Sappho Fragment 31: 'He seems to me equal to gods'

About the Poem

Sappho’s phainetai moi — “He seems to me [equal to the gods]” — is the most influential short lyric of antiquity. Sixteen lines survive intact (four Sapphic stanzas), with traces of a fifth stanza that breaks off mid-thought. The poem is preserved in Longinus’ treatise On the Sublime (§10), where he cites it as the supreme example of the gathered-together effect that great writing should produce.

The speaker, watching a woman she loves talk and laugh with a man, catalogues her own physical symptoms — silenced tongue, fire under the skin, ringing ears, cold sweat, trembling, greenness, near-death. This clinical precision is one of the founding moments of Western love poetry.

Catullus 51 is a near-line-by-line Latin translation (with one substituted final stanza), preserving Sappho’s metre.

Original Aeolic Greek (Lobel-Page fr. 31)

φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θέοισιν ἔμμεν’ ὤνηρ, ὄττις ἐνάντιός τοι ἰσδάνει καὶ πλάσιον ἆδυ φωνεί- σας ὐπακούει

καὶ γελαίσας ἰμέροεν, τό μ’ ἦ μὰν καρδίαν ἐν στήθεσιν ἐπτόαισεν· ὠς γὰρ ἔς σ’ ἴδω βρόχε’, ὤς με φώναι- σ’ οὐδ’ ἒν ἔτ’ εἴκει,

ἀλλ’ ἄκαν μὲν γλῶσσα † ἔαγε †, λέπτον δ’ αὔτικα χρῷ πῦρ ὐπαδεδρόμηκεν, ὀππάτεσσι δ’ οὐδ’ ἒν ὄρημμ’, ἐπιρρόμ- βεισι δ’ ἄκουαι,

† έκαδε μ’ ἴδρως ψῦχρος κακχέεται †, τρόμος δὲ παῖσαν ἄγρει, χλωροτέρα δὲ ποίας ἔμμι, τεθνάκην δ’ ὀλίγω ‘πιδεύης φαίνομ’ ἔμ’ αὔτᾳ·

ἀλλὰ πὰν τόλματον, ἐπεὶ †καὶ πένητα†

English Translation (Henry Thornton Wharton, 1885 — public domain)

That man seems to me peer of gods, who sits in thy presence, and hears close to him thy sweet speech and lovely laughter; that indeed makes my heart flutter in my bosom.

For when I see thee but a little, I have no utterance left, my tongue is broken down, and straightway a subtle fire has run under my skin,

With my eyes I have no sight, my ears ring, sweat pours down, and a trembling seizes all my body; I am paler than grass, and seem in my madness little better than one dead.

But I must dare all…

(The poem breaks off mid-stanza; the final line is uncertain.)

Longinus on the Poem (On the Sublime 10.1–3)

Longinus introduces the fragment with this analysis (Roberts trans., 1899, PD):

Sappho, for instance, never fails to take the emotions incident to the passion of love from the symptoms which accompany it in real life. And wherein does she show her excellence? In the skill with which she selects and combines the most striking and intense of those symptoms.

Catullus 51 — Latin Reception (excerpt)

For comparison, here is the opening of Catullus’ Latin imitation, in the same Sapphic stanza:

Ille mi par esse deo videtur, ille, si fas est, superare divos, qui sedens adversus identidem te spectat et audit

dulce ridentem…

“He seems to me equal to a god, he, if it be permitted to say it, surpasses the gods, who sitting opposite again and again watches you and hears you sweetly laughing…”

Sources & Citations

Greek text: Lobel-Page fr. 31 / Voigt fr. 31. Perseus — Sappho, Fragment 31
Source of preservation: Longinus, Peri Hypsous (On the Sublime) 10 — Greek text at Perseus
English translation (PD): Wharton, Sappho (1885) — archive.org
Catullus 51: Perseus — Catullus 51
Modern scholarly: Glenn W. Most, “Reflecting Sappho,” in Re-Reading Sappho (ed. Greene, 1996)
Wikipedia: Sappho 31