Sappho context

• • Often speaks of luxuries and riches in her poetry 
  • Perfumes with rich ingredients and lots of accessories 
• • Geography of lesbos is important here 
  • Rich in trade 
  • Sat between the Lydian empire and Greek city-states 
• • Poetry was a gift to the Gods
  • Topos of Sappho appealing to the goddess 
• • Veils were an important item of clothing for Greek women 
  • Sappho seems to be referring to veiling with “garlands” and “headbands” 
• • veils are crucial to women's honour  
  • A sign of sexual purity and civilised status  
  • Protected their future children from claims of illegitimacy 
• Only sex workers and maenads went unveiled 
• Topos


  central theme of a poem
• Abanthis and Gonglya were close friends of Sappho’s 


  potentially lovers
• Sappho held a Thiasos

  • Inspiring the women to sing and write and love 
  • Mentor role over young girls
• who was Sappho's brother?

  Charaxus

  fell in love with a courtesan called Rhodopis

  went to Naucratis in Egypt
• what type of poetry did Sappho sing?

  lyric

  sung with a lyre
• Sappho was exiled to Sicily 604-595BC
• we have fragments of her work from Papyrus
• some fragments date back to the 6th Century BC
• Hellenistic poets called her the "tenth muse" or the "mortal muse"
• Sappho was very popular in Greece

  Plato liked her works