 The metre of the Tithonus poem was already known , before the discovery of the Cologne papyrus , from four quotations of Sappho . Two of these are preserved in the Enchiridion of Hephaestion ; he describes the metre as aiolikon and says that Sappho used it frequently . The metre is of the form " × ¯ ˘ ˘ ¯ ¯ ˘ ˘ ¯ ¯ ˘ ˘ ¯ ˘ ¯ ¯ " , which is part of the larger class of aeolic metres . The poems in this metre by Sappho are conventionally thought to have been from the fourth book of the Alexandrian edition , though no direct evidence either confirms or denies this . 
