Sappho: Ancient Greek Poet, Style, and Legacy

Introduction

Among the famous love poets known today, few of them are women, even though women are generally considered to be the more romantic and sentimental gender. However, one of the most influential of the ancient Greek poets was in fact a woman. Sappho is still known today for her incredible influence on the direction of poetry and the passion evident in her work. She is also famous for her unconventional lifestyle, which shaped her poetry, and for the controversy surrounding the Christian condemnation of her work. Sappho is an outstanding poet because of her fascinating lifestyle, her creation of a unique poetic style, and the passion of her work, which continues to influence poets and artists today.

Sappho's Life and Lifestyle on Lesbos

Sappho was born between 630 and 612 BC and lived in Mytilene, a city on the island of Lesbos. At the time, Lesbos was a cultural center of the ancient Greek world. She was an aristocrat who married a wealthy merchant, with whom she had one daughter, Cleis. She spent her time studying the arts and also served as the head of a finishing school for girls. Sappho's family was politically active, which allowed her to travel widely and become renowned for her poetry.

Sappho's lifestyle is perhaps best known today because she was openly passionate about other women, and most of her love poetry is addressed to females. It is speculated that, much like most male teachers in ancient Greece, she had romantic relationships with her students, for whom much of her poetry may have been written.

Sapphic Meter and Poetic Style

Sappho's love poetry had a distinctive style. She was referred to as a lyrist because her poems were written to be performed with the accompaniment of a lyre, as was the custom of the time, and she composed her own music. She employed several metrical forms in her writing, but she is best known for what is today called Sapphic meter. Sapphic meter is a poetic form spanning four lines, consisting of "3 hendecasyllabic lines of trochee, trochee, dactyl, trochee, trochee and a concluding line of dactyl, trochee, known as the Adonic or Adonean line" ("Sapphic Stanza"). It can be represented using "−" for a long syllable, "u" for a short syllable, and "x" for a free syllable as follows:

x − u u − x

Sappho's poetry was noteworthy not only because of her development of this new metrical style, but also because she was among the first poets to write from the first-person point of view, as opposed to writing from the perspective of the gods and goddesses of the Greek pantheon. She was considered a leading figure in the new wave of Greek lyric poets.

Conclusion

Sappho's work is especially intriguing to students of the arts today because her lifestyle offered her a completely different perspective to inject into her writing. She was groundbreaking in her time for developing a new metrical style and for being part of the new movement of Greek poets who began to write from a first-person point of view, expressing an individuality of emotion that was entirely new. Sappho was well loved in her own era and remains so today among artists of all backgrounds. Sadly, only one complete poem by Sappho survives intact, yet her influence remains strong and enduring in the artistic world.