Sappho eclipsed the confines of femininity in ancient Greece. Her work endures because it  is masterful, not just as a social rebellion, but as a universally applicable expression of human passion. Sappho emerged as the only ubiquitous female poet of her era by publishing work that transcends literal definitions of romance and expands the historical context of gender and sexuality. What enabled her to transcend social constructs and achieve her greatest potential, while the vast majority of women throughout the centuries are stymied by socio-economic pressures? Does history do justice to Sappho by acknowledging her extraordinary achievements, or do we continue to assign her to an “atypical” category, as if being an extraordinary female is somehow deviant?

During the 6th century BCE, Greek society’s characterization of femininity and professional achievement tended to be mutually exclusive. Sappho’s poetry redefined female sexuality, power, and desire  in ancient Greece. Since then, she has been relegated as a “lesbian writer,” a heroine of female achievement, and a feminist revolutionary. Though she is all of those things, efforts to fit her into a neat category undermine her achievements and overlook the fact that she is first and foremost one of the greatest poets to emerge from ancient civilization. 

In contemporary literary circles, Sappho is frequently hailed as a rebellious proto-feminist, owing to her apparent rejection of traditional feminine roles. Conversely, it was her development in a progressive, female-centric society that enabled Sappho to actualize her identity and quench her intellectual thirst. While women in Sparta and Athens were confined to domestic labor, denied professional employment, and shackled by marital obligations, the Island of Lesbos emboldened female ambition. Sappho’s supportive upbringing, in a cloistered community unencumbered by the ingrained sexism that saddled Athens and Sparta, empowered the poet’s contemporary and enduring success. 

Our knowledge of Sappho’s life is as fragmented as the remains of her poetry. Whether by present day anti-LGBTQ sentiments, Hellenistic-era puritanism, or simply by fault of translation error, modern readers are left with a distressingly incomplete body of work. Historians throughout the centuries have attempted to construct a concrete representation of the poet and her character, based solely on the content of her poetry. Given her blunt and vivid descriptions of desire, some scholars shelved the poet as a “sexual degenerate,” even suggesting that her poetry is merely a form of carnal catharsis, rather than a valid expression of multi-faceted passion. However, it is impossible to analyze verse as if it is an extension of a poet’s biography, and equally misleading to regard Sappho’s poetry as a full-bodied and accurate reflection of her character.

Unfortunately, there is evidence that Sappho faced personal criticism drawn from the content of her poetry, leveled by her contemporaries and subsequent historians. Though Sappho is notorious amongst the modern-day LGBTQ community for her groundbreaking depictions of lesbian love, it is the aforementioned depictions of lust that were met with objection in her own time. Homosexuality was tolerated, and even embraced during the time period–so it was not some hypocritical Greek antipathy to lesbianism that led to the disappearance of her works. In fact, Plato praised the poet as “The Twelth Muse” and drew from her poetry to inform his own writings on same-sex love. The lack of knowledge about her true character and biography left room for subjectivity–and these holes were filled with everything from sensationalized fables, to admiring lore, to downright fraudulent slander. One Medieval theologist who prudishly characterized Sappho by the unorthodox content of her verse dubbed her  “a sex-crazed whore who sings of her own wantonness.” In the literary consciousness largely sculpted by male chroniclers who fetishized the poet, a kaleidoscope of Sapphos emerged after her death.

 Filtered through the male-lens, Sappho’s work metamorphosed into frivolous sketches of erotica centuries after she died. The depth of her words was disregarded, and her work was taken at the superficial value of its sensuality, thus the hyperbolic accounts of her promiscuity. In other tall-tales, the free-spirited Sappho founded an all-girls school; she was later exiled to Sicily for her political views. In one of the most ubiquitous misconceptions, Sappho fatally jumped off a cliff when a boatman rejected her love. One male historian mockingly dubbed this suicide, “Sappho’s last fling.” Sappho was even criticized by her contemporaries for her “masculine persona.” This is a common plight for the female poet: throughout history, society’s attention rests on judgements of the poet’s character, rather than on the content of their work. Thus, the value of Sappho’s poetry was obscured for centuries, as salacious hearsay about the  author herself became the focal point. Additionally, translational blunders and failure to discern her unusual dialect, erased much of her text. Evidence also suggests that the Catholic church in 1703 BCE decreed the burning of her poetry, in an effort to muzzle lesbian literature. Today, both the controversy and appreciation surrounding Sappho’s work hinges on her sexual preferences, even though her homosexuality was not a cause of friction during her time period. Raised in a progressive, supportive community of lesbian women, Sappho’s poetry was neither a feminist rebellion, nor what would be described as modern-day LGBTQ activism. 

When modern day scholars filter her work through an anachronistic lens of “wokeness,”advocacy, and feminism, the timeless applicability of Sappho’s poetry is concealed. As scholar Mark Joshua notes, these  labels diminish the power of Sappho’s poetry beyond a superficially erotic level. Strikingly, her words themselves were permeated with sexual tension that mirrored the themes of her poetry and reflected her whimsical character. ““May I write words more naked than flesh, stronger than bone, more resilient than sinew, sensitive than nerve.” Her musings on passion are universally applicable, for example, to any human being who has questioned their worth in the overwhelming face of love. Understandably, Sappho felt that she could never give enough of herself to a larger-than-life lover. “I asked myself/What, Sappho, can/you give one who/ has everything/ like Aphrodite?”

Sappho’s poetry provides us with a window into the largely unexplored domain of queer women in Ancient Greece. Author Page Du Bois heralds Sappho’s works as “one of the few texts which break the silence of women in antiquity, an instance in which women become more than the objects of man’s desire.” Du Bois continues to use Sappho’s poetry to reframe modern perspectives surrounding female marginalization in Ancient Greece. While it is indisputable that women faced severe restriction in the domestic and marital spheres, the celebration of femininity eclipsed their biological capability of childbirth. Sappho’s revelatory poetry encouraged Greek society to celebrate women as sexual beings in their own right. Du Bois writes, “Sappho is absent from the history of sexuality…in part because she is a woman, because she writes about sex and about female desire …her desire is asymmetrical to that of the male subject and incompatible with the reputed passivity of the female object.” Bound by biological and social constraints of motherhood and marriage, the function of women in mainland Greece was distilled into their ability to produce male offspring. This atmosphere, clearly unconducive to womens’ creative pursuits, explains the dearth of female-composed poetry produced in Ancient Greece. However, Sappho’s work did not endure in spite of indomitable misogyny, nor was she some sort of proto-feminist agitator. The poet’s success hinged not on a rejection of societal roles, but instead on her uniquely empowering, female-centric upbringing on the Island of Lesbos. 

Thus, Sappho’s depictions of sexual interactions between women provides us with novel insight into the pervasiveness of lesbianism on the unusual Island of Lesbos.  Unencumbered by traditional feminine obligations, Sappho’s island community enabled her to pursue her passion, both physically and literally. Surrounded by women who valued intellectual, sexual, and emotional freedom,  Sappho distinguished herself as a poet and a freethinker. Instead of contending with the sexist slog that stunted mainland Greece’s creative female minds, Sappho’s sorority-upbringing allowed her to channel energy into her potential as a fully actualized human being, rather than a child-bearing vessel. In fact, inspired by the progressive quality of her own nurturing, Sappho likely superintended a rare all-girls school on the Island of Lesbos, which prepared other aristocratic young women for success.

Both ancient and  contemporary readers attempted to define Sappho by one-dimensional labels of gender and sexuality. However, her poetry persists and appeals on a universal level; it masterfully depicts the tenderness, trepidation, and turbulence of emerging passion between two humans, regardless of their gender or sexuality. Sappho’s work is neither a  lesbian manifesto, nor a feminist dissent–it is simply the fruit of an open-minded community that emphasized the quality of her verse more than her vagina. Sappho once dubbed her poetry her “immortal daughters” , a remark proven true by this essay, 2,000 years later.  Infused with all of Sappho’s poise and aplomb, one prophetic poem vowed:  

“Someone, I tell you, will remember us, even in another time.”

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