Sappho, one of the great poetesses of the world, was born either at Mitylene or at Eresos in Lesbos. She was only six years old when she lost her father Scamandronymus, and she must have flourished about the end of the 7th century B.C., as she was contemporary with Alceus, Stesichorus, and Pittacus. But little is known with certainty of her life, save that she had a daughter named Cleis, and was acquainted with Alceus. We are told, with much less certainty, that she fled about 596 from Mitylene to some place of refuge in Sicily, but after some years was again at Mitylene, the centre of a group of girls with a passion for poetry. Her famous plunge into the sea from the Leucadian rock, because Phaon did not return her love, seems to have no historical foundation whatever. The traditional account of her moral character was first assailed by Welcker (1816), who carried his argument to the absurd extreme of making her a paragon of virtue. This view Bergk and Colonel Mure both attacked, and the progress of the controversy may be seen in the Rheinisches Museum (1857-58). Without believing her the exceptionally immortal woman of Greek tradition, we can scarcely take her at Welcker's valuation, looking at the poetry itself and the easy standard of her age. But about the much more important question of her genius there can be no doubt whatever. For sincerity, depth of feeling, passion, and exquisite grace of form her lyrics stand alone among the masterpieces of antiquity. Her poems were divided by the Alexandrine scholars into nine books, according to their metres. But two of her odes, one to Aphrodite, with a number of short fragments, are extant. Most of these were composed in the metre named from her the sapphic strophe, rendered familiar from its use by Horace.
The best text is that contained in Bergk's Poëte Lyrici Græci (vol. iii. 4th ed. 1882). See Poëstion, Griechische Dichterinnen (Vienna, 1876); Arnold, Sappho, ein Vortrag (Berl. 1871); Köchly (in Akademische Vorträge, Zurich, 1859); Sehöne, Untersuchungen über das Leben der Sappho (Leip. 1867); and H. T. Wharton's edition of the text, with life, translation, &c. (Lond. 1885). The last contains a good bibliography of the books and papers written on Sappho, to which may be added the metrical translation by James S. Gasby-Smith (Washington, 1891).