Born: 630 BC (circa), Greece
Died: 570 BC (circa)
Country most active: Greece
Also known as: Σαπφώ, Ψάπφω
The following is excerpted from Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women, written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company.
Sappho, (flourished about 600 B.C.) a Greek poet, native of Lesbos, where she was head of a great poetic school, for poetry in that age and place was cultivated as assiduously and apparently as successfully by women as by men. In antiquity her fame rivalled that of Homer, and she was styled “the tenth Muse” and “the flower of the Graces.” Almost nothing is known of her life, and the legend of her unrequited love for Phaon and of her casting herself down from a promontory into the sea, has no confirmation. Sappho is for us chiefly a name, a theme for the fervent rhetoric evoked by impassioned contemplation of the few exquisite fragments of her poems that time has spared, a type of the highest achievement of woman in literature. Prof. John Arthur Platt says: “Her poems were arranged in nine books, on what principle is uncertain; she is said to have sung them to the Mixo-Lydian mode, which she herself invented. The perfection and finish of every line, the correspondence of sense and sound, the incomparable command over all the most delicate resources of verse, and the exquisite symmetry of the complete odes which are extant, raise her into the very first rank of technical poetry at once, while her painting of passion has never been surpassed since, and approached only by Catullus, and by Dante in the Vita Nuova.” Another writer, H. B. Cotterill, says: “Sappho’s poetry has the exquisite natural grace and the delicate but distinct outlines of the finest Greek sculpture—such sculpture as we see on the frieze of the Parthenon or on some beautiful Athenian stele. Both in thought and in language it offers the very greatest contrast imaginable to what is often regarded as the true poetical method of expressing deep emotion. It affects one not by the display of vehement passion, but by impressing on one’s mind a picture which haunts the memory and ever afterwards has the power of stirring one’s feelings as if it were a real experience.
IW note: Sappho’s work spoke of love and desire between women; for this reason, the words sapphic and lesbian derive from her name and that of her home.
The following is excerpted from “400 Outstanding Women of the World and the Costumology of Their Time” by Minna Moscherosch Schmidt, published in 1933.
She was known as “the tenth Muse” by the choicest spirits of antiquity, and universally acclaimed as the first woman poet of the world. Sappho was born in the island of Lesbos in the Aegean sea. Her school of poetry and nausic was known as “the Seat of the Muses.” Here, her friends, young girls whom she gathered about her in tender love, studied under her guidance all that related to poetry and music. From this school there issued youthful poetesses, fourteen of whose names have been preserved to us, the most famous being Erinna of Telos, and Damophila of Pamphylia. She wrote her lyric poetry in the Aeolic dialect and in a metre which is now known by her name, the Sapphic.
Her lyrics were arranged by her in nine books. Of these poems, two Odes, alone, have survived in their entirety. Besides these, three epigrams and some other fragments exist which are sufficient to show her consummate art. Depth and power of feeling, tenderness and grace, the supreme simplicity and sincerity with which she expresses the greatest human emotions are all combined with the melody of her language and the harmony of her versification.
Of the Roman poets, Camilus was her closest imitator, while Horace’s imitations of her style and metre are well-known. In a famous Ode, Horace relates, among other things, how Sappho continued to charm by her songs, even the shades of the youths of Hades. Sappho was held in great honor, during her lifetime, by her fellow citizens of Mitylene, who engraved her head upon their silver and copper coinage, an honor reserved only for the most famous men. The Athenians had, in their Prytaneum a statue of Sappho, much praised by Cicero. The greatest writers of antiquity have written about Sappho with admiration, so also have the moderns. Swinburne, the great English poet, says of her: “Her verve is the supreme success, the final achievement, of the poetic art.” Portraits of Sappho are to be found in most of the Museums of the world, whether on coins (though none of these are earlier than the Christian era) or on vase paintings. The Tanagra of the Louvre and the bust in the Naples Museum are well known.
The following is excerpted from A Cyclopædia of Female Biography, published 1857 by Groomsbridge and Sons and edited by Henry Gardiner Adams.
SAPPHO, A celebrated Greek poetess, was a native of Mitylene, in the Isle of Lesbos, and flourished about B. C. 610. She married Cercala, a rich inhabitant of Andros, by whom she had a daughter named Cleis; and it was not, probably, till after she became a widow that she rendered herself distinguished by her poetry. Her verses were chiefly of the lyric kind, and love was the general subject, which she treated with so much warmth, and with such beauty of poetical expression, as to have acquired the title of the “Tenth Muse.” Her compositions were held in the highest esteem by her contemporaries, Roman as well as Greek, and no female name has risen higher in the catalogue of poets. Her morals have been as much depreciated, as her genius has been extolled. She is represented by Ovid as far from handsome; and as she was probably no longer young when she fell in love with the beautiful Phaon, his neglect is not surprising. Unable to bear her disappointment, she went to the famous precipice of Leucate, since popularly called the Lover’s Leap, and throwing herself into the sea, terminated at once her life and her love.
Sappho formed an academy of females who excelled in music; and it was doubtless this academy which drew on her the hatred of the women of Mitylene. She is said to have been short in stature, and swarthy in her complexion. Ovid confirms this description in his Heroides, in the celebrated epistle from Sappho to The Mitylenes esteemed her so highly, and were so sensible of the glory they received from her having been born among them, that they paid her sovereign honours after her death, and stamped their money with her image. The Romans also erected a monument to her memory. “It must be granted,” says Rapin, “from what is left us of Sappho, that Longinus had great reason to extol the admirable genius of this woman; for there is in what remains of her something delicate, harmonious, and impassioned to the last degree. Catullus endeavoured to imitate Sappho, but fell infinitely short of her; and so have ail others who have written upon love.”
Besides the structure of verse called Sapphic, she invented the Æolic measure, composed elegies, epigrams, and nine books of lyric poetry, of which all that remain are, an ode to Venus, an ode to one of her lovers, and some small fragments.