Song of the Sailors is the English title of two anonymous Imperial lyrics, the Little Songs of the Sailors. They are not the name of a poet. One piece, from P.Oxy. 3.425, invites sea-sailors and Nile-sailors to compare the deep with the fertile river. The other, from P.Oxy. 11.1383, is a Rhodian sailor’s song to the winds.
Both are printed in the Göttingen collection of Greek poetical fragments of the Roman Imperial period (1963), p. 33. The copies belong to the second or third century CE.
These are short performed songs from Egypt, kin to other printed lyric papyri of the period, not lost works unattested in the scholarly record.
Available Works
Fragments on Sea and Nile
Ἀποσπάσματα περὶ Θαλάσσης καὶ Νείλου
6 passages
To the Winds of Rhodes
Πρὸς τοὺς Ἀνέμους τῆς Ῥόδου
11 passages
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