Sappho Of Lesbos

Abstract Sappho’s poetry made her famous throughout the ancient Greek world, probably within her lifetime. Soon, like the medieval French poet François Villon, she became a subject of legend and figured later as a character in comedy. Surviving biographical facts are few and are transmitted to us mixed up with the lore of fables and with bits of dramatic fiction.* Sappho was born on Lesbos around 630 b.c., probably in the town of Eresos, but spent most of her life in Mytilene, the most important of the island’s five cities. Her mother’s name was Kleïs; her father’s name may have been Skamandronymos. She was orphaned at the age of six. Her family was socially prominent and politically active. Lesbos was settled by Aeolic Greeks in the eleventh century b.c. In Sappho’s time, five generations after Homer, it had a flourishing economic, religious, and artistic culture, connections throughout the eastern Mediterranean, and a vibrant local poetic tradition of long- standing and wide fame.