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May 12, 2024 · Sappho was a Greek lyric poet who flourished in the 6th century BCE on Lesbos and has been greatly admired since antiquity for the beauty of her writing style. Her phrasing is concise, direct, and picturesque, and her themes are personal—primarily concerned with the female religious and educational community that met under her leadership.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Why is Sappho important?Sappho was a Greek lyric poet who flourished in the 6th century BCE on Lesbos and has been greatly admired since antiquity for the beauty of her wr...
- What was Sappho’s family like?Sappho had at least two brothers, Larichus and Charaxus, and may have had a third. A fragment from Sappho that is dedicated to Charaxus has survive...
- What is Sappho best remembered for?Sappho’s legacy is her poetry, though most of it is lost. In the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE her writings were collected in a nine-book edition of ly...
- How did Sappho die?The exact time, place, and cause of Sappho’s death are unknown. According to an often repeated, though unlikely, legend, Sappho leaped from the Leu...
Sappho ( / ˈsæfoʊ /; Greek: Σαπφώ Sapphṓ [sap.pʰɔ̌ː]; Aeolic Greek Ψάπφω Psápphō; c. 630 – c. 570 BC) was an Archaic Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. [a] Sappho is known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied by music.
Sep 7, 2023 · In antiquity Sappho was regularly counted among the greatest of poets and was often referred to as "the Poetess," just as Homer was called "the Poet." Plato hailed her as "the tenth Muse," and she was honored on coins and with civic statuary.
- Sappho's Life
- Sappho’s Sexuality
- Sappho's Poetry
- Conclusion
Sappho was born on the island of Lesbos, Greece, to an aristocratic family. While scholars regularly claim that her wealth allowed her to live a life of her own choosing, this cannot be supported. Most women in ancient Greece married according to the traditions and customs of their city-states, and Sappho's wealth would not have made her immune to ...
It is generally accepted that Sappho was a gay poet whose work became so popular that, by the late 6th century BCE, the meaning of the term lesbian has changed from "one from Lesbos" to "a woman who prefers her own sex". The Greek lyric poet Anacreon (l. c. 582 - c. 485 BCE), writing after Sappho, alludes to women of Lesbos as lesbians in the moder...
Her surviving works are deeply personal reflections on desire, love, and loss. Livingstone writes: Sappho seems to have understood this clearly and focused her work on the most basic and most enduring human emotions. Scholar Suzanne MacAlister comments: Sappho, instead, focuses on what the speaker in the poem is feeling, the rush of excitement at f...
The manner of Sappho's death is unknown. The Greek comedyplaywright Menander (l. c. 341-329 BCE) started the legend that she committed suicide by leaping from the Leucadian cliffs over the unrequited love of a beautiful ferryman named Phaon: This seems highly unlikely and has been rejected by historians in the present day and as far back as the Gre...
- Joshua J. Mark
Sappho is not only one of the few women poets we know of from antiquity, but also is one of the greatest lyric poets from any age. Most of her poems were meant to be sung by one person to the accompaniment of the lyre (hence the name, “ lyric ” poetry).
Jan 11, 2022 · Sappho was the quintessential lyric poet of ancient Greece. Although the bulk of her poetry has been lost, she was well-known and greatly admired throughout antiquity as one of the greatest of lyric poets, and her immense reputation has endured through surviving fragments.
Sappho was an ancient Greek lyric poet from the island of Lesbos. She wrote around 10,000 lines of poetry, only a small fraction of which survives. Only one poem is known to be complete; in some cases as little as a single word survives.
