transferred to the other, and vice versa. Herodotus lived so short a
time after Rhodopis, and tells so many exact particulars of her private
life that it is impossible she should have been a mere creation of
fiction. The letter of Darius, given at the end of Vol. II., is intended
to identify the Greek Rhodopis with the mythical builder of the Pyramid.
I would also mention here that she is called Doricha by Sappho. This may
have been her name before she received the title of the "rosy-cheeked
one."

I must apologize for the torrent of verse that appears in the love-scenes
between Sappho and Bartja; it is also incumbent upon me to say a few
words about the love-scenes themselves, which I have altered very
slightly in the new edition, though they have been more severely
criticised than any other portion of the work.

First I will confess that the lines describing the happy love of a
handsome young couple to whom I had myself become warmly attached, flowed
from my pen involuntarily, even against my will (I intended to write a
novel in prose) in the quiet night, by the eternal Nile, among the palms
and roses. The first love-scene has a story of its own to me. I wrote
it in half an hour, almost unconsciously. It may be read in my book that
the Persians always reflected in the morning, when sober, upon the
resolutions formed the night before, while drunk. When I examined in the
sunshine what had come into existence by lamplight, I grew doubtful of
its merits, and was on the point of destroying the love-scenes
altogether, when my dear friend Julius Hammer, the author of "Schau in
Dich, und Schau um Dich," too early summoned to the other world by death,
stayed my hand. Their form was also approved by others, and I tell
myself that the 'poetical' expression of love is very similar in all
lands and ages, while lovers' conversations and modes of intercourse vary