Poet · 630 BC – 570 BC
Sappho
Key Takeaways
- Sappho was an ancient Greek lyric poet from the island of Lesbos.
- Ancient critics ranked her so highly they called her the "Tenth Muse".
- Her poetry gave intimate, first-person voice to love and desire.
- Almost all her work is lost, surviving only in fragments and quotations.
In an age of grand epics about gods and war, Sappho turned poetry inward, to the trembling of the human heart. The ancient world treasured her so highly that it called her the Tenth Muse.
The voice of the lyric
Writing on the island of Lesbos in early Greece, Sappho composed lyric poetry — verse meant to be sung to the lyre — of startling intimacy. Her surviving lines speak of desire, jealousy and tenderness in a personal voice unlike the sweeping epics of Homer. Later admirers, from Plato to Ovid, revered her.
A legacy in fragments
Tragically, almost all of her poetry is lost; we know her through fragments and quotations. Yet her influence is immense: she made the inner life a worthy subject for great art, and her name and island gave the world the words “sapphic” and “lesbian.” Few poets of ancient Greece have echoed so far on the strength of so little surviving work.
Influence
Sappho made the private, personal emotion of the individual a fitting subject for great poetry, founding a lyric tradition that runs through all of Western verse.
Legacy
Though her poetry survives only in fragments, her name and the island of Lesbos have given us the very words for same-sex love between women.
Major Works
- Ode to Aphrodite
- Fragment 31 ('He seems to me equal to the gods')
Connections
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Sappho?
Sappho (c. 630–570 BC) was an ancient Greek lyric poet from Lesbos, famed for her intimate love poetry and hailed in antiquity as the 'Tenth Muse'.
Why is so little of Sappho's poetry left?
Most of her work was lost over the centuries; what survives comes mainly from fragments on papyrus and quotations by later ancient authors.
Citations & Sources
People Like Sappho
Homer
95Homer was the legendary ancient Greek poet to whom the great epics the Iliad and the Odyssey are attributed, foundational works of Western literature.
Why The other towering poet of early Greece, working in epic where Sappho perfected the lyric.
Plato
96Plato was a Greek philosopher who founded the Academy in Athens, wrote the foundational dialogues of Western philosophy, and developed the influential theory of Forms.
Why Plato is credited with the epigram hailing Sappho as the 'Tenth Muse'.
Ovid
82Ovid was a Roman poet of the Augustan age whose Metamorphoses, a sweeping collection of mythological tales, became one of the most influential works of classical literature on later Western art and poetry.
Why A later poet of love who admired and wrote about Sappho.
Euripides
79Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, whose psychologically searching, often unsettling plays such as Medea and The Bacchae made him the most modern-feeling dramatist of the ancient world.
Why Also a writer · Active in the same era
Herodotus
83Herodotus was a Greek writer of the 5th century BC, called the "Father of History" for his Histories, the first known work to systematically investigate and narrate past events as a connected inquiry.
Why Also a writer · Active in the same era
Sophocles
81Sophocles was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, author of Oedipus Rex and Antigone, whose dramas shaped Western theatre and gave us some of its most enduring stories.
Why Also a writer · Active in the same era