Sappho lived and prospered during the so called Pre-Classical period, in the early 6th century B.C. (around 580), mostly in Mytilene, the capital of the Aeolic Lesbos island in the North-East Aegean. Arts and culture were thriving there in that period. She was probably born a few decades earlier, by the end of the 7th century BC, around 620, at Eressos, on the same island.

Alkaios was her contemporary, and they both lived about two generations after Terpandros, a well-known guitar-singer that lived in late 7th century and is alleged to be the founder of the first school of lyric poetry on the island of Lesvos. Sappho and Alkaios are the most prominent figures of ancient Lyric poetry, and there are few others, like Archilohos and Anacreon.

She is the most well known poetess of ancient Greece, although some would say of the whole world. She has been loved and praised in her time, and still is, for the beauty and the tenderness in her love lyrics, and for her direct approach to readers feelings. Looks like she loved music and every kind of beauty.
She has been called "the Tenth Muse" and the "mortal Muse" (probably the muse of lyrics and erotic poetry), Plato has called her wise (according to Aelianus Claudious), and Horace in his 2nd ode says that even the dead are admiringly listening to her songs in holy silence in the underworld.

She was the daughter of a distinguished family, of Skamandronymos and Kleida (Kleis) and had three brothers, Larihos, Haraksos, and Eurygios. Larixos was the wine-attendant at the town prytaneum. Haraksos traveled to Egypt on trading business, where he fell in love with the beautiful Rodope and he bought her freedom at quite a high price. Sappho scolds him for doing this, in one of her songs.

There has been some mentioning that she was married to a man named Kerkylas, from the Aegean island of Andros, but no reliable source ever mentions this. We are certain she had a daughter named Kleida.
(In the Aegean there's still families practising the old custom that may hold from matriarchal times - the first daughter has to be named after the mother's mother.)

Sappho's time is a time of change. Colonies along the Mediterranean coasts start flourishing, sometimes becoming more prominent than their parent-cities, democracy is competing tyranny in many a city-state and politics become quite interesting and affect people's lives.

Sappho traveled to Sicily and stayed in Syrakouce ??? for some years, around 600 BC, maybe to avoid political turbulence in Mytilene. She returns home around 585-580 BC, after tyranny is overthrown, at the times of Pitakos the Mytilenian ruling.

There have been extensive rumours that she killed herself by jumping out of the coast cliffs on a cape in the Ionian-sea Island of Leykas, for the pretty eyes of a young man named Fawn (Faon). But this myth does not look real, it's probably due to some misconception about one of her poems where she praises the beauty of Fawn, who was not a real person but a legendary follower of Aphrodite, the goddess of love.

After her death, the Mytilenian people minted coins with her image. In Syracusse ??? they made a cenotaph in memory of her visit there. All of the ancient world accepted her as the tenth Muse, the mortal one, and many a Greek city put up images of her bust.

Her private life has been a matter of loads of discussions and arguments, but there is not enough reliable information to help us distinguish between fable, legend, gossips, "politically correct" reparations, and truth.
Looks as though each writer mentioning Sappho tries to support either their private views, or generally accepted public opinions, or even "spicy" enertaining stories, heavily influenced by their social and cultural frames and time-periods. And none of them is near-contemporary to Sappho to have possibly either met her in person or at least to have met people that really knew her. The most reliable sources are the oldest ones (Herodotus etc.) and they refrain from any comments about her personal life.
The heavier smear-campaign was made during the Christian Byzantine times, especially in Soudas lexikon, unshamefully "devising" spicy details bout Sappho's life never mentioned in any previous source.

Some sources say she had fallen in love with some women in her circle, namely Atthis, Telessipa and Megara. Some of her students names are Anagora from Miletus, Gogyla from Kolofon and Eunikia from Salamina.

In those times on the island of Lesvos the daughters of the higher class used to receive musical education (lyre-playing, singing and dancing) in older and more experienced women's salons. Sappho's probably was one of the most distinguished salons in her times. Gorgo, Andromeda and Mica are reported to have been her rivals ('antitexnes' or anti-artists-female, antagonists in this art-offering trade).

In 380 the religious fanatics ruling the empire ordered the first burning of Sappho's poetry. Then in 1073 all known copies of Sappho's lesbian love poems were ordered to be burned by the Christian church authorities in Costantinople and Rome. As a consequence, today we have only one twentienth of Sappho's total output, and even that exists only because of an 1897 archeological discovery, and more discoveries in Egupt and other places away from the church rule.

Writers about Sappho :
- Herodotus, referring to her family
- Aristotele mentions a short dialogue between Sappho and Alcaios, where he ... wants to tell her something ... but he is ashamed, and Sappho answers back "if it was something positive and beautiful you wanted to say and your tongue was not itching to express wrong things, you would not be ashamed to reveal your fair thoughts.''
- Plato ...
- Aristotelian philosopher Hameleon, biographical treatise, ~300 B.C.
- The Kolophonian poet Ermeisianax, contemporary of Alexander or Ptolemy, in his elegy named "Leontion", mentioning love relationships between poets, has written about Alkaios love for Sappho, and claims Anacreon was his rival in this love - but Anacreon lived 70 years after Sappho. This could have been some king of allegory, referring to their poetry.
- Maximus from Tyrus, philosopher of the second half of 2nd c. AD, says Sappho was "small and dark", and rejects all rumours about her having homosexual affairs with her female students, holding her relationships to her female friends were purely educational, comparing it to Socrates relationship to his students.
- Aelianus Claudius, in his Assorted History (Ποικίλη ιστορία), mentions that Plato addressed Sappho as wise.
- Horace in his Odes insists that Sappho's songs are worthy of sacred admiration.

- Odysseas Elytis, 20th century AD Greek poet coming from the same island, marvellous in his very own individual ways, may have been the most impartial of them all.
He says he feels as though Sappho were a distant cousin of his ''two and a half years ago in Mytilene'', maybe somewhat older, but one with whom they ''grew up together, playing in the same gardens, around the same pomegranate trees, over the same cisterns'',
and dedicates one of his ''Mikra Epsilon'' (''petit'' e-letters) ??? to her, where in three small pages he has compressed the all-time world-accepted praise of her poetry, vividly colouring the shades of her ''salon'' almost alive, maybe including the shades of her very soul, ending this ''epsilon'' with the following phrase :
''.. Such a being, both sensitive and courageous, is not often presented by life. A small-built deep-dark-skinned girl, that did prove to be equally capable of subjugating a rose-flower, interpreting a wave or a nightingale, and saying 'I love you', to fill the globe with emotion.''

• Sappho Project Index (was at http://www.lesbian.org/sappho-project/sapphoinfo.html - not yet restored after the September 2005 server problem - google it! - reported Jan/Feb. 2006)
  ... The sappho project is ... a non-profit organisation consisting of highly qualified artists and administrators. To date, we have designed and produced two exhibits which reveal the life and extraordinary creative work of the great genius Sappho.


• Sappho the Poet, from Lesvos from the Lesvos island pages, @ magivaljourneys.com


• Artistic installations of the life and times of Sappho of Mytilene (Lesvos island), one of the Sappho-project pages - http://www.lesbian.org/sappho-project/sapphohome.html ( see above about the lesbian.org technical problems.. september 2005)


• The Divine Sappho


• Sappho Schoolmistress, by Holt N. Parker, University of Cincinnati

Sappho wrote love poems, hymns to gods, and wedding poem-songs.
The Alexandrian scholars divided her writtings to nine books. Though all her poems are estimated to be about half the Iliad in volume, there's very few of her poems saved in our times, mostly small fragments.
Since late 19th c. archaeologists found eguptian papurs with intersting additional parts of Sappho's poems, and in 1927 four strophes were found on a shell , which include the description of a holy text, possibly located in Crete. After the recent discovery of palimpsest papyrs stufed in mummies, there's more of Sapphos writings returning to public view.
Her basic subject spin around her female friends (interpreted as supposed students today), and exept the nyptials, they're quite private. She is expresing her emotions freely, her loves, joys and sorrows. The nyptials are quite simple and very close to local folk poetry, but very beaytifull.
They say her verses are so melodic due to the local aeolic dialect she is using, and some support that's why she was called a muse, but whoever has heard they way the older people in her parts almost sing their daily speech (especially people priming in mid 20th century, the ones raised before the internationalist culture), may think otherwise. She's using siple discription and phrases, accompanied by strong feelings and finest expressions and impressions.