Sappho: An Ancient Lesbian Icon

By George Leggett, 2nd Year Ancient History

Such is the iconic status of Sappho as an LGBTQ+ figure in antiquity, modern day terms referring to romantic love or attraction between women derive from her. “Lesbians” in ancient history referred to the inhabitants of Lesbos, the island Sappho was born, meanwhile, “sapphic”, in the most simplistic sense of the term, refers to the attraction between women. Originally used in the 16th century to describe the nature of her poetry’s metre, “sapphism” started referring to sexual relations between women around the late 19th century. 

This raises the question, then, why is Sappho such an iconic LGBTQ+ figure? Most of her poetry seems to not have survived far beyond the Middle Ages, and the work that does remain is largely fragmented-Lardinois puts the figure at about 650 lines remaining, out of 10,000 written. But despite what little of her poetry remains, we have even less concrete knowledge of the details of her life; thus, historians are often forced into drawing conclusions about her life from her poetry.

We do know Sappho was born (probably to an aristocratic family) in Lesbos, Greece, c.630 BCE, and seems to have had at least two (possibly three) brothers, judging from the Brother’s Poem. It is thought that she fled or was exiled to Sicily around the year 600 BCE, eventually returning to Lesbos’ capital Mytilene where she wrote most of her poetry. She is thought to have led what is referred to as a thiasos on Lesbos. The term in Greek typically describes affiliations of people that gather to worship a deity, but Sappho’s thiasos is thought to be a school for the education of young women before marriage. Parker argues instead that the group was more of a society, “tied by family, class, politics, and erotic love”. As for her poetry, the fraction that remains is considered lyrically and stylistically extraordinary from antiquity till the present day. 

Perhaps Sappho’s most famous work (and her only fully surviving work) is her Ode to Aphrodite, in which the speaker appeals to Aphrodite in anguish due to her beloved (likely a female based on the feminine participle of etheloisa being used) not loving her back, referring to a previous time Aphrodite has helped her:

(Elizabeth Vandiver translation):

Iridescent-throned Aphrodite, deathless

Child of Zeus, wile-weaver, I now implore you,

Don't--I beg you, Lady--with pains and torments

Crush down my spirit,

But before if ever you've heard my pleadings

Then return, as once when you left your father's

Golden house; you yoked to your shining car your

Wing-whirring sparrows;

Skimming down the paths of the sky's bright ether

On they brought you over the earth's black bosom,

Swiftly--then you stood with a sudden brilliance,

Goddess, before me;

Deathless face alight with your smile, you asked me

What I suffered, who was my cause of anguish,

What would ease the pain of my frantic mind, and

Why had I called you

To my side: "And whom should Persuasion summon

Here, to soothe the sting of your passion this time?

Who is now abusing you, Sappho? Who is

Treating you cruelly?

Now she runs away, but she'll soon pursue you;

Gifts she now rejects--soon enough she'll give them;

Now she doesn't love you, but soon her heart will

Burn, though unwilling."

Come to me once more, and abate my torment;

Take the bitter care from my mind, and give me

All I long for; Lady, in all my battles

Fight as my comrade.

Another notable example of Sappho’s poetry is fragment 31, of which only 16 lines remain but still one of Sappho’s most complete and famous works. In it, Sappho writes of her amazement (or jealousy?) of a man sitting next to the woman she desperately desires, powerfully describing the longing she feels for the woman the man sits opposite:

(Willis Barnstone translation):

To me he seems like a god 

as he sits facing you and 

hears you near as you speak

softly and laugh 

in a sweet echo that jolts 

the heart in my ribs. For now

as I look at you my voice 

is empty and

can say nothing as my tongue

cracks and slender fire is quick

under my skin. My eyes are dead

to light, my ears

pound, and sweat pours over me.

I convulse, greener than grass, 

and feel my mind slip as I

go close to death,

yet, being poor, must suffer everything.

Sappho’s status as an LGBTQ+ figure is still questioned by some historians even today. According to the Suda, Sappho was supposedly married to a man, Kerkylas of Andros, which in itself seems fairly innocuous. However, although Andros is a real place, ‘Kerkylas’ has obvious phallic connotations in being fairly similar to the Greek word for penis (kerkos); put together with Andros (‘of Man’)...well, the name pretty much means ‘penis of a man’. As such, many believe this is a name made up by a Comic poet. Ancient authors seem to deny Sappho was a lesbian, or at least claim that her poetry does not provide concrete evidence that she was. But, if we use fragment 31 as a case study, it seems extremely likely that she was writing about a woman, as the object of Sappho’s desire was sitting opposite a man. To refer back to the Hymn to Aphrodite, this indicates a similar love for women. The idea Karl Otfried Muller posed in the early 19th century, that the poem expresses nothing but a “friendly attachment” to a young woman, is laughable, as this suggests that the immensely powerful sensations Sappho describes as a result of merely looking at the woman -sweating, shaking, feeling close to death - are nothing but platonic. 

It is also thought that Sappho had a daughter named Cleis, supposedly named after Sappho’s mother, though some historians theorise that she could have been one of Sappho’s younger lovers rather than a child due to the language used in a poem about her. According to legend, Sappho killed herself by jumping off the Leucadian Cliffs out of love for the mythical ferryman Phaon, but Hallett argues this was out of a desire to claim Sappho was heterosexual. We could delve into the fact Sappho probably had relationships with women in her thiasos, but overall it seems wise to not attempt to label Sappho’s sexuality. But, when concluding the poet’s life, acknowledge the likelihood of its fluidity (as was fairly commonplace in the ancient world), rather than burying relationships she had with other women.

There isn’t a clear answer as to why “The Tenth Muse” is such an LGBTQ icon even today, but we do have an understanding of why she was such an iconic and unique poet. “Sapphic” in terms of poetry refers to her style of writing 4-line stanzas, with the 4th line being shorter than the other 3 lines. Her originality in format has stood the test of time and maintains her as a major influence even today. That she was one of the first poets to use her own perspective as the speaker in her poetry speaks greater volumes, as Sappho helped transition Greek poetry from epic to more personal, emotional narratives (such was the nature of most lyric poetry). Thus, the fact that Sappho expressed profound and lyrically beautiful emotion, and, importantly, sexual desire, is perhaps the reason why she is an iconic feminist and LGBTQ+ figure. We can say with relative confidence that the way Sappho wrote about other women makes this piece of information stand out to us. 

This, and the fact that she remains proof of queer existence in the ancient world has meant Sappho has remained a household name in LGBTQ+ circles. Perhaps we can consider it a tragedy that so much of Sappho’s poetry has been destroyed, but arguably it almost gives the fragments we do have that much more value.