Sappho : One Hundred Lyrics (Poetry) Audiobook

Sappho : One Hundred Lyrics (Poetry) audiobook with text and illustrations, and dramatized 🎵 with sound effects and music, by Audiobooks Dimension. 

Title : Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics
Author : Sappho (Ψάπφω)
Written : 610 - 570 BCE
Place of Origin : Ancient Greece
Original Media type : Potsherd, Papyrus Fragments, Manuscripts
Original Language : Ancient Greek
Genre(s) : Ancient Greece, Poetry
Translator : Bliss Carman (1861 - 1929)
Reader : Peter Yearsley
Musician : Aakash Gandhi
Editor : AudioBooks Dimension

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Dramatized 🎵

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Sappho : One Hundred Lyrics Audiobook Video Chapters Time Stamps :

00:00:00 - I Cyprus, Paphos, or Panormus
00:00:28 - II What shall we do, Cytherea?
00:00:58 - III Power and beauty and knowledge
00:01:32 - IV O Pan of the evergreen forest
00:03:15 - V O Aphrodite
00:04:32 - VI  Peer of the gods he seems
00:05:31 - VII The Cyprian came to thy cradle
00:06:40 - VIII Aphrodite of the foam
00:07:04 - IX Nay, but always and forever
00:07:26 - X  Let there be garlands, Dica
00:07:46 - XI When the Cretan maidens
00:08:06 - XII  In a dream I spoke with the Cyprus-born
00:08:56 - XIII Sleep thou in the bosom
00:09:21 - XIV  Hesperus, bringing together
00:09:38 - XV In the grey olive-grove a small brown bird
00:10:08 - XVI In the apple boughs the coolness
00:10:26 - XVII Pale rose leaves have fallen
00:10:44 - XVIII  The courtyard of her house is wide
00:11:07 - XIX There is a medlar-tree
00:11:26 - XX  I behold Arcturus going westward
00:11:56 - XXI Softly the first step of twilight
00:12:38 - XXII  Once you lay upon my bosom
00:13:02 - XXIII I loved thee, Atthis, in the long ago
00:14:06 - XXIV  I shall be ever maiden
00:14:38 - XXV It was summer when I found you
00:14:56 - XXVI  I recall thy white gown, cinctured
00:15:18 - XXVII Lover, art thou of a surety
00:15:37 - XXVIII With your head thrown backward
00:16:16 - XXIX  Ah, what am I but a torrent
00:16:51 - XXX Love shakes my soul, like a mountain wind
00:17:40 - XXXI  Love, let the wind cry
00:19:01 - XXXII Heart of mine, if all the altars
00:20:30 - XXXIII Never yet, love, in earth’s lifetime
00:21:22 - XXXIV “Who was Atthis?” men shall ask
00:21:46 - XXXV When the great pink mallow
00:22:40 - XXXVI When I pass thy door at night
00:23:00 - XXXVII Well I found you in the twilit garden
00:23:37 - XXXVIII Will not men remember us
00:23:57 - XXXIX  I grow weary of the foreign cities
00:24:40 - XL Ah, what detains thee, Phaon
00:25:12 - XLI Phaon, O my lover
00:25:51 - XLII O heart of insatiable longing
00:26:16 - XLIII Surely somehow, in some measure
00:26:46 - XLIV O but my delicate lover
00:27:29 - XLV Softer than the hill-fog to the forest
00:27:57 - XLVI  I seek and desire
00:28:15 - XLVII Like torn sea-kelp in the drift
00:28:36 - XLVIII  Fine woven purple linen
00:29:16 - XLIX When I am home from travel
00:30:00 - L  When I behold the pharos shine
00:30:25 - LI Is the day long
00:31:05 - LII Lo, on the distance a dark blue ravine
00:32:47 - LIII Art thou the top-most apple
00:33:30 - LIV How soon will all my lovely days be over
00:34:33 - LV Soul of sorrow, why this weeping?
00:35:21 - LVI It never can be mine
00:36:00 - LVII Others shall behold the sun
00:36:20 - LVIII Let thy strong spirit never fear
00:37:00 - LIX Will none say of Sappho
00:37:30 - LX When I have departed
00:38:07 - LXI There is no more to say, now thou art still
00:38:40 - LXII Play up, play up thy silver flute
00:39:05 - LXIII A beautiful child is mine
00:39:20 - LXIV Ah, but now henceforth
00:39:45 - LXV Softly the wind moves through the radiant morning
00:40:13 - LXVI What the west wind whispers
00:40:53 - LXVII  Indoors the fire is kindled
00:41:27 - LXVIII  You ask how love can keep the mortal soul
00:42:19 - LXIX  Like a tall forest were their spears
00:42:56 - LXX My lover smiled, “O friend, ask not
00:43:44 - LXXI Ye who have the stable world
00:44:29 - LXXII I heard the gods reply
00:45:08 - LXXIII The sun on the tide, the peach on the bough
00:45:35 - LXXIV If death be good
00:45:55 - LXXV Tell me what this life means
00:46:13 - LXXVI Ye have heard how Marsyas
00:46:52 - LXXVII  Hour by hour I sit
00:47:11 - LXXVIII Once in the shining street
00:47:33 - LXXIX How strange is love, O my lover
00:47:56 - LXXX How to say I love you
00:48:34 - LXXXI Hark, love, to the tambourines
00:49:08 - LXXXII Over the roofs the honey-coloured moon
00:49:51 - LXXXIII  In the quiet garden world
00:50:22 - LXXXIV Soft was the wind in the beech-trees
00:50:48 - LXXXV Have ye heard the news of Sappho’s garden
00:52:49 - LXXXVI Love is so strong a thing
00:53:09 - LXXXVII Hadst thou with all thy loveliness been true
00:53:48 - LXXXVIII As on a morn a traveller might emerge
00:55:06 - LXXXIX Where shall I look for thee
00:56:10 - XC O sad, sad face and saddest eyes that ever
00:57:16 - XCI Why have the gods in derision
00:58:10 - XCII Like a red lily in the meadow grasses
00:59:06 - XCIII When in the spring the swallows all return
00:59:53 - XCIV  Cold is the wind where Daphne sleeps
01:00:18 - XCV Hark, where Poseidon’s
01:01:20 - XCVI Hark, my lover, it is spring!
01:02:55 - XCVII When the early soft spring wind comes blowing
01:04:02 - XCVIII I am more tremulous than shaken reeds
01:04:29 - XCIX Over the wheat field
01:05:28 - C Once more the rain on the mountain
01:08:01 - Epilogue

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THE POETRY OF SAPPHO.—If all the poets and all the lovers of poetry should be asked to name the most precious of the priceless things which time has wrung in tribute from the triumphs of human genius, the answer which would rush to every tongue would be “The Lost Poems of Sappho.” These we know to have been jewels of a radiance so imperishable that the broken gleams of them still dazzle men’s eyes, whether shining from the two small brilliants and the handful of star-dust which alone remain to us, or reflected merely from the adoration of those poets of old time who were so fortunate as to witness their full glory.

Sappho was an Archaic Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied by music. In ancient times, Sappho was widely regarded as one of the greatest lyric poets and was given names such as the "Tenth Muse" and "The Poetess". Most of Sappho's poetry is now lost, and what is extant has mostly survived in fragmentary form; only the Ode to Aphrodite is certainly complete. As well as lyric poetry, ancient commentators claimed that Sappho wrote elegiac and iambic poetry. Three epigrams formerly attributed to Sappho are extant, but these are actually Hellenistic imitations of Sappho's style.

Little is known of Sappho's life. She was from a wealthy family from Lesbos, though her parents' names are uncertain. Ancient sources say that she had three brothers: Charaxos, Larichos and Eurygios. She was exiled to Sicily around 600 BCE, and may have continued to work until around 570 BCE. According to legend, she killed herself by leaping from the Leucadian cliffs due to her unrequited love for the ferryman Phaon.

Sappho was a prolific poet, probably composing around 10,000 lines. She was best-known in antiquity for her love poetry; other themes in the surviving fragments of her work include family and religion. She probably wrote poetry for both individual and choral performance. Most of her best-known and best-preserved fragments explore personal emotions and were probably composed for solo performance. Her works are known for their clarity of language, vivid images, and immediacy. The context in which she composed her poems has long been the subject of scholarly debate; the most influential suggestions have been that she had some sort of educational or religious role, or wrote for the symposium.

Sappho's poetry was well-known and greatly admired through much of antiquity, and she was among the canon of Nine Lyric Poets most highly esteemed by scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria. Sappho's poetry is still considered extraordinary and her works continue to influence other writers. Beyond her poetry, she is well known as a symbol of love and desire between women, with the English words sapphic and lesbian deriving from her name and that of her home island, respectively.

"The Lost 'Poems of Sappho" have been jewels of a radiance so imperishable that the broken gleams of them still dazzle men's eyes, whether shining from the two small brilliants and the handful of star-dust which alone remain to us, or reflected merely from the adoration of those poets of old time who were so fortunate as to witness their full glory.

For about two thousand five hundred years Sappho has held her place as not only the supreme poet of her sex, but the chief lyrist of all lyrists. Every one who reads acknowledges her fame, concedes her supremacy ;  but to all except poets and Hellenists her name is a vague and uncomprehended splendour, rising secure above a persistent mist of misconception. In spite of all that is in these days being written about Sappho, it is perhaps not out of place now to inquire, in a few words, into the substance of this supremacy which towers so unassailably secure from what appear to be such shadowy foundations.

Sappho was at the height of her career about six centuries BCE, at a period when lyric poetry was peculiarly esteemed and cultivated at the centres of Greek life. Among the Molic peoples of the Isles, in particular, it had been carried to a high pitch of perfection, and its forms had become the subject of assiduous study. Its technique was exact, complex, extremely elaborate, minutely regulated; yet the essential fires of sincerity, spontaneity, imagination and passion were flaming with undiminished heat behind the fixed forms and restricted measures. The very metropolis of this lyric realm was Mitylene of Lesbos, where, amid the myrtle groves and temples, the sunlit silver of the fountains, the hyacinth gardens by a soft blue sea, Beauty and Love in their young warmth could fuse the most rigid forms to fluency. Here Sappho was the acknowledged queen of song—revered, studied, imitated, served, adored by a little court of attendants and disciples, loved and hymned by Alcæus, and acclaimed by her fellow craftsmen throughout Greece as the wonder of her age. That all the tributes of her contemporaries show reverence not less for her personality than for her genius is sufficient answer to the calumnies with which the ribald jesters of that later period, the corrupt and shameless writers of Athenian comedy, strove to defile her fame. It is sufficient, also, to warrant our regarding the picturesque but scarcely dignified story of her vain pursuit of Phaon and her frenzied leap from the Cliff of Leucas as nothing more than a poetic myth, reminiscent, perhaps, of the myth of Aphrodite and Adonis—who is, indeed, called Phaon in some versions. The story is further discredited by the fact that we find no mention of it in Greek literature—even among those Attic comedians who would have clutched at it so eagerly and given it so gross a turn—till a date more than two hundred years after Sappho’s death. It is a myth which has begotten some exquisite literature, both in prose and verse, from Ovid’s famous epistle to Addison’s gracious fantasy and some impassioned and imperishable dithyrambs of Mr. Swinburne; but one need not accept the story as a fact in order to appreciate the beauties which flowered out from its coloured unreality.

The applause of contemporaries, however, is not always justified by the verdict of after-times, and does not always secure an immortality of renown. The fame of Sappho has a more stable basis. Her work was in the world’s possession for not far short of a thousand years—a thousand years of changing tastes, searching criticism, and familiar use. It had to endure the wear and tear of quotation, the commonizing touch of the school and the market-place. And under this test its glory grew ever more and more conspicuous. Through those thousand years poets and critics vied with one another in proclaiming her verse the one unmatched exemplar of lyric art. Such testimony, even though not a single fragment remained to us from which to judge her poetry for ourselves, might well convince us that the supremacy acknowledged by those who knew all the triumphs of the genius of old Greece was beyond the assault of any modern rival. We might safely accept the sustained judgment of a thousand years of Greece.

Fortunately for us, however, two small but incomparable odes and a few scintillating fragments have survived, quoted and handed down in the eulogies of critics and expositors. In these the wisest minds, the greatest poets, and the most inspired teachers of modern days have found justification for the unanimous verdict of antiquity. The tributes of Addison, Tennyson, and others, the throbbing paraphrases and ecstatic interpretations of Swinburne, are too well known to call for special comment in this brief note; but the concise summing up of her genius by Mr. Watts-Dunton in his remarkable essay on poetry is so convincing and illuminating that it seems to demand quotation here: “Never before these songs were sung, and never since did the human soul, in the grip of a fiery passion, utter a cry like hers; and, from the executive point of view, in directness, in lucidity, in that high, imperious verbal economy which only nature can teach the artist, she has no equal, and none worthy to take the place of second.”

The poems of Sappho so mysteriously lost to us seem to have consisted of at least nine books of odes, together with epithalamia, epigrams, elegies, and monodies. Of the several theories which have been advanced to account for their disappearance, the most plausible seems to be that which represents them as having been burned at Byzantium in the year 380 Anno Domini, by command of Gregory Nazianzen, in order that his own poems might be studied in their stead and the morals of the people thereby improved. Of the efficacy of this act no means of judging has come down to us.

Perhaps the most perilous and the most alluring venture in the whole field of poetry is that which Mr. Carman has undertaken in attempting to give us in English verse those lost poems of Sappho of which fragments have survived. The task is obviously not one of translation or of paraphrasing, but of imaginative and, at the same time, interpretive construction. It is as if a sculptor of to-day were to set himself, with reverence, and trained craftsmanship, and studious familiarity with the spirit, technique, and atmosphere of his subject, to restore some statues of Polyclitus or Praxiteles of which he had but a broken arm, a foot, a knee, a finger upon which to build. Mr. Carman’s method, apparently, has been to imagine each lost lyric as discovered, and then to translate it; for the indefinable flavour of the translation is maintained throughout, though accompanied by the fluidity and freedom of purely original work.

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Persons mentioned in Sappho : One Hundred Lyrics

1. Adonis (Ἄδωνις) : the mortal lover of the goddesses Aphrodite and Persephone, who was famous for having achieved immortality. Adonis was gored by a wild boar during a hunting trip and died in Aphrodite's arms as she wept. His blood mingled with her tears and became the anemone flower. Aphrodite declared the Adonia festival to commemorate his tragic death, which was celebrated by women every year in midsummer. During this festival, Greek women would plant "gardens of Adonis", small pots containing fast-growing plants, which they would set on top of their houses in the hot sun. The plants would sprout, but soon wither and die. Then the women would mourn the death of Adonis, tearing their clothes and beating their breasts in a public display of grief.
2. Andromeda (Ἀνδρομέδα) : the daughter of Cepheus, the king of Aethiopia, and his wife, Cassiopeia. When Cassiopeia boasts that she (or Andromeda) is more beautiful than the Nereids, Poseidon sends the sea monster Cetus to ravage the coast of Aethiopia as divine punishment. Queen Cassiopeia understands that chaining Andromeda to a rock as a human sacrifice is what will appease Poseidon. Perseus finds her as he is coming back from his quest to decapitate Medusa, and brings her back to Greece to marry her and let her reign as his queen. With the head of Medusa, Perseus petrifies Cetus to stop it from terrorizing the coast any longer.
3. Atthis (Ἀτθίς) : some woman mentioned by Sappho.
4. Cleis : a beautiful young girl.
5. Dica : a female friend of Sappho.
6. Gorgo (Γοργόνος) : one of the multiple women of Aegyptus, king of Egypt.
7. Linus (Λῖνος) : a reputed musician and master of eloquent speech. He was regarded as the first leader of lyric song.
8. Lityerses (Λιτυέρσης) : an illegitimate son of Midas dwelling in Celaenae, Phrygia. Lityerses was a talented swordsman, and was bloodthirsty and aggressive. He challenged people to harvesting contests and beheaded those he beat, putting the rest of their bodies in the sheaves. Heracles won the contest and killed him, then threw his body into the river Maeander. He was also known as the "Reaper of Men." The Phrygian reapers used to celebrate his memory in a harvest-song which bore the name of Lityerses. In this song, there is no mention of the legend; it is merely an ordinary reaping-song.
9. Marsyas (Μαρσύας) : an expert player on the double-piped double reed instrument known as the aulos. The goddess Athena, who invented the aulos, once looked in the mirror while she was playing it and saw how blowing into it puffed up her cheeks and made her look silly, so she threw the aulos away and cursed it so that whoever picked it up would meet an awful death. Marsyas picked up the aulos and was later killed by Apollo for his hubris.
10. Orpheus (Ὀρφεύς) : a Thracian bard, legendary musician and prophet. He was also a renowned poet and, according to the legend, travelled with Jason and the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece, and even descended into the underworld of Hades, to recover his lost wife Eurydice.
11. Phaon (Φάων) : a mythical boatman of Mytilene in Lesbos. He was old and ugly when Aphrodite came to his boat. She put on the guise of a crone. Phaon ferried her over to Asia Minor and accepted no payment for doing so. In return, she gave him a box of ointment. When he rubbed it on himself, he became young and beautiful. Many were captivated by his beauty. Sappho fell in love with him. He lay with her but soon grew to resent her and devalue her. Sappho was so distraught with his rejection that she threw herself into the sea under the superstition that she would be either cured of her love, or drowned. She was drowned.
12. Sappho (Ψάπφω) : an Archaic Greek poet from Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied by music. In ancient times, Sappho was widely regarded as one of the greatest lyric poets and was given names such as the "Tenth Muse" and "The Poetess".

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Deities mentioned in Sappho : One Hundred Lyrics

1. Aphrodite (Αφροδιτη) : the Olympian goddess of love, beauty, pleasure and procreation.
2. Daphne (Δάφνη) : a naiad, a variety of female nymph associated with fountains, wells, springs, streams, brooks and other bodies of freshwater. Due to a curse made by the fierce wrath of the god Eros, son of Aphrodite, on the god Apollo, she became the unwilling object of the infatuation of Apollo, who chased her against her wishes. Just before being kissed by him, Daphne invoked her river god father, who transformed her into a laurel tree, thus foiling Apollo.
3. Eros (Ἔρως) : the Greek god of love and sex. He is one of the children of Aphrodite and Ares, and with some of his siblings, was one of the Erotes, a group of winged love gods.
4. Hermes (Ἑρμῆς) : the Olympian god of herds and flocks, travellers and hospitality, roads and trade, thievery and cunning, heralds and diplomacy, language and writing, athletic contests and gymnasiums, astronomy and astrology. He was the herald and personal messenger of Zeus, King of the Gods, and also the guide of the dead who led souls down into the underworld.
5. Hesperus (Ἕσπερος) : a son of the dawn goddess Eos. Hesperus is the personification of the "evening star", the planet Venus in the evening.
6. Orion (Ὠρίων) : a giant huntsman whom Zeus placed among the stars as the constellation of Orion.
7. Pan (Πάν) : the god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, rustic music and impromptus, and companion of the nymphs. He has the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat, in the same manner as a faun or satyr. With his homeland in rustic Arcadia, he is also recognized as the god of fields, groves, wooded glens, and often affiliated with sex; because of this, Pan is connected to fertility and the season of spring.
8. Poseidon (Ποσειδῶν) : the Olympian god of the sea, earthquakes, floods, drought and horses.
9. Rhea (Ῥέα) : a mother goddess, the Titan daughter of the earth goddess Gaia and the sky god Uranus. She is the older sister of Cronus, who was also her consort, and the mother of the five eldest Olympian gods (Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Poseidon, and Zeus) and Hades, king of the underworld.
10. Saturn / Cronus (Κρόνος) : the leader and youngest of the first generation of Titans, the divine descendants of the primordial Gaia (Mother Earth) and Uranus (Father Sky).
11. Selene (Σελήνη) : the goddess and personification of the Moon. She is the daughter of the Titans Hyperion and Theia, and sister of the sun god Helios and the dawn goddess Eos. She drives her moon chariot across the heavens.
12. Syrinx (Σύριγξ) : an Arcadian nymph and a follower of Artemis, known for her chastity. Being pursued by Pan, she fled into the river Ladon, and at her own request was metamorphosed into a reed from which Pan then made his panpipes.
13. Truth / Aletheia (Αληθεια) : the personified spirit (daimona) of truth and sincerity.

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Places mentioned in Sappho : One Hundred Lyrics

1. Antares : the brightest star in the constellation of Scorpius.
2. Arbela : a city of the Assyrian Empire.
3. Arcturus : the fourth-brightest star in the night sky, and the brightest in the northern celestial hemisphere.
4. Babylon : an ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia.
5. Cyprus (Κυπριακή) : an island in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, north of the Sinai Peninsula, south of the Anatolian Peninsula, and west of the Levant.
6. Dacia : : the land inhabited by the Dacians, its core in Transylvania, stretching to the Danube in the south, the Black Sea in the east, and the Tisza in the west.
7. Egypt : a civilization of ancient Northeast Africa. It was concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River, situated in the place that is now the country Egypt.
8. Imbros (Ίμβρος) : the island located in the north-northeastern Aegean Sea, at the entrance of the Gulf of Melas.
9. Latmus (Λάτμος) : a town of ancient Caria.
10. Lesbos (Λέσβος) : a Greek island located in the northeastern Aegean Sea.
11. Militus (Μῑ́λητος) : an ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia, near the mouth of the Maeander River in ancient Ionia.
12. Mitylene (Μυτιλήνη) : the capital of the Greek island of Lesbos, and its port.
13. Naxos (Νάξος) : a Greek island and the largest of the Cyclades. It was the centre of the archaic Cycladic culture.
14. Nile : a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa.
15. Ninus (Νίνος) : an ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia. It is located on the eastern bank of the Tigris River and was the capital and largest city of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, as well as the largest city in the world for several decades.
16. Panormus (Πάνορμος) : a small port town of ancient Caria, on the coast south of Miletus.
17. Paphos (Πάφος) : a coastal city in southwest Cyprus. Aphrodite had landed at the site of Paphos when she rose from the sea.
18. Pharos (Φάρου) : a beach in Cyprus. The sea of this bay is a crystal blue and with significant fish life.
19. Phocaea (Φώκαια) : an ancient Ionian Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia.
20. Pleiads : is an asterism and an open star cluster in the north-west of the constellation Taurus. The Pleiades are a prominent sight in winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and are easily visible from mid-southern latitudes. They have been known since antiquity to cultures all around the world.
21. Rhodes (Ρόδος) : the largest of the Dodecanese islands of Greece and is their historical capital.
22. Samos (Σάμος) : a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea. Samos was an especially rich and powerful city-state, particularly known for its vineyards and wine production.
23. Scorpion : a zodiac constellation located in the Southern celestial hemisphere, where it sits near the center of the Milky Way, between Libra to the west and Sagittarius to the east. Scorpius is an ancient constellation that pre-dates the Greeks.
24. Tyre (Τύρος) : a city in Lebanon. It was one of the earliest Phoenician metropolises and the legendary birthplace of Europa, her brothers Cadmus and Phoenix, as well as Carthage's founder Dido (Elissa). The ancient city of Tyre is located along the coast of Phoenicia.

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Terms mentioned in Sappho : One Hundred Lyrics

1. Beauty : refer to the goddess of beauty Aphrodite.
2. Cretan : an inhabitant of Crete, the largest and most populous of the Greek islands.
3. Cyprian : one of the epithets of the goddess Aphrodite, particularly in poetry.
4. Cytherea : one of the epithets of the goddess Aphrodite.
5. Dryad (Δρυάδες) : a tree nymph or tree spirit in Greek mythology. Often their life force was connected to the tree in which they resided and they were usually found in sacred groves of the gods. They were considered to be very shy creatures except around the goddess Artemis, who was known to be a friend to most nymphs.
6. Egyptian : an inhabitant of Egypt.
7. Eleusinian : an inhabitant of Eleusis, a deme of ancient Attica.
8. Eleusinian mother : refer to the goddess Demeter.
9. Fate : refer to one of the three goddess of destiny (Moirai), without specifying who.
10. Fates / Moirai (Μοιραι) : the three goddesses of fate who personified the inescapable destiny of man.
11. Great Mysteries : refer to Eleusinian Mysteries, an initiations held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at the Panhellenic Sanctuary of Eleusis in ancient Greece. They are considered the "most famous of the secret religious rites of ancient Greece". The Mysteries represented the myth of the abduction of Persephone from her mother Demeter by the king of the underworld Hades, in a cycle with three phases: the descent (loss), the search, and the ascent, with the main theme being the ascent (ἄνοδος) of Persephone and the reunion with her mother. It was a major festival during the Hellenic era.
12. Hellas (Ἑλλάς) : a name for all lands inhabited by Hellenes, i.e. all of ancient Greece, including the Greek colonies.
13. Lesbian : an inhabitant of Lesbos, a Greek island in the Aegean Sea.
14. Lydian : an ancient people of Anatolia.
15. Muses (Μοῦσαι) : the nine inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric songs, and myths that were related orally for centuries in ancient Greek culture.
16. Pandean : offsprings of the god Pan.
17. Reed-nymph : refer to Daphne.
18. Sidonian : an inhabitant of Sidon, a significant Phoenician city, nestled on a mainland promontory and boasting two harbors.
19. The Cyprus-born : refer to the goddess of love Aphrodite.
20. The daughter of Cyprus : refer to the goddess of love Aphrodite.
21. Thy father’s golden house : refer to Olympus, the home of the gods who dwelt in fabulous palaces of marble and gold.

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