Sappho of Lesbos

Sappho

Two and a half thousand years ago, on the Greek island of Lesbos, a female poet wrote:

He seems to me like a God. That man,

whoever he is opposite you

Who sits and listens closely

to your sweet voice

and lovely laugh.

Sappho was a woman who loved other women, and sang for them.. But any human who has ever lived and loved can relate to her intense feelings.

—oh! it

puts the heart in my chest on wings

for when I look at you, even for a moment, no voice

is left in me.

Oh! My tongue breaks,

and thin

fire is racing under my skin,

and sight has left my eyes, and drumming

fills my ears.

And cold sweat holds me and shaking

grips me all, greener than grass I am,

and dead—or almost

It seems to me.

Even the Greek comic playwrights mocked her as a sexually rampant woman. Tatian, an early christian writer, called her a whore who “sang of her own licentiousness.” In 1073, Pope Gregory VII ordered her works to be burned.

So it might shock you to learn that she perhaps committed suicide over her love for - a man. We will get onto that later, but first let’s look at what we actually know about Sappho.

About 700 lines of her poetry have come down to us, most of them as fragments. There were once about 10,000 lines in 9 books, held in the Greek-Egyptian library of Alexandria. Recently some scraps have turned up in ancient Egyptian rubbish dumps. Some were stuffed into a mummified crocodile.

The fragments have a charm of their own, giving us snippets of her life:

You arrived, and I was crazy for you.

And you cooled my mind that burned with longing.

She lived in Mytilene, the main city-state on the isle of Lesbos.

Lesbos was famous for its wine. The historian Herodotus tells us a story about one of Sappho’s brothers, Charaxus. He was a wine merchant who travelled to Egypt on business and fell in love with a prostitute there, spending a large amount of money on her.

In recent years, part of a poem about her brothers has turned up. Sappho expresses worry for Charaxus and prays for his safe return. And she mentions a younger brother.

Larichus, soon you will be bigger,

and my friend Andromeda wants to marry you.

In another fragment, perhaps surprisingly, she apparently mentions a daughter.

I have a beautiful child, beloved Kleis, who has a form like golden flowers, for whom I would not exchange all the wealth of Lydia.

It certainly sounds like a mother speaking of a beloved daughter, but some scholars claim that the name Kleis echoes a Greek word for a valuable part of female anatomy.

Sappho’s Lyrical poetry was musical and meant to be accompanied.

I took my lyre and said:

Come now, my heavenly

tortoise shell: become

a speaking instrument.

Many of her songs express personal feelings. This was a new development in poetry.

But some of her work was more public in spirit, celebrating festivals and weddings. She may even have led a chorus of girls who sang and danced.

Naturally her favourite deity was Aphrodite, the goddess of love who rode a chariot pulled by sparrows.

Deathless Aphrodite with your intricate throne,

child of Zeus, who twists traps, I beg you,

O lady,

do not break my heart with harsh pain..

Lesbos is not far from the coast of Modern Turkey. Back then, the most glittering metropolis in the region was Sardis, the capital of the Lydian Empire. This was home to King Croesus, famed for his vast wealth.

Some of her women friends went to live in splendid Sardis. She missed them.

Some say a host of cavalry,

others of infantry,


and others of ships,

is the most beautiful
 thing on this dark earth,

but I say it is
the object of a person’s love.

I would much prefer to see the lovely

Way she walks and the radiant glance of her face

Than the Lydians’ chariots and armed 
men.

Her poetic skill was much celebrated in antiquity. Plato called her the 10th muse.

The Roman Poet, Catullus, translated one of her poems into Latin. In his own verse, he gave a nickname to the noble Roman woman whom he was involved with: Lesbia.

A nod to Sappho.

Elsewhere Catullus wrote tersely “I love and I hate. Why do I do this? You may well ask. I don’t know why. But I do. And I am crucified.”

A sentiment that Sappho, who first described love as “bitter sweet”, would have approved of.

English poets have translated and admired her including Alexander Pope and Robert Browning.

Perhaps the most famous tribute of all comes from Lord Byron:

THE isles of Greece! the isles of Greece

Where burning Sappho loved and sung,

Where grew the arts of war and peace,

Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!

Eternal summer gilds them yet,

But all, except their sun, is set.

So finally, is it true that burning Sappho died for the love of a man?

200 years after her life, Menander, a comic playwright, suggested that she leapt off a cliff to her death. He claimed that she was tormented with love for Phaon, a ferryman. The story was taken up by the Roman poet Ovid, who composed a letter in verse, supposedly from Sappho:

Would’st thou rather see this breast dashed on pointed rocks, than pressed to thine? this breast, which you, Phaon, have so often praised as the seat of love and genius.

The trouble is, Ovid was not always entirely serious, and Menader certainly wasn’t.

But she really could have had wider interests. After all, we do think she married and had a daughter. Perhaps the daughter was adopted? It’s just possible, but unlikely.

And we have a poem in which, rather than jumping off a cliff, she reaches old age.

Old age has already

Laid its gentle hand upon me, and my black hair

Has turned white, and my spirit has grown heavy.

My knees no longer bear me, and my

Feet once swift now drag like leaden weights

Is it not possible, being human, to be un-aging?

So we don’t think she took her own life for a man, but she may have married.

Greek men could happily be bisexual. According to Plato, the philosopher Socrates had a wife and children, and was the lover of the Greek aristocrat, Alcibiades. The poems of Sappho hint that there was probably quite a bit of latitude on the island of Lesbos during her life in the 6th century BC. Sappho, it seems, was free to love her heart’s desires.