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The word “sapphic” in recent years has become almost ubiquitous throughout queer culture. Today it is prolifically used to describe the “women loving women” (sexual, and otherwise) vibes of everything from comics to thrillers to historical fiction (ahem) to Netflix shows. But what do we really know about the OG herself, the originator, who lent her name across the waves of history to this much beloved term? Thousands of years after her life, what does the legacy of Sappho of Lesbos tell us about queerness in history?

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Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

Sappho, or Psappho, was probably born in 610 BCE on the island of Lesbos, and may have been raised in the city of Mytilene.[1] She was born into a wealthy family of significant means, and seems to have been highly educated for a woman of her era.[2] Notably, Sappho spent her adult years devoted to the education of women, who were largely devalued and disempowered in ancient Greek society. The details of her personal life are highly fragmented and difficult to verify with reputable contemporary sources. It appears that she married another aristocrat from Andros named Cercylas (a typical arrangement for a high-ranking ancient Greek woman), and may have had a daughter named Cleis by him.[3]

Sappho’s (known) life was dominated by two driving passions: education and poetry. The two were probably interlinked for her, and she became famous (or infamous) for both within her own lifetime.

Sappho is thought to have been the headmistress of a sort of ancient all-girls academy, known during the period as a thiasos. These informal institutions were common and enjoyed social recognition and support. They may have been sanctioned as what we might think of as “finishing schools” for young and/or unmarried females. These communities would be organized around the worship of one or multiple principal gods or goddesses. In Sappho’s case, it seems that her thiasos worshipped Aphrodite and Eros – understandably, given the romantic and sexual focus of her own writings.[4]

The Tenth Muse

But Sappho’s most lasting contribution to civilization, and queer history, is her acclaimed work as a poet. Sappho was among the rare women who was widely perceived as a top peer in her literary field among her (overwhelmingly male) contemporaries. Plato himself called her “the Tenth Muse”, and ancient writers ranked her alongside Homer “the Poet” with the moniker “the Poetess”.[5] Coins bearing her visage survive to us.[6] Astoundingly, only about two-dozen lines of her poetry exist today through various ancient volumes uncovered over the last two centuries. Even so, she is credited with the development of “Sapphic meter” form of lyric poetry, and her work would prove inspirational for later writers from Percy Shelley to Lord Byron.[7]

Literary experts and historians agree that Sappho represented one of the earliest, and most influential, examples of female agency in literature. R.B. Parkinson notes that “[i]n a male-dominated society, she gave a voice to women”.[8] Her poems focus intensely on themes of desire, both in the positive and negative sense. One source argues, “[t]he conventions of lovesickness—uncertainty, sleeplessness, bondage, slavery—familiar from Ovid, the troubadours, and more recent writers including the lyricists of blues songs are fully developed in Sappho.”[9] Her work has been interpreted as intensely personal, subjective and candid to her own experience of romantic and perhaps erotic desire.

It is this latter point which has placed Sappho so firmly in the pantheon of queer history, for her most memorable poems (and works attributed to her) suggest desire for other women. These poems are why “sapphic” has survived for thousands of years as a descriptor for desire among women, for women, of many forms.

Her “Ode to Aphrodite” is an instructive example. It can be read as a prayer to the goddess herself, and begins:

The opening lines read similarly to any typical poem of love. But later lines explicitly place the poet herself as the point of view – and that the object of her desire is another woman.

The full poem can be read (translated) here. Sappho’s other writings reflect the intensity and internal conflict which permeates the Ode to Aphrodite. Her work was, and remains, admired for its emphasis on raw, unfiltered emotion in an era when literature was often strictly formalized.

While this poem, and others, are far from proof that Sappho herself actively pursued sexual relationships with other women, queerness itself is not confined to consummated, physical expressions of love. In this perspective, the themes of Sappho’s work are explicitly queer, regardless of what we can definitively say about the poet herself.

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Controversy

Despite Sappho’s acclaim in her own era, she has been the subject of controversy throughout Western history given the erotic (and especially the homoerotic) aspects of her literary contributions. The “New Comedy” era of Greek literature saw her lampooned just a few centuries after her death, specifically for the sexual emphasis of her poems and her suspected lesbianism.[10] This opprobrium held firm in the following centuries: the famous early Christian apologist Tatian outright derided her as a “whore” and dismissed her poetry as licentious, while Pope Gregory VII ordered copies of her extant works to be burned.[11]

But these snobbish attitudes were not universal, even in the early modern era; famed Renaissance painter Raphael saw much to admire in Sappho, and even included her in his painting The Parnassus.

Happily, modern generations of scholars have found a renewed appreciation for her contributions to literary history. Likewise, historians of queer culture have emphasized her foundational role in lesbian and otherwise non-heteronormative expressions of passion. The challenge of interpreting Sappho’s work, to say nothing of discerning who she may have been as a person, is perhaps insurmountable. But the fact remains that she ranks among the most important women of the ancient world.

It is telling that generation after generation of people, from her own contemporary students to today’s Gen Z teens, see their own experiences mirrored in her outpourings of emotion. Even those today who know little about Sappho herself know the descriptors which bear her name and that of her home (Lesbos). This is a rare feat for any artist to achieve – let alone maintain for millennia. Of all the qualities that have made Sappho extraordinary, her timelessness is perhaps the most astonishing.

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[1] Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia, “Sappho”, Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sappho-Greek-poet.

[2] The Poetry Foundation, “Sappho”, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/sappho.

[3] Britannica, ibid.

[4] American Academy of Poets, “Sappho”, https://poets.org/poet/sappho.

[5] The Poetry Foundation, ibid.

[6] American Academy of Poets, ibid.

[7] The Poetry Foundation, ibid.

[8] R.B. Parkinson, “The Lesbian Poet”, A Little Gay History: Desire and Diversity Across the World, Columbia University Press, New York, 2013, pg. 44.

[9] The Poetry Foundation, ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.