Brothers Poem

The Brothers Poem or Brothers Song is a poem by the archaic Greek poet Sappho, first published in 2014. It was discovered by Dirk Obbink, the head of Oxford University's Oxyrhynchus Papyri Project, on a papyrus from a private collection. Most of the poem survives, though the beginning has been lost. The fragment is one of a series of poems by Sappho about her brothers. It mentions two, Charaxos and Larichos, by name: this is the only extant mention of these names in Sappho's own writings, though they were previously known from other ancient sources. These mentions, as well as the language used, identify the poem as being one of Sappho's works.

The poem has been the object of both scholarly and popular attention, and its discovery was reported in the international media. Scholars have tended to be critical of the literary value of the poem, but consider it valuable as a historical source. Much of the scholarship on the poem has focused on the question of who the speaker and the addressee in the poem are, and whether Charaxos and Larichos are the historical or fictional brothers of Sappho; other discussions have suggested reconstructions of the missing initial paragraphs, and discussed how the poem draws on epic, particularly the homecoming stories told in the Odyssey.

In 2014, five new fragments of papyrus, containing the remains of nine separate poems – three previously unknown – by Sappho, were published by Dirk Obbink, Simon Burris, and Jeffrey Fish. The most impressive of these new fragments was the newly discovered Brothers Poem, five stanzas of which are preserved on a fragment of papyrus known as P. Sapph. Obbink, published by Obbink. Nine lines of a second poem, called the Kypris poem by Obbink, are also preserved on the same papyrus. The papyrus fragment measures 176 mm × 111 mm, and preserves part of a papyrus roll which was originally a critical edition of Book I of Sappho's poetry. The handwriting in which the fragment is written dates to the third century AD.

The papyrus was reused as cartonnage – a material similar to the modern papier-mâché made with linen and papyrus – which Obbink suggests was used as a book cover. This fragment has been described as "the best-preserved Sappho papyrus in existence". The fragment was part of David Moore Robinson's collection from 1954, which he left to the University of Mississippi. It was later sold at auction in 2011 to a collector in London, and it was this anonymous owner who gave Obbink, the head of Oxford University's Oxrhynchus Papyri Project, access to the papyrus and permission to publish it. A second piece of papyrus, Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 2289, published by Edgar Lobel in 1951, preserves enough of the Brothers Poem to show that at least one stanza preceded the well-preserved portion.

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