What do we know about Sappho?

Everybody heard about Sappho, at least in connection with the island of Lesbos. I bet, you know that much.

Researchers say, that Sappho's birth was sometime between 630 BC and 612 BC, and that she died around 570 BC. Unfortunately, the bulk of her poetry, which was well-known and greatly admired throughout antiquity, has been lost, but her immense reputation has endured through surviving fragments.

Guess, what? No contemporary historical sources exist for Sappho's life — only her poetry. Scholars have rejected a biographical reading of her poetry and have cast doubt on the reliability of the later biographical traditions from which all more detailed accounts derive. So what do we know about Sappho?

It seems that she was born into an aristocratic family, because her language is so sophisticated. References to dances, festivals, religious rites, military fleets, parading armies, generals, and ladies of the ancient courts are all reflected in her writings. She speaks of time spent in Lydia, one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries of that time. More specifically, Sappho speaks of her friends and happy times among the ladies of Sardis, capital of Lydia, once the home of Croesus and near the gold-rich lands of mythical King Midas.

Sappho's poetry centers around passion and love for various personages and genders. The word "lesbian" itself derives from the name of the island of her birth, Lesbos. Her name is also the origin of its less common synonym sapphic. The narrators of many of her poems speak of infatuations and love for various women.

In antiquity, Sappho was commonly regarded as the greatest, or one of the greatest, of lyric poets. An epigram in the Anthologia Palatina, ascribed to Plato says:

Some say the Muses are nine: how careless!
Look, there's Sappho too, from Lesbos, the tenth.

And I could not agree more.