnaeque gemant, ac sine funibus vix durare carinae possint imperiosius aequor? …

English (John Conington, 1882 — PD)

O Ship! new billows waft thee out to sea. What dost thou? Hold the port with all thy might. See’st thou not how thy oar-banks are undone, thy mast all shiver’d by the swift south-west, thy yards all groaning, and how scarce thy keel can hold out ‘gainst the unrelenting deep?…

The Alcaic Stanza

Both the Greek original and Horace’s version use the Alcaic stanza — one of the two great lyric metres of Greco-Roman poetry (alongside the Sapphic):

— ⏑ — × — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ —   (11 syllables)
— ⏑ — × — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ —   (11 syllables)
— ⏑ — × — ⏑ —         (9 syllables)
— ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ —     (10 syllables)

Sources & Citations

• Greek text: Edgar Lobel & Denys Page, Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta (Oxford, 1955), fr. 6, 73, 208. Also Eva-Maria Voigt, Sappho et Alcaeus (Amsterdam, 1971).
• Perseus — Alcaeus fragments
• English (PD): J. M. Edmonds, Lyra Graeca vol. I (Loeb Classical Library, 1922) — archive.org
• Horace 1.14 Latin: Perseus — Horace, Odes 1.14; English: Conington (1882) at Perseus
• Modern scholarly: Anne Burnett, Three Archaic Poets: Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho (Cambridge MA: Harvard, 1983); G. O. Hutchinson, Greek Lyric Poetry: A Commentary on Selected Larger Pieces (Oxford, 2001), pp. 194–279.
• Wikipedia: Alcaeus of Mytilene, Ship of state