Ancient Greek lyric poet
from Lesbos.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.