Sappho

The dates of Sappho or Psappho are not known. She is thought to have been born around 610 B.C. and to have died in about 570. Sappho is thought to have come from Mytilene on the island of Lesbos.

Playing with the available meters, Sappho wrote moving lyric poetry, and had a poetic meter named after her. She wrote odes to the goddesses, especially Aphrodite, the subject of Sappho's complete surviving ode, and love poetry, including the wedding genre of epithalamia, using vernacular and epic vocabulary. She also wrote about herself, her women's community, and her times, differently from her contemporary Alcaeus, whose poetry was more political.

Although we do not know how her poetry was transmitted, by the Hellenistic Era, Sappho's poetry was published, along with the writing of other lyric poets, categorized metrically. By the Middle Ages most of Sappho's poetry was lost, and so today there are only parts of four poems. Only one of them is complete. There are also fragments of her poetry, including 63 complete, single lines and perhaps 264 fragments. The fourth poem is a recent discovery from rolls of papyrus in Cologne University.

There is a legend that Sappho leapt to her death as the result of a failed love affair with a man named Phaon, which is probably untrue. Sappho is usually counted a lesbian -- the very word coming from the island where Sappho lived, and Sappho's poetry clearly shows that she loved some of the women of her community, whether or not the passion was expressed sexually. Sappho may have been married to a wealthy man named Cercylas.

Larichus and Charaxus were Sappho's brothers. She also had a daughter named Cleis or Claïs. In the community of women in which Sappho participated and taught, singing, poetry, and dance played a big part.

An elegiac poet of the first century B.C. named Antipater of Thessalonica catalogued the most respected women poets and called them the nine earthly muses. Sappho was one of these earthly muses.