Stanley Lombardo (2018): Sappho: Complete Poems and Fragments. Hackett.
xl, 100 pp. 187 fragments.
Mind-shimmering, deathless Aphrodite,
child of Zeus, weaver of wiles,
I beg you, do not crush my spirit
with anguish, Lady,
Stanley Lombardo’s 2002 translation of Sappho’s works contained a relatively small selection of only 73 fragments. In 2016 he took the opportunity of the major new discoveries to produce a new edition, including a much more comprehensive set of fragments. The 2016 edition also reverts from Lombardo’s own arrangement of the fragments to the familiar ordering based on Lobel & Page. The result is one of the best translations of Sappho’s works currently available.
Lombardo’s translation compares in some ways favourably with Rayor and Lardinois’ 2023 offering, my personal favourite. The introductory material by Pamela Gordon is much more comprehensive, and the appendices with translations of the ancient elegiac poems alluding to, or claiming authorship by Sappho, and Ovid’s long poem "Sappho to Phaon", are nice additions to the volume.
On the other hand Rayor’s notes on individual translations have no parallel in Lombardo’s text. Rayor also includes a number of fragments not included in Lombardo (including several in Sappho’s Lesbian dialect, but of uncertain authorship), and in some cases updated readings based on scholarship which postdates Lombardo’s edition (particularly in fr. 26, the “Cypris poem”).