Sappho

Sappho’s poetry survives mainly in fragments, but ancient readers regarded her as one of the greatest lyric poets. Her work is associated with desire, female voices, song, Aphrodite and the social world of archaic Lesbos.

She belongs in Classical for pages about Greek lyric, women’s voices, eros and archaic literary culture. Her fragmentary survival also makes her important for discussions of how ancient texts are transmitted and reconstructed.