Sappho (c. 630 – c. 570 BC).
ancient Greek lyric poet from Lesbos.
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She was an Archaic Greek poet from the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied by a lyre. In ancient times, Sappho was widely regarded as one of the greatest lyric poets and was given names such as the "Tenth Muse" and "The Poetess". Most of Sappho's poetry is now lost, and what is extant has mostly survived in fragmentary form; two notable exceptions are the "Ode to Aphrodite" and the Tithonus poem. As well as lyric poetry, ancient commentators claimed that Sappho wrote elegiac and iambic poetry.
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Little is known of Sappho's life. She was from a wealthy family from Lesbos. Ancient sources say that she had three brothers. She was exiled to Sicily around 600 BC, and may have continued to work until around 570. Later legends surrounding Sappho's love for the ferryman Phaon and her death are unreliable. She is also said to have been married to Cercylas, a wealthy man from the island of Andros. Sappho may have had a daughter named Cleïs, who is referred to in two fragments.
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Sappho was a prolific poet, probably composing around 10,000 lines. Her poetry was well-known and greatly admired through much of antiquity, and she was among the canon of nine lyric poets most highly esteemed by scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria. Beyond her poetry, she is well known as a symbol of love and desire between women, with the English words sapphic and lesbian being derived from her own name and the name of her home island respectively. Whilst her importance as a poet is confirmed from the earliest times, all interpretations of her work have been coloured and influenced by discussions of her sexuality.
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Her language contains elements from Aeolic vernacular speech and Aeolic poetic tradition, with traces of epic vocabulary familiar to readers of Homer. Her phrasing is concise, direct, and picturesque. She has the ability to stand aloof and judge critically her own ecstasies and grief, and her emotions lose nothing of their force by being recollected in tranquillity. Her themes are invariably personal—primarily concerned with her thiasos, the usual term (not found in Sappho’s extant writings) for the female community, with a religious and educational background, that met under her leadership.
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No reliable portrait of Sappho's physical appearance has survived; all extant representations, ancient and modern, are artists' conceptions. In the Tithonus poem she describes her hair as now white but formerly melaina, i.e. black. A literary papyrus of the second century A.D. describes her as pantelos mikra, quite tiny.
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