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MJT

When the
ancient ‘the Poet’ they meant Homer, and when they For the events that followed
Greeks remembered ‘the Poetess’ they meant Sappho. our main source of
Plato have called her the ‘tenth Muse’ and
information is her poems.
referred to her face was depicted on coins. When the There are two theories
about Sappho’s life after her
Alexandrian scholars catalogued the writings
of this mysterious woman from Lesvos, they repatriation. The first one
filled 9 volumes, nevertheless few fragments and assumes that she established
even fewer whole poems of hers survive, mere an Odeon, something like
shreds of her insight and sensitivity. Her brilliant a girls’ school of antiquity,
verses talk about the bittersweet nature of love, the beauty and where girls of noble birth
the kindness of men and women alike, the pain of separation, the learned music and poetry.
unfulfillment of the erotic desire. But who was Sappho? This was something usual,
The truth is that we don’t know, and probably we will never find there were many schools
out. We know for sure that she was born in Lesvos in the 7th c. BC, of this kind in Greece. The
she had lived there, and she was married with a daughter, Cleis. The second theory, and perhaps
only information on what she looked like is that she was ‘small and the most interesting, seems to
dark.’ The well-known posterior depiction of her, by Polygnotus, be the dominant today. The
features the profile portrait of a slender woman with a big nose who assumption is that Sappho
brings in mind Virginia Wolf. We also know that she fled to Sicily was a sort of a priestess of an
due to political reasons, and returned to Lesvos when Myrsilus’ association of young women
tyranny fell and Pittacus of Mytilene came to power. who were devoted to the cult of
Aphrodite. The worship of the
Goddess prepared the girls for
A controversial figure, mostly due to her sexuality, the milestones of womanhood
and feminine nature: puberty,
Sappho still moves us. When will she stop to divide marriage, birth.
us? Αμφιλεγόμενη μορφή, κυρίως για τη σεξουαλικό- Sappho’s encounter with the
τητά της, η Σαπφώ εξακολουθεί να συγκινεί. Πότε θα girls and the alleged sexual
πάψει να διχάζει; by Vassia Antonopoulou relations between them were
considered improper, were
spoofed, besmeared and have
created the terms ‘lesbian
love’, ‘sapphism’, and so
on. But if we examine the

Th e T a l e nt e d

M r s . Sa pph o

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