Sappho....

Facts are scant and contradictory concerning the life of Sappho, the greatest of the early Greek lyric poets, whom Plato called "the tenth Muse." She was born in either Eressos or Mytilini on the Greek island of Lesvos into an aristrocratic, socially prominent family, and was orphaned at the age of six. Her father, Skamandronymous, is believed to have been a prosperous wine merchant. The eldest of her three brothers, Charaxos, was a wine merchant as well, and another brother, Larichos, held the prestigious job of wine pourer for the Mytileneans at their town hall. Sappho had a daughter, Cleis, named after her mother according to the tradition of the time; the child's father may have been a wealthy merchant named Cercylas. Some sources claim that Cercylas was her husband and died when Sappho was about thirty-five. Sappho lived mainly in Mytilini but was exiled to Sicily for a time, probably because of her family's political activities. She is reputed to have been short and dark-haired in an era when the feminine ideal was tall and fair-haired. Although her romantic preference was for women, she is said to have had male as well as female lovers, including the poet Alcaeus. Legend has it that she threw herself off a cliff for the unrequited love of a man named Phaon, but this is generally considered by scholars to be untrue. Lesvos, in Sappho's day, was a brilliant cultural center with a strong poetic tradition. Its society was markedly less misogynous than that of many of the Greek city-states; Lesbos's women mixed freely with men, were highly educated, and formed clubs for the cultivation of poetry and music. Sappho wrote her poetry for her circle of friends and disciples, mostly, but not exclusively, young women. She wrote in the Aeolic dialect in a great many meters, one of which has been called, after her, the Sapphic stanza. The principal subject of her poetry is love with all its passion, joy, sorrow, jealousy, frustration, and longing. Sappho's verse is a classic example of the love lyric and expresses the poet's feelings for women, her daughter, and nature, written with a direct simplicity and a perfect control of meter. Sappho also composed, and probably performed, epithalamiums, songs or poems written to celebrate a marriage that usually tell of the happenings of the wedding day. In the third and second centuries B.C., Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace collected and edited Sappho's poetry in nine books, according to meter. Her work continued to influence readers, scholars, and the Roman poets Catullus, Ovid, and Horace. By the fifth century A.D., when scholars began to transcribe works from papyrus scrolls to books, Sappho's poetry was left out and largely forgotten. It was not until the 1890s that a concerted effort was begun to collect and arrange her works. The first modern collection of Sappho's poetry was published by the Oxford University Press in 1925.

~sappho.net

Sappho Links:

About.com's Guidesite on Sappho

The modern day Isles of Lesbos

Poems and Brief Biography on Sappho

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Dominick Hiddo-Perry

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