Sappho

Name of Author: Sappho, also spelled (in the Aeolic dialect spoken by the poet) Psappho.
Born: c.610 BCE
Died: c.570 BCE

LEARN MORE ABOUT SAPPHO:

• Sappho is also known as the first Lesbian poet, who moved the word “lesbian.”
• She is said, for example, to have been married to Cercylas, a wealthy man from the island of Andros.
• Greek lyric poet greatly admired in all ages for the beauty of her writing style. She ranks with Archilochus and Alcaeus, among Greek poets, for her ability to impress readers with a lively sense of her personality.
• Her birthplace was on the Isle of Lesbos, also called Lesvos or Mitilini. Lesbos Island was known for lesbian relationships in ancient Greece. The word “lesbian” is in fact derived from the name of the Island, Lesbos.
• Hardly any of Sappho’s work survives— Sappho is known to have written some nine volumes of poetry, but very little of her work was preserved.
• Her language contains elements from Aeolic vernacular speech and Aeolic poetic tradition.
• 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.
• Frequent images in Sappho’s poetry include flowers, bright garlands, naturalistic outdoor scenes, altars smoking with incense, perfumed unguents to sprinkle on the body and bathe the hair—that is, all the elements of Aphrodite’s rituals.
• An important part of Sappho’s poetic oeuvre is occupied by epithalamia, or nuptial songs.
• It is not known how her poems were published and circulated in her own lifetime and for the following three or four centuries.