Although she was without a doubt one of the greatest poets of her time, it is sad to say that very little is known about the author Sappho today. What little is known is deduced from her writings and the writings of other authors of her time and is in all probability not all together accurate.
It is known that Sappho was born to an aristocratic family in the city-state of Mytilene that was on Lesbos, an island in the realm of ancient Greece, around 630 B.C. She became an accomplished poet in her own time, so it is also thought that she learned to read and write at a very early age.
There is a large portion of her poetry in which Sappho expresses a longing to return home. This is thought to be the result of her exile to Sicily during a political rebellion against the aristocrats in Lesbos. Although the people of Sicily welcomed her with open arms and even erected a statue in her honor, Sappho must have still longed to return to her true home.
In all probability she was married and had children to keep with the custom of the time. In spite of this, her poems suggest that she may have had homosexual relationships with other women in Lesbos. Because of her openness about this, the word Lesbian (from Lesbos) began to be commonly used to describe homosexual women.
It is also thought that Sappho opened a school for young girls that trained them in the arts and prepared them for marriage. This is just one hypothesis as to what the poet's actual occupation was. Her poetry suggests that she may have been a priestess to Aphrodite, which means that she may have been involved in a form of ritual prostitution. She also may have trained accomplished runners, designed and sold a new type of garment called the chlamy or been apprenticed to a weaver. Priestess? Sacred whore? Athlete? Fashion designer? Weaver? Sappho could have been any or all of these. We simply do not know.
It is thought that Sappho became an accomplished and well-liked lyrist in her own time. Before her death, coins were minted in her image, Plato elevated her to a tenth muse, and Solon, an Athenian ruler, lawyer, and poet, asked to be taught one of her poems, saying "I want to learn it and die". By the third century B.C., her poems had been written down and bound into nine books.
Unfortunately, Sappho's work was deemed obscene by the Catholic Church and it was all burned. By the middle ages, the only bit of Sappho's work that was still in existence was in quotations by other authors of her time. It wasn't until the nineteenth century, when archaeologists began to unearth Egyptian tombs that her work was re-discovered. Her poems had been scrawled onto pieces of papyrus that had been cut into strips and used to wrap mummies and stuff the bodies of dead animals. The poems were pieced back together with much difficulty. Even today, only one of her poems is known in its entirety. The rest are merely fragments of a forgotten whole.
It seems ironic to think that in one of Sappho's poems she stated, "someone in another time will remember us". It is almost prophetic considering the loss and recent re-birth of her work. It is a sad thing that so much has been lost of this most amazing and elusive figure. Although we may never know the reality of Sappho, we will always have a taste of her in what remains of her poems.