Sappho’s flowers: Lyric ἄνθεσιν and the Aeolic dative

The retention of -ss- in the Aeolic dialects implies that Proto-Aeolic had s-stem dative plurals with -ss- (ἄνθεσ-σι). Yet the Lesbian lyric poets only have forms with a single -s- (ἄνθεσι). In an influential study, Morpurgo Davies argued that the ἄνθεσιν-type is native to Lesbian and used these forms as crucial evidence for the simplification of -ss- in Proto-Aeolic. However, a closer look at the epigraphic and literary evidence strongly suggests that ἄνθεσιν in Lesbian lyric is a poetic borrowing from Ionic and that Proto-Aeolic maintained -ss- in the dative plural of the s-stems. These findings have important implications for the history of Proto-Greek, Proto-Aeolic, and our understanding of the poetic dialect of Sappho and Alcaeus.