SAPPHO

Fl. 6th century B.C.

Greek poet. Greek lexicon compiled around the end of the

tenth century. Based on earlier lexicons, scholarly
commentaries, and excerpts from the works of
historians, grammarians, and biographers, the Sui-

M any critics consider Sappho the greatest

female poet of the classical world and the
most accomplished of an influential group of lyric
das records that Sappho was a native of Lesbos, an
island in the Aegean, and that she was probably
born in either Eresus or Mytilene. Her father’s
poets who were active in Greece between 650 B.C. name is given as Scamandronymus, and her
and 450 B.C.—a period often designated the Lyric mother’s as Cleis. Evidence also suggests that Sap-
Age of Greece. Though most of her work survives pho had three brothers and that her family
only in fragments, the imagery and phrasing of belonged to the upper class. According to tradi-
those fragments have been striking enough to tion, she lived briefly in Sicily around 600 B.C.,
inspire readers from her own time to the present when political strife on Lesbos forced her into
day to deem her one of the greatest poets of all exile. After returning, she probably married a
time. Many of her poems discuss the female
wealthy man named Cercylas, had a daughter
speaker’s feelings for another woman, making Sap-
named Cleis, and apparently spent the rest of her
pho an important figure in homosexual literary
life in the city of Mytilene. Most of her time there
history. (Sappho’s homeland of Lesbos lent its
was occupied with organizing and running a thi-
name to the modern term “lesbian.”) Moreover,
asos, or an academy for unmarried young women.
as one of the first female authors of the West, Sap-
As was the custom of the age, wealthy families
pho has been embraced by many later authors as
from Lesbos and from the neighboring states
an icon of the feminine poetic voice.
would send their daughters to live for a period of
time in these informal institutions in order to be
instructed in the proper social graces, as well as in
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION composition, singing, and the recitation of poetry.
Very few details of Sappho’s biography are Intended as a transition between their parents’
known, and even fewer can be considered trust- homes and the homes of their future husbands,
worthy. Accounts of her life have become thor- Sappho’s thiasos ranked as one of the best and
oughly interwoven with legend, myth, and rumor. most prestigious in that part of Greece, and as its
The only standard—but unreliable—source of dedicated teacher and spiritual leader, she enjoyed
information about Sappho’s life is the Suidas, a great renown for having educated generations of

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 young women for fulfilling their social and marital tradition of poetry, influenced by the poets Ter-
SAPPHO responsibilities. Some legends of Sappho’s life pander and Alcaeus, both from Mytilene, and
indicate that she lived to old age, but others relate Archilochus, a poet from the nearby island of Pa-
that she fell hopelessly in love with a young boat- ros. Many lyrics, including Sappho’s, were in-
man, Phaon, and, disappointed by their failed love tended to be sung accompanied by the lyre and
affair, leaped to her death from a high cliff—a critics have noted the melody and cadence of her
story made famous by the Roman poet Ovid in poetry. Much of Sappho’s poetry was also oc-
his Heroides, but one which has been largely casional, or written to commemorate a particular
discredited by modern scholars. event, but, too, she composed narrative poetry,
religious hymns, and epithalamia, for which she
was famous. Historians have recorded that Sap-
pho was a frequent and sought-after guest at wed-
MAJOR WORKS dings, where she would sing a marriage song
The textual history of Sappho’s poetry is as composed especially for the couple. Sappho’s lyric
sketchy as her biography. According to the Suidas, verse was personal, emotional, and written in a
her substantial body of work was collected into a simple, translucent style which contrasted with
standard nine-volume edition in the third century the epic poetry of Homer—the dominant mode of
B.C.; the arrangement of these volumes was based composition at the time she was writing. Sappho’s
on the type of meter she used—Sapphic, choriam- poems use a vernacular language which is closer
bic, Alcaic, and others—with a whole volume to natural speech and they address feelings of
devoted to epithalamia, or marriage songs. Noth- friendship, desire, jealousy, playfulness, and anger.
ing is known about the way Sappho’s poetry was
transmitted or recorded from her lifetime until
the printing of the uniform edition in the third
century B.C. Until the nineteenth century, the CRITICAL RECEPTION
only known texts of her poetry were miscel- Sappho’s works have met with critical and
laneous fragments quoted in the works of several popular praise since she first wrote them, and
Alexandrian grammarians to illustrate the Lesbian- other poets in particular have praised her gift for
Aeolic dialect), and two poems: the ode to Aphro- imagery and portraying emotion. Plato called her
dite, reprinted by Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the tenth muse and Catullus and Horace imitated
his treatise on style, and the poem which begins her openly, as did the English Romantics includ-
“Peer of the gods he seems to me,” presented by ing Alfred Lord Tennyson, Algernon Charles Swin-
Longinus in On the Sublime as an example of burne, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who translated
polished style. Though composed in approxi- some of her fragments. She became an important
mately the first century B.C., the two treatises, poet during the rise of German nationalism and
and the two poems by Sappho, were not discov- was a key influence on American and English
ered until the Renaissance, when they came to Imagists, including Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle
the attention of Italian scholars. The chief impor- (known as H. D.). The literary relationship be-
tance of the two poems lay in the fact that they tween H. D. and Sappho in particular has been a
were believed to be preserved in their entirety and frequent subject of scholarly interest. Neverthe-
therefore constituted the most substantial remains less, Sappho’s personal reputation has often suf-
of Sappho’s to date. In 1898, scholars discovered fered in public discourse. Two or three centuries
third-century B.C. papyri containing additional after her death, rumors began to circulate about
verse fragments. Then, in 1914, archaeologists her supposed immorality and licentiousness: she
excavating cemeteries in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, was said to be the lover of Alcaeus, an instructor
unearthed coffins made from papier-mâché com- of homosexual practices at her thiasos, and a
posed of scraps of paper containing fragments of seductress. Speculation about these and other
literary writings, including some by Sappho. These rumors was for centuries the focus of writing on
discoveries sparked new interest in Sappho and Sappho. Not until the early nineteenth century,
her poetry, inspiring new critical studies of the when the German classicist Friedrich Gottlieb
text. Though the first English translations of Sap- Welcker published the seminal essay “Sappho von
pho had appeared in the seventeenth century, it einem herrschenden Vorurtheil befreit” (“Sappho
was not until the nineteenth century that transla- freed from a common prejudice”), did critical
tions and commentary on her work began to focus begin to shift again to her poetry, although
proliferate, with the first English scholarly edition the issue of her sexual orientation continues to
appearing in 1885. Sappho wrote within the lyric inform modern scholarship. Because Sappho’s

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poems were intended for performance, the iden- Sappho: Lyrics in the Original Greek with Translations

SAPPHO
tity of the speaker and its relationship to the [translated by Willis Barnstone] (poetry) 1965
meaning of the poems has been a crucial ques- Sappho: Poems and Fragments [translated by Guy
tion: several critics have pointed out that the “Sap- Davenport] (poetry) 1965
pho” in the poems does not necessarily speak for
Sappho the woman. Judith Hallett contends that Sappho: Love Songs [translated by Paul Roche]
the poems do not reflect homosexual desire, but (poetry) 1966
instead encourage the listeners—whom Hallett The Poems of Sappho [translated by Suzy Q. Groden]
imagines as the young women of Sappho’s (poetry) 1967
school—toward heterosexual love. Although Hal- “Sappho” in Archilochos, Sappho, Alkman: Three
lett’s interpretation has not been universally ac- Lyric Poets of the Late Greek Bronze Age [trans-
cepted, her notion of a non-autobiographical lated by Guy Davenport] (poetry) 1980
persona speaking in the poems continues to
inform scholarship. Many critics have proposed Greek Lyric Poetry: Including the Complete Poetry of
that the speaker of the poems, whether or not she Sappho [translated by Willis Barnstone]
is Sappho, makes possible a feminine subjectivity, (poetry) 1987
or a place from which a woman could speak in a Sappho’s Lyre: Archaic Lyric and Women Poets of
culture and literary tradition dominated by men Ancient Greece [translated by Diane J. Raynor]
and a masculine perspective. One of the central (poetry) 1991
twentieth-century scholars who advanced this
If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho [translated by
view is Eva Stehle Stigers; in several essays on Sap-
Anne Carson] (poetry) 2002
pho, Stigers demonstrates how Sappho’s use of a
speaking persona expands the possibilities of
female identity. Another school of Sappho scholar-
ship has focused on Sappho as a symbol for later
women writers. This criticism acknowledges how PRIMARY SOURCES
the idea of Sappho, even more than her writings,
was influential and inspirational for other women SAPPHO (POEM DATE C. 600 B.C.)
writing in male-centered cultures. As Susan Gubar SOURCE: Sappho. “Hymn to Aphrodite.” In The Sap-
asserts, even centuries after her death, Sappho as pho Companion, edited by Margaret Reynolds, p. 29.
London: Chatto and Windus, 2000.
symbol has legitimized the efforts of women
authors and has given them a place from which In the following poem, one of her best known and most
complete, Sappho displays her characteristic yearning.
they can speak. The translation is by John Addington Symonds (1883).
Star-throned incorruptible Aphrodite,
Child of Zeus, wile-weaving, I supplicate thee,
Tame not me with pangs of the heart, dread
PRINCIPAL ENGLISH mistress,
TRANSLATIONS Nay, nor with anguish.

But come thou, if erst in the days departed

“Sapphic Fragments” in Poems [translated by
Thou didst lend thine ear to my lamentation,
Dante Gabriel Rossetti] (poetry) 1870 And from far, the house of thy sire deserting,
Sappho: Selected Renderings and a Literal Translation Camest with golden
[translated by Henry Thornton Wharton]
Car yoked: thee thy beautiful sparrows hurried
(poetry) 1885 Swift with multitudinous pinions fluttering
The Poems of Sappho [translated by Edwin Marion Round black earth, adown from the height of
Cox] (poetry) 1924 heaven
Through middle ether:
The Songs of Sappho [translated by Marion Mills
Miller and David M. Robinson] (poetry) 1925 Quickly journeyed they; and, O thou, blest Lady,
Smiling with those brows of undying lustre,
Sappho: The Poems and Fragments [translated by C.
Asked me what new grief at my heart lay,
R. Haines] (poetry) 1926 wherefore
Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta [translated by Edgar Now I had called thee,
Lobel and Denys Page] (poetry) 1955
What I fain would have to assuage the torment
Sappho: A New Translation [translated by Mary Bar- Of my frenzied soul; and whom now, to please
nard] (poetry) 1958 thee,

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