About poet Sappho from Lesbos

Sappho of Lesbos, was a girl from the city of Mytilene, but nothing more of her origin has been left to posterity. To be sure, if we consider her pursuit of literature, we will see restored what age has taken away, namely that she was born of noble parents, because a degenerate or plebeian mind would not have been able to desire or attain to literary production. And so, even though we do not know when she flourished, she was nevertheless of such a noble mind, blossoming in age and form, not content just to known how to join words together, but burning with a great fire of the mind and the persuasive vivacity of her genius, she ascended the lofty and jutting peak of Parnassus with her untiring zeal and, with a lucky stroke of boldness joined herself to the Muses, who willingly accepted her. Having wandered the laurel grove, she came all the way to Apollo’s cave and, bathing in the Castalian water, she took up the plectrum of Phoebus and did not hesitate to touch the strings of her sonorous cithara and draw forth her tunes as the sacred nymphs danced in attendance. All of these things have seemed difficult to even the most studious men.

What more can I say? She came so far with her own earnest zeal that even today her most renowned song shines forth with the testimony of the ancients, and there are bronze statues erected to her and inscribed with her name, and she herself is numbered among the most famous poets. To be sure, even the diadems of princes, the crowns of pontiffs, and the laurels of triumphing generals are not more notable than her splendor. But – if one may credit the story – she was as unhappy in love as she was fortunate in her studies. She was taken by the love of a certain youth, or rather, by an unbearable pestilence. When he proved disinclined to her desire, she mourned his obstinate hardness and they say that she sang some mournful songs. I would have thought that they were elegies (since elegies are usually used for this sort of material) if I had not read that a new type of poetry, employing a different meter from others, had been invented by her after she rejected the forms of older poems. These types of poems are called Sapphics after her even today.

And so what have we learned? It seems that the Muses are to blame. They were able to move the Theban rocks when Amphion touched his lyre, but when Sappho sang, they did not even soften a young man’s heart.