Sappho was born in either Mytilène or
Eressos on the northeastern
Aegean isle of
Lesbos, in
Greece, sometime between
630 and
612 BCE to a wine merchant,
Skamandronymous. She is said to have lived until around
570 BCE. In the original Greek, her name would be
Psappho.
Most of her works have been lost, but the ones that remain are rated with the finest Greek lyric poetry, especially remarkable for intensity of feeling. Nearly all of these poems treat of erotic love and are focused upon the young women who were part of her circle. But Sappho was not exclusively homosexual, and was married to a man named Cercylas (from Andros), whom she survived, and with him had a daughter, Cleis. She also had as a lover the poet Alcaeus. Legend would have it that she threw herself off of a cliff for love of one Phaon, who did not love her in return.
She wrote in the Aeolic dialect, and was among the first poets to write in the first-person voice. Plato distinguished her by conferring her status as the Tenth Muse. In her native town, the Mytilenians venerated her so greatly that they made coins with her profile as decoration, and paid a royal tribute to her memory at her death. She traveled much of Greece, and after she left from a visit to Syracruse, the locals erected a statue of her. Only one complete Sapphic poem remains, of nine volumes once compiled by Aristophanes and Aristarchus, some few hundred years later.
See also: To a Young Girl, Leto and Niobe, To Aphrodite, Without warning, Tonight I Watched.