Sappho
Sappho,lyric poet. Born on Lesbos in the second half of the 7th cent. bc, she was hailed in antiquity as ‘the tenth Muse’ (Anth. Pal 9. 506), and her poetry was collected into nine books (arranged according to metre) in the canonical Alexandrian edition. Only one complete poem and some substantial fragments survive, culled from quotations in other writers or from papyrus finds.
Most of her poems were for solo performance, and many refer to love between women or girls. Other subjects include hymns to deities and apparently personal concerns such as her brother's safety (fr. 5). Wedding songs, and snatches from a lament for Adonis (fr. 140) are clearly for several singers. Fr. 44, describing the marriage of Hector and Andromache, is unusual in its narrative length and proximity to epic.
Little about her life is certain: biographies (Oxyrhynchus Papyri 1800,...
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