SAPPHO

Sappho of Lesbos was one of the greatest lyric poets in ancient Greece and one of the first in the Western world to consistently express personal emotions. She composed her poems in the Aeolian dialect and sang them to the accompaniment of a lyre. Her works, which survive mostly in fragments, cover a broad thematic range: poems celebrating nature and love, hymeneals and epithalamia (marriage songs), odes and invocations of gods. Her superb lyric imagery, vivid rendering of female sensitivity and bold eroticism have, for centuries, stirred widespread interest, if not controversy. Sappho won high acclaim in ancient times and was even hailed as the “tenth Muse”. To this day, she remains one of the most influential ancient poets.