Sappho
The painting “Sappho and Erinna in the Garden Mytelene” by Simeon Solomon, in which a pale woman with brown hair wearing a red dress is held by another pale woman with black hair wearing a yellow dress. They sit together on a stone bench surrounded by nature.
“You may forget but let me tell you this:
someone in some future time will think of us.”
– Sappho
Sappho is known for her poetry and her literary impact on Ancient Greece. She lived and wrote some time in the early seventh century on the island of Lesbos, and her poems mention multiple women with whom she had varying relationships. Leaving ripples throughout queer history, her legacy for loving women led to the creation of the labels sapphic and lesbian, making her a cornerstone of the modern queer community. Despite this fact, her legacy remains hotly contested.
While she is highly regarded now, she was not always treated with such dignity. Her story is filled with rumours, gossip, and half-truths. At one point, she was a stock figure in Ancient Greek comedies, and some of the more wild theories about her life can be sourced from these.
Sappho’s life led to the creation of the word lesbian. While the word initially described fellatio between a man and a woman, her reputation for loving women shifted it to the term as it is used today. In fact, Sappho had quite an impact on queer linguistics; her name created the word sapphic, describing romantic love between two women.
During her lifetime, Greece was relatively accepting of same-gender attraction, though more so in the case of men. It is worth noting that even the grandest speculation about her did not always exclusively come from homophobia. While Christianity was experiencing a period of intense political power, Christian leaders aimed to burn as much of her work as possible. For a time, minimizing her love for and attraction to women meant her work was protected from extremists.
Unfortunately, because of this there are not many primary sources in the discussions around Sappho's life, leaving even the most simple details in question. Some sources judge her as beautiful, while the opposition says she was ugly. There are even tales of two Sapphos, where one is a virtuous poet, and the other a “notorious slut”.
On the more accepted end of the speculation spectrum is Sappho's husband. Named Kerkylas, he was introduced by the Suda, an encyclopedic lexicon written centuries after her death. This was not the first time her life story had included a husband or male lover. And though a man would not negate her queerness, her supposed husband's name translates to "Penis, from Men's Island", suggesting that he may be a fabrication.
Willis Barnstone, a religious scholar and translator, writes of these theories, saying:
"It is no less than astonishing how otherwise temperate scholars became outraged and imaginatively unobjective at the slightest suggestions by others of moral frivolity on Sappho's part."
The most considerable blow to discussions of her and her work came in 391 C.E., when a mob of Christian zealots partially destroyed the library of Alexandria, which housed nine volumes of her poetry. From this point on, the effort to understand her life and preserve her work was more of a piecemeal operation. What remains of her writings mostly comes from the original papyrus' fragments, quotes from other works, and mummy wrappings. Even these fragments are debated.
Despite how almost everything known about Sappho is speculation, at best rumours and gossip, it is still controversial that the best source of information is her work. After years of theorizing about her sexuality, and editing and mistranslating her work with the aim of erasing her queerness, historians have settled on a take: her queer poetry was not, in fact, autobiographical.
Most seem content to accept that the poems are autobiographical when discussing things like politics or a feud with friends, but they balk as soon as it comes to her sexuality. In these cases, there is a divide between Sappho the poet and the speaker of the poem.
If such a claim was valid, then truly nothing can be known of the real Sappho.
Queer or otherwise, historians and writers have not been a united front of homophobic erasure. Had they been, there would likely be nothing left of her memory. Fortunately, Sappho’s legacy may remain, if only because she is impossible to ignore.
Though there is little of her work left, she once had nine volumes of poetry, all of which were well-loved and referenced by other famous writers. Plato, who was known for not enjoying poetry, even said:
"Some say the Muses are nine: how careless!/Look, there's Sappho too, from Lesbos, the tenth."
Horace wrote in his Odes that Sappho's work was worthy of sacred admiration. Her work is known as some of the best poetry of all time, full of wit and eloquence, inspiring other writers for thousands of years to come. She is also credited with musical innovations throughout her life, as most of her poems started their lives as songs.
Through all of this, Sappho has become as much a figurehead as she was a poet. Activist groups are named after her. Books are written about her. Queer people themselves identify with her. She is the proof that homosexuality is not new, but as old as legends themselves.
She is also proof that through the fires of religious zealots, the alienation by academic institutions, the fear, the deeply conditional love, queer people remain on the pages of history.
References and Further Reading
Disclaimer: some of the sources may contain triggering material
Barnstone, W. (2009). The Complete Poems of Sappho. Shambhala Publications.
DeJean, J., & Dejean, P. J. (1989). Fictions of Sappho, 1546-1937. University of Chicago Press.
Duban, J. M., & Sappho. (1983). Ancient and modern images of Sappho: Translations and studies in archaic Greek love lyric. University Press of America.
Greek Gender. (n.d.). Greek Sexuality and Gender Relations. Retrieved March 23, 2021, from https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~rauhn/greek_gender.htm
Mendelsohn, D. (2015, March 16). How Gay Was Sappho? The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/16/girl-interrupted
Sappho. (2002). The Sappho Companion (M. Reynolds, Ed.; Reprint). St. Martin’s Griffin.
Sappho. (2009). If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
Sappho (last). (2018). Poems & Fragments (Josephine Balmer, Trans.; 2nd ed.). Bloodaxe Books. https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781780374574
Last edited January 6th, 2026
