Sappho
（
Σαπφώ; Aeolic,
Ψάπφα).
One of the
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Sappho. (From the painting by Alma-Tadema.)
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two great leaders of the Aeolian school of lyric poetry, Alcaeus being the other.
She was a native of Mitylené, or, as some said, of Eresos in Lesbos, and flourished
towards the end of the seventh century B.C. Her father's name was Scamandronymus, who died
when she was only six years old. She had three brothers, Charaxus, Larichus, and Eurigius.
Charaxus was violently upbraided by his sister in a poem, because he became so enamoured of
the courtesan Rhodopis at Naucratis in Egypt as to ransom her from slavery at an immense
price. Sappho was contemporary with Alcaeus, Stesichorus, and Pittacus. That she was not only
contemporary, but lived in friendly intercourse, with Alcaeus is shown by existing fragments
of the poetry of both. Of the events of her life we have no other information than an obscure
allusion in the Parian Marble and in Ovid (
Her. xv. 51) to her flight from Mitylené to Sicily to escape
some unknown danger, between B.C. 604 and 592; and the common story that
being in love with Phaon, and finding her love unrequited, she leaped down from the Leucadian
Rock. This story, however, seems to have been an invention of later times. The name of Phaon
does not occur in one of Sappho's fragments, and there is no evidence that he was mentioned in
her poems. As for the leap from the Leucadian Rock, it is a mere metaphor, taken from an
expiatory rite connected with the worship of Apollo, which seems to have been a frequent
poetical image. At Mitylené Sappho appears to have been the leader of a feminine
literary set, most of the members of which were her pupils in poetry, fashion, and gallantry,
so that from this association later writers have attempted to prove that the moral character
of Sappho was not free from all reproach; and it is difficult to read the fragments which
remain of her verse without being forced to come to the conclusion that a woman who could
write such poetry could not be the pure woman that her modern apologists would have her. (See
the defence of Sappho by Welcker [1816] and the various papers in the
Rheinisches
Museum for 1857-58.) Of her poetical genius, however, there cannot be a question. The
ancient writers agree in expressing the most unbounded admiration for the passion, sincerity,
and grace of her poetry. Already in her own age the recitation of one of her poems so affected
Solon that he expressed an earnest desire to learn it before he died. Her lyric poems formed
nine books, but of these only fragments have come down to us. The most important is a splendid
ode to Aphrodité, of which we perhaps possess the whole. The best editions of the
fragments is by Neue
(Berlin, 1827), and that in Bergk's
Poet. Lyrici
Graeci, vol. iii.
(4th ed. 1882). The fragments are all collected and
translated into English by Wharton with a full bibliography in his
Sappho
(Chicago, 1895). See Arnold,
Sappho (Berlin, 1871);
Schöne,
Untersuchungen über das Leben der Sappho
(Leipzig, 1867); and Poestion,
Griechische Dichterinnen (Vienna,
1876). There is a metrical translation of the fragments by Gasby-Smith
(Washington, 1891).
