I mentioned this in conversation with Tiako in the AMA yesterday, but it seems that two new Sappho poems are to be published by Dirk Obbink in the next issue of Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik. One of the fragments is given here, with a serviceable English translation here.

The fragment is interesting mainly because it appears to be the ultimate source of a lot of known bits of Sappho's "biographical" tradition. Sappho is apparently addressing her brother Erigyios, and talking about her two other brothers Charaxos (a wine trader) and Larichos. In the first stanza (of five) she complains that Erigyios is always saying Charaxos will come home with a full ship one day; she is not so sure. The family is in some hardship, but fortune is in the hands of the gods, she goes on; it will also be nice, she says in the fifth stanza, when Larichos gets old enough to help out.

The text apparently comes from the same poem as Sappho fr. 5, a fragment that begins

Kypris and Nereids, grant that my brother arrive here unharmed and that everything he wishes in his heart be fulfilled...

Some of the "biographical" background is given in a Life of Sappho from p.Oxy. 1800:

[Sappho] had three brothers, Erigyios, Larichos, and Charaxos, the eldest, who sailed to Egypt and associated with one Doricha, spending large sums on her; Sappho was more fond of the young Larichos.

The poem was followed by a sequel, in which it turns out that Charaxos spent all his money on a girl. Herodotos 2.135 tells part of the story:

Rhodopis... was freed for a great sum of money by a Mytilenaian, Charaxos, the son of Skamandronymos and the brother of the poet Sappho... After freeing Rhodopis, Charaxos returned to Mytilene, where he was roundly abused by Sappho in one of her songs.

The girl's name is Doricha in Sappho's poem, as other sources tell us (see p.Oxy. 1800 above; Strabo 17.1.33 clarifies that they're the same poem person; in reality I suspect they're two separate characters that were only conflated by Herodotos). Charaxos' fling is alluded to in a poem by Posidippos (fr. 17 G-P, dating to the 3rd cent. BCE):

Doricha, your bones fell asleep long ago... the bands of your hair, and the perfume-breathing shawl in which you once wrapped the handsome Charaxos, and, joining him to your flesh, grasped the wine cup in the small hours... Happy your name, which Naukratis will preserve thus as long as a ship from the Nile goes upon the wide salt sea.

(Edit: Posidippos' reference to ships travelling from Egypt certainly confirms Herodotos' story that that's where she comes from. I'm not too sure whether that also confirms his story that her name is Rhodopis.)

Ovid also alludes to the incident in Heroides 15.63-8 and 117-18, where Sappho is writing a letter:

My needy brother was on fire, captured by love of a courtesan, and endured losses mixed with foul shame. Reduced to poverty he roams the dark blue seas with agile oar, and the wealth he lost by evil means he now seeks by evil means. Moreover, he hates me because I gave him much good advice out of loyalty; the freedom of my speech and my sisterly words brought this on me. ...

My brother Charaxus rejoices and exults at my grief, and passes and repasses before my eyes.

So behind all this lies two paired poems: one in which Sappho is worried that Charaxos isn't home from his travels yet, and she fears for the future; and a second in which she is horrified to see him return having spent all his money on Doricha. Fragment 5, and the new five-stanza fragment, both come from the first poem. The second poem is lost.

Edit: I should add the same caveat as yesterday: don't take the "biographical" information too seriously. Archaic poets were always putting on personas and "being" another more famous poet. It's very possible that much of "Sappho's" poetry isn't by her specifically, but by colleagues, collaborators, and followers.

For those interested in such things, I'm happy to announce that the British National Archives have released their first batch of First World War diaries online for anyone to search and read. These are the official war diaries of the first three cavalry and first seven infantry divisions to arrive in France and Belgium in 1914, and they cover the whole of these divisions' involvement in the war.

N.B.: These are not personal diaries of the "today I did X" variety -- they are the official activity logs of these units right down to the regimental level. It's still a wealth of information, and will be of considerable help to all sorts of researchers for many years to come. 1.5 million pages have been digitized so far, and this is just the start.

It's been well over a century since the Adena Mound has been excavated, but in all that time its age has been unknown. After all, back in 1901, radiocarbon dating was still about half a century down the line. Luckily the original team of archaeologists collected some material, wood from the tomb within the mound and a textile fragment from within the tomb, that has now been dated. The results were made public last week, and the will be officially published in the upcoming issue of Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology.

The date for the textile fragment came out to be ~140 BCE, while the wood used in the tomb was dated to ~40 CE. This makes the Adena Mound, the type site for the entire Adena culture, quite late. Even the early date, 140 BCE, comes just after the regional culture starts to shift into what archaeologists recognize as the Hopewell. With the 40 CE date, was probably erected alongside early Hopewell earthworks. That's not as surprising as it may sound. We've known for quite a while now that the Hopewell are descendants of the Adena, rather than invaders, and that other Adena traditionalist enclaves are known to have lasted to this later date, if not longer, along the nearby Hocking River and a few other places to the south and east of the Scioto Hopewell. It is, however, interesting to see a major expression of Adena architecture, artifacts, and burial customs in what was quickly becoming the cultural epicenter of the Scioto Hopewell.

I've recently acquired enough information to work on a fairly broad history of high voltage suspension insulators in the United States. I expect to have the first part done by May, and will likely release it digitally at no cost.