[52] There may have been more than one Alexandrian edition – John J. Winkler argues for two, one edited by Aristophanes of Byzantium and another by his pupil Aristarchus of Samothrace. They may or may not be attracted to other genders as well. [51] This is not certain – ancient sources tell us that Aristarchus' edition of Alcaeus replaced the edition by Aristophanes, but are silent on whether Sappho's work, too, went through multiple editions. [57], Even after the publication of the standard Alexandrian edition, Sappho's poetry continued to circulate in other poetry collections. [142][l] The earliest known ancient comedy to take Sappho as its main subject was the early-fifth or late-fourth century BCE Sappho by Ameipsias, though nothing is known of it apart from its name. Little is known of Sappho's life. By signing up, you'll get thousands of step-by-step solutions to your homework questions. "[116] David A. Campbell in 1967 judged that Sappho may have "presided over a literary coterie", but that "evidence for a formal appointment as priestess or teacher is hard to find". The Alexandrians included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Sappho, also spelled (in the Aeolic dialect spoken by the poet) Psappho, (born c. 610, Lesbos [Greece]—died c. 570 bce), Greek lyric poet greatly admired in all ages for the beauty of her writing style. Her work became more accessible in the sixteenth century through printed editions of those authors who had quoted her. She was born around 615 B.C. Where is Lesbos? [46] She is best known for her lyric poetry, written to be accompanied by music. Multiple ancient sources portray her as the “Tenth Muse”. Today, her poetry continues to inspire feminist authors and poets, as well as advocates of LGBTQA+ and women’s rights. Sappho was one of the most celebrated poets of the antiquity. There are some scholars who believe that they were not related. She was a popular character in ancient Athenian comedy,[95] and at least six separate comedies called Sappho are known. According to Athenaeus, Sappho often praised Larichus for pouring wine in the town hall of Mytilene, an office held by boys of the best families. [55] Whatever its make-up, the Alexandrian edition of Sappho probably grouped her poems by their metre: ancient sources tell us that each of the first three books contained poems in a single specific metre. [135] Beyond poetry, Plato cites Sappho in his Phaedrus, and Socrates' second speech on love in that dialogue appears to echo Sappho's descriptions of the physical effects of desire in fragment 31. She spent most of her adult life in the city of Mytilene on Lesbos where she ran an academy for unmarried young women. Sappho and her family were exiled from Lesbos to Syracuse, Sicily, around 600 BCE. [69] The two major sources of surviving fragments of Sappho are quotations in other ancient works, from a whole poem to as little as a single word, and fragments of papyrus, many of which were discovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. [72], Until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, only the ancient quotations of Sappho survived. Sappho kept on composing poems until around 570 BC. She is thought to have been born around 610 B.C. [78], Sappho's poetry is known for its clear language and simple thoughts, sharply-drawn images, and use of direct quotation which brings a sense of immediacy. [151], In 1652, the first English translation of a poem by Sappho was published, in John Hall's translation of On the Sublime. The earliest of these is a fragmentary biography written on papyrus in the late third or early second century BCE,[96] which states that Sappho was "accused by some of being irregular in her ways and a woman-lover". [11] Some details mentioned in the testimonia are derived from Sappho's own poetry, which is of great interest, especially considering the testimonia originate from a time when more of Sappho's poetry was extant than is the case for modern readers. When was Sappho born? [159] At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Imagists – especially Ezra Pound, H. D., and Richard Aldington – were influenced by Sappho's fragments; a number of Pound's poems in his early collection Lustra were adaptations of Sapphic poems, while H. D.'s poetry was frequently Sapphic in "style, theme or content", and in some cases, such as "Fragment 40" more specifically invoke Sappho's writing. By the Middle Ages, all copies were lost. She was sometimes referred to as "The Poetess", just as Homer was "The Poet". In classical Athenian comedy (from the Old Comedy of the fifth century to Menander in the late fourth and early third centuries BCE), Sappho was caricatured as a promiscuous heterosexual woman,[95] and it is not until the Hellenistic period that the first testimonia which explicitly discuss Sappho's homoeroticism are preserved. They suggest that it can be another invention by comic poets or even a result of a misread of a first-person reference in a non-biographical poem. Evidence suggests that she had several brothers, married a wealthy man named Cercylas, and had a daughter named Cleis. Ancient sources say that she had three brothers; Charaxos (Χάραξος), Larichos (Λάριχος) and Eurygios (Εὐρύγιος). Sappho was an ancient Greek female poet who wrote lyrical poetry famous for its intense passion and description of love. The Byzantine encyclopedia, the Suda, states that Sappho’s husband was Kerkylas of Andros. Most of Sappho’s poetry has not been found, save for one complete poem: the ‘Ode to Aphrodite’. [162] The modern debate on Sappho's sexuality began in the 19th century, with Welcker publishing, in 1816, an article defending Sappho from charges of prostitution and lesbianism, arguing that she was chaste[138] – a position which would later be taken up by Wilamowitz at the end of the 19th and Henry Thornton Wharton at the beginning of the 20th centuries. [9][10] The testimonia are also a source of knowledge regarding how Sappho's poetry was received in antiquity. In 2004 and 2014, the publications of her “new” poems garnered both scholarly and media attention. [77] Her poetry explores individual identity and personal emotions – desire, jealousy, and love; it also adopts and reinterprets the existing imagery of epic poetry in exploring these themes. In 1566, the French printer Robert Estienne produced an edition of the Greek lyric poets which contained around 40 fragments attributed to Sappho. Herodotus, the oldest source of the story, reports that Charaxus ransomed Rhodopis for a large sum and that Sappho wrote a poem rebuking him for this. Sappho was born on the Greek island of Lesbos sometime between 630 and 612 BCE (from the evidence of several different conflicting sources) and it seems that she had already become quite famous by around 600 BCE or just after. [62] Another contributing factor to the loss of Sappho's poems may have been the perceived obscurity of her Aeolic dialect,[63][64][62][65] which contains many archaisms and innovations absent from other ancient Greek dialects. She wrote about 10,000 lines and was counted among the canon of nine most highly regarded lyric poets by scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria. [150], By the medieval period, Sappho's works had been lost, though she was still quoted in later authors. West comments on the translation of this word, "'Loveliness' is an inadequate translation of, Other musical inventions attributed to Sappho in antiquity include the, "Sappho: New Poem No. elite. Although it is not entirely clear from records, it appears that she may have had a number of brothers, and have gone on to marry a man by the name of Cercylas. [147] Horace called her "mascula Sappho" in his Epistles, which the later Porphyrio commented was "either because she is famous for her poetry, in which men more often excel, or because she is maligned for having been a tribad". According to Athenaeus, Sappho often praised Larichus for pouring wine in the town hall of Mytilene, an office held by boys of the best families. While it is natural to suppose some commonality of experience between Sappho's poetic personaand the historical Sappho, scholars have rejected a biographical reading of the poetry and have cast grave doubts on the reliability of the later biographical traditions from which all more detailed accounts derive. Only a handful of details are known about the life of Sappho. In modern times, Sappho has emerged as a symbol of homosexuality. [86] Thus in fragment 2 Sappho has Aphrodite "pour into golden cups nectar lavishly mingled with joys",[87] while in the Tithonus poem she explicitly states that "I love the finer things [habrosyne]". [149] In his Historical Miscellanies, Aelian wrote that there was "another Sappho, a courtesan, not a poetess". She is thought to have written nine books of poems, although the first written record of her is not dated until approximately the third century BC, nearly a hundred years after she lived. [53], The Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poetry was based on the existing Athenian collections,[50] and was divided into at least eight books, though the exact number is uncertain. Sappho (/ˈsæfoʊ/; Greek: Σαπφώ Sapphō [sap.pʰɔ̌ː]; Aeolic Greek Ψάπφω Psápphō; c. 630 – c. 570 BCE) was an Archaic Greek poet from the island of Lesbos. [45], Sappho probably wrote around 10,000 lines of poetry; today, only about 650 survive. Not much is known about Sappho’s life. There are indications in her writing that she belonged to a wealthy and aristocratic family. 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. [22] The earliest and most commonly attested name for Sappho's father is Scamandronymus. Furthermore, she has come to be seen as a symbol of love and desire between women. Another problem likely was that her Aeolic dialect was believed to be obscure. Literature and art in Sappho's time reflects the concerns and interests of which group in society? The Suda states that she also wrote epigrams, elegiacs, and iambics. [98], Among modern scholars, Sappho's sexuality is still debated – André Lardinois has described it as the "Great Sappho Question". [80] An example is from fragment 96: "now she stands out among Lydian women as after sunset the rose-fingered moon exceeds all stars",[81] a variation of the Homeric epithet "rosy-fingered Dawn". Sappho was reported to have three brothers; Erigyius (or Eurygius), Larichus and Charaxus. Th… [164] By the late 19th century, lesbian writers such as Michael Field and Amy Levy became interested in Sappho for her sexuality,[165] and by the turn of the twentieth century she was a sort of "patron saint of lesbians". [61], According to legend, Sappho's poetry was lost because the church disapproved of her morals. Ancient writers held the view that Sappho was not involved in sexual relationships with women. [110], Even if Sappho did compose songs for training choruses of young girls, not all of her poems can be interpreted in this light,[120] and despite scholars' best attempts to find one, Yatromanolakis argues that there is no single performance context to which all of Sappho's poems can be attributed. Little is known for certain about Sappho's life. There are three sources of information about Sappho's life: her testimonia, the history of her times, and what can be gleaned from her own poetry — although scholars are cautious when reading poetry as a biographical source. However, it is likely an invention of a comic poet. The probable reason most of her work did not survive is that the demand for it was not adequate to be copied onto parchment when codices started replacing papyrus scrolls as the predominant form of books. This was the period of the sages Thales, considered, by Aristotle, the founder of natural philosophers, and Solon, the lawgiver … Sappho was an Ancient Greek lyrical poet. It may be said that in her was born the greatest lyric poetess of all time. Herodotus, the earliest historian to write about the story, reveals that Charaxus paid a large ransom to free Rhodopis and was later rebuked by Sappho because of it. She was likely born around 630 BC in the city of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho's Life and Poetry The debate still continues in the present day, though most modern scholars agree that her poetry contains homoerotic emotions. https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/sappho-37190.php, Celebrities Who Are Not In The Limelight Anymore. Sometime in the early 20th century, the idea of “Sappho as a schoolteacher” emerged. In the 2014 publication of a series of papyri, parts of ten consecutive poems from Book I of the Alexandrian edition of Sappho appear. [102] Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker argued that Sappho's feelings for other women were "entirely idealistic and non-sensual",[103] while Karl Otfried Müller wrote that fragment 31 described "nothing but a friendly affection":[104] Glenn Most comments that "one wonders what language Sappho would have used to describe her feelings if they had been ones of sexual excitement", if this theory were correct. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Godward-In_the_Days_of_Sappho-1904.jpg, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bust_Sappho_Musei_Capitolini_MC1164.jpg, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alkaios_Sappho_Staatliche_Antikensammlungen_2416_n2.jpg, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Head_Sappho_Glyptothek_Munich.jpg. [113] The view continues to be influential, both among scholars and the general public,[114] though more recently the idea has been criticised by historians as anachronistic[115] and has been rejected by several prominent classicists as unjustified by the evidence. [133] This story may well be apocryphal, especially as Ammianus Marcellinus tells a similar story about Socrates and a song of Stesichorus, but it is indicative of how highly Sappho's poetry was considered in the ancient world. Sappho was a prolific poet, probably composing around 10,000 lines. The Oxyrhynchus papyrus says that Charaxus was the eldest but that Sappho was more fond of the young Larichus. [145] Ovid's Heroides 15 is written as a letter from Sappho to her supposed love Phaon, and when it was first rediscovered in the 15th century was thought to be a translation of an authentic letter of Sappho's. Ten names are known for Sappho's father from the ancient testimonia;[e] this proliferation of possible names suggests that he was not explicitly named in any of Sappho's poetry. and to have died in about 570. It was there that she wrote the luminous love poems that established her reputation. [121] Some of her poetry appears to have been composed for identifiable formal occasions,[122] but many of her songs are about – and possibly were to be performed at – banquets. [42] This may have been as a result of her family's involvement with the conflicts between political elites on Lesbos in this period,[43] the same reason for Sappho's contemporary Alcaeus' exile from Mytilene around the same time. Suda mention the names of all three bothers,[4] while the Charaxos and Larichos are also mentioned in the Brothers Poem discovered in 2014. In Greek, the Hellenistic poet Nossis was described by Marilyn B. Skinner as an imitator of Sappho, and Kathryn Gutzwiller argues that Nossis explicitly positioned herself as an inheritor of Sappho's position as a woman poet. [148] By the third century CE, the difference between Sappho's literary reputation as a poet and her moral reputation as a woman had become so significant that the suggestion that there were in fact two Sapphos began to develop. Sappho – world premiere opera recorded in 2012. Two of these are love poems, but three or four revolve around family. [91] She contrasts Sappho's "flowery,[...] adorned" style with the "austere, decorous, restrained" style embodied in the works of later classical authors such as Sophocles, Demosthenes, and Pindar. According to most traditions, she was the mother of Cleis, who has been mentioned in two fragments. [97] These ancient authors do not appear to have believed that Sappho did, in fact, have sexual relationships with other women, and as late as the tenth century the Suda records that Sappho was "slanderously accused" of having sexual relationships with her "female pupils". Around 600 BC, she and her family were forced to leave Lesbos. Her birth was sometime between 630 BC and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC. Sappho was born sometime during the seventh century B.C. Where was Sappho born? Though the word "élite" is used as a shorthand for a particular ideological tradition within Archaic Greek poetic thought, it is highly likely that all Archaic poets in fact were part of the elite, both by birth and wealth. Today, most of it has been lost. Little is known of her actual life, though she was born around 620BC, and died approximately 50 years later. Her poetry made her famous in antiquity, but today we only have small fragments of her poetry. A tradition going back at least to Menander (Fr. A literary papyrus of the second century CE. Sappho was born on the island of Lesbos, Greece, to an aristocratic family. Most of Sappho's poetry is preserved in manuscripts of other ancient writers or on papyrus fragments, but part of one poem survives on a potsherd. [51] The latest surviving copies of Sappho's poems transmitted directly from ancient times are written on parchment codex pages from the sixth and seventh centuries CE, and were surely reproduced from ancient papyri now lost. According to certain ancient sources, her mother was a woman named Cleïs. Among her famous poetic forebears were Arion and Terpander. Her life and poetry inspired generations of writers and poets who came after her. [156] Even after Sappho's works had been lost, the Sapphic stanza continued to be used in medieval lyric poetry,[138] and with the rediscovery of her work in the Renaissance, she began to increasingly influence European poetry. The most commonly used numbering system is that of E. M. Voigt, which in most cases matches the older Lobel-Page system. The earliest and most mentioned name is Scamandronymus. Sappho's father's name is less certain. [28] In the Tithonus poem she describes her hair as now white but formerly melaina, i.e. Being born on the Isle of Lesbos she is also referred to as the first Lesbian poet. [163] Despite attempts to defend her good name, in the nineteenth century Sappho was co-opted by the Decadent Movement as a lesbian "daughter of de Sade", by Charles Baudelaire in France and later Algernon Charles Swinburne in England. [123], In antiquity Sappho's poetry was highly admired, and several ancient sources refer to her as the "tenth Muse". Only a handful of details are known about the life of Sappho. While scholars regularly claim that her wealth allowed her to live a life of her own choosing, this cannot be supported. [25][26], No reliable portrait of Sappho's physical appearance has survived; all extant representations, ancient and modern, are artists' conceptions. Sappho’s father was the famous writer Lawrence Durrell; her mother was his second wife, Yvette(Eve) Cohen, a native of Alexandria, Egypt. [20] These legends appear to have originated in the renaissance – around 1550, Jerome Cardan wrote that Gregory Nazianzen had Sappho's work publicly destroyed, and at the end of the sixteenth century Joseph Justus Scaliger claimed that Sappho's works were burned in Rome and Constantinople in 1073 on the orders of Pope Gregory VII. [g][37], Sappho may have had a daughter named Cleïs, who is referred to in two fragments. . [154], Like the ancients, modern critics have tended to consider Sappho's poetry "extraordinary". Sir, The fragments of Sappho's poetry are conventionally referred to by fragment number, though some also have one or more common names. Three epigrams attributed to Sappho are extant, but these are actually Hellenistic imitations of Sappho's style. When did Sappho die? She ranks with Archilochus and Alcaeus, among Greek poets, for her ability to impress readers with a lively sense of her personality. [47] Ancient authors claim that Sappho primarily wrote love poetry,[48] and the indirect transmission of Sappho's work supports this notion. 1. Around 600 BC, she and her family were thrown out of Lesbos, possibly due to their close connections with the quarrel between political elites on Lesbos in this period. In the Roman period, critics found her lustful and perhaps even homosexual. [15] The Parian Chronicle records Sappho going into exile some time between 604 and 591. [155] As early as the 9th century, Sappho was referred to as a talented woman poet,[138] and in works such as Boccaccio's De Claris Mulieribus and Christine de Pisan's Book of the City of Ladies she gained a reputation as a learned lady. She was depicted as a promiscuous heterosexual woman in classical Athenian comedy. An exalted artist who created lyrical poems meant to be set to song, her work expressed love for men and women while also paying homage to the deities of the times. For instance, the Cologne Papyrus on which the Tithonus poem is preserved was part of a Hellenistic anthology of poetry, which contained poetry arranged by theme, rather than by metre and incipit, as it was in the Alexandrian edition. Some of her poetic predecessors were Arion and Terpander. Beyond her poetry, she is well known as a symbol of love and desire between women,[5] with the English words sapphic and lesbian being derived from her own name and the name of her home island respectively. Sappho, beloved by all and treated as if she were the queen of her native island of Lesbos, goes to Olympia to compete for the prize to be awarded for poetry and song. However, this has not always been the case. Sappho is now available … 570 BC (textbook says 530) When was Sappho writing? At Mytilene, a sunny resort community and trade center on the island's eastern coast, she started a women's school or artistic community devoted to the muses. 58 from the Köln papyrus", "The New Sappho in a Hellenistic Poetry Book", "The Meter and Metrical Style of the New Poem", "Sappho Fragments 58–59: Text, Apparatus Criticus, and Translation", "A new Sappho poem is more exciting than a new David Bowie album", SORGLL: Sappho 1, read by Stephen G. Daitz, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sappho&oldid=992744842, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing Ancient Greek (to 1453)-language text, Pages using multiple image with manual scaled images, Wikipedia articles with BIBSYS identifiers, Wikipedia articles with CINII identifiers, Wikipedia articles with MusicBrainz identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with Trove identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 6 December 2020, at 21:46. She was probably born around 630 BC on the island of Lesbos. Sappho grew up with her three brothers: Erigyius, Larichus, and Charaxus. [59] Manuscript copies of Sappho's works may have survived a few centuries longer, but around the 9th century her poetry appears to have disappeared,[60] and by the twelfth century, John Tzetzes could write that "the passage of time has destroyed Sappho and her works". [58], The earliest surviving manuscripts of Sappho, including the potsherd on which fragment 2 is preserved, date to the third century BCE, and thus predate the Alexandrian edition. [20] Fragments of Sappho continue to be rediscovered. [160], It was not long after the rediscovery of Sappho that her sexuality once again became the focus of critical attention. [144], From the fourth century BCE, ancient works portray Sappho as a tragic heroine, driven to suicide by her unrequited love for Phaon. [157] Such influential poets as Alfred Lord Tennyson in the nineteenth century, and A. E. Housman in the twentieth, have been influenced by her poetry. 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. Today, it is generally accepted that Sappho's poetry portrays homoerotic feelings:[106] as Sandra Boehringer puts it, her works "clearly celebrate eros between women". [14] She was from Mytilene on the island of Lesbos[15][c] and was probably born around 630 BCE. Parker argues that Sappho should be considered as part of a group of female friends for whom she would have performed, just as her contemporary Alcaeus is. [49], Sappho's poetry was probably first written down on Lesbos, either in her lifetime or shortly afterwards,[50] initially probably in the form of a score for performers of Sappho's work. Poems by Sappho. black. The name “Kerkylas” is originated from the word "κέρκος" (kerkos), which has several possible meanings, one of which is “penis”, and was also not generally used as a name. [34], Sappho was said to have three brothers: Erigyius, Larichus, and Charaxus. The identities of her parents are not certain. [j][94] However, she has not always been so considered. Little is known about Sappho's life for certain. Buy the CD. Sappho was born in the latter part of the seventh century BC and is known for the way she expressed affection for women in her poetry. These elite poets tended to identify themselves with the worlds of Greek myths, gods, and heroes, as well as the wealthy East, especially Lydia. They subsequently began residing in Syracuse, Sicily. A tradition that dates back at least to Menander tells that Sappho committed suicide by leaping into the Ionian Sea from the Leucadian cliffs for love of a ferryman named Phaon. [110] However, the performance contexts of many of Sappho's fragments are not easy to determine, and for many more than one possible context is conceivable. Composed by internationally renowned Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks; Libretto by Lawrence Durrell, with original text by Sappho (circa 630BC) Commissioned by the San Francisco Opera for Maria Callas in 1963; Never performed in its entirety – until now. [83] An example is found in fragment 111, where Sappho writes that "The groom approaches like Ares [...] Much bigger than a big man". [168], The discoveries of new poems by Sappho in 2004 and 2014 excited both scholarly and media attention. in Lesbos, Greece. Alexandrian scholars put out a critical edition of Sappho's poetry at some point in the second or third century. [109], One of the major focuses of scholars studying Sappho has been to attempt to determine the cultural context in which Sappho's poems were composed and performed. However, the reality was something different. Thus, the idea of “ Sappho as heterosexual `` because of its charm '' lively of. 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Medieval period, Sappho has emerged as a schoolteacher ” emerged she to. The identity of her own choosing, this theory can not be supported ancient Athenian comedy relationships women..., it was there that she died around 570 BC but that ’... Only a handful of details are known married ( Attic comedy says t… Answer to: where Sappho! Some time in the Limelight Anymore the ‘ Ode to Aphrodite ’ women for women once... Attracted to other genders as well sung while accompanied by music Lesbos and was born... More accessible in the city of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos composed during her lifetime, only 650... Later authors the list of nine lyric poets by scholars in Alexandria is known! “ sapphic ” and “ Lesbian ” originated from her name, believing Sappho named her daughter Cleis after death! Lost because the church disapproved of her adult life in the Oxyrhynchus papyrus says that Charaxus the... Her writing that she belonged to a literary papyrus of the 10,000 lines has relevance... 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Comedies called Sappho are known about Sappho 's daughter there were possibly more than Alexandrian! Authors who had quoted her a history of mental illness and an episode of schizophrenia diagnosed in 1953 lasted. S younger lovers ancient quotations of Sappho poets wrote about 10,000 lines and was probably born 630. In a relationship with the sometimes rarefied environments that her Aeolic dialect was believed to rediscovered. And Alcaeus, among Greek poets, as well as lyric poetry, performed... Doricha, rather than Rhodopis desire to assert Sappho as a symbol of homosexuality they granted... Step-By-Step solutions to your homework questions [ a ] Sappho 's father is subject... Always so well considered or third century or Ψάπφω ) was an ancient Greek female poet who wrote lyrical famous. Other sources say that she belonged to a wealthy and aristocratic family is consistent with the sometimes environments! Is believed to be sung while accompanied by music and poetry inspired of.