Midnight poem

The Midnight poem is a fragment of Greek lyric poetry preserved by the Alexandrian grammarian Hephaestion.

The poem, four lines describing a woman alone at night, is one of the best-known surviving pieces of Greek lyric poetry.

Δέδυκε μὲν ἀ σελάννα καὶ Πληΐαδες, μέσαι δέ νύκτες, πάρα δ' ἔρχετ' ὤρα, ἔγω δὲ μόνα κατεύδω.

Four lines of the poem survive,[b] preserved in Hephaestion's Enchiridion, a treatise on meter in Greek poetry.

[9] The poem describes the speaker – a woman, as the adjective "μόνα" ("alone") in the final line is feminine – lying alone at night.

Clay suggests that this was intended to allude to, and contrast with, the myth of Selene and her mortal lover Endymion, who were reunited each night.

[1] He identifies three separate features which he does not believe are consistent with the archaic Lesbian dialect found elsewhere in the works of Sappho and Alcaeus.

[34] Clay identifies a number of classical works which may allude to the midnight poem, including Aristophanes' play Ecclesiazusae and the fifteenth of Ovid's Heroides.