![]() Christian moralists pronounced anathemas upon her. Ovid related the story of Phaon, who, according to some traditions, rejected Sappho's love and caused her to leap from a rock to her death. Sappho was lampooned by the writers of New Comedy. An Anacreontic fragment that was written in the generation after Sappho sneers at Lesbians. Indeed, the facts of her life have often been distorted to serve the moral or psychological ends of her readers. Nonetheless, an ancient, scurrilous tradition attacked and ridiculed her for her evident sexual preferences. Scholars have discussed her likely political connections and have proposed plausible biographical details, but these remain highly speculative. In antiquity Sappho was regularly counted among the greatest of poets and was often referred to as "the Poetess," just as Homer was called "the Poet." Plato hailed her as "the tenth Muse," and she was honored on coins and with civic statuary. ![]() Sappho seems also to have exchanged verses with the poet Alcaeus. Even the names of her family members are inconsistently reported, but she does seem to have had several brothers and to have married and had a daughter named Cleis. Apparently her birthplace was either Eressos or Mytilene, the main city on the island, where she seems to have lived for some time. ![]() ![]() She was born probably about 620 BCE to an aristocratic family on the island of Lesbos during a great cultural flowering in the area. Little is known with certainty about the life of Sappho, or Psappha in her native Aeolic dialect. ![]()
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