, an eminent Greek poetess, was a native of Mitylene in the island
, an eminent Greek poetess, was a native of
Mitylene in the island of Lesbos. Who was her father is
uncertain, there being no less than eight persons who have
contended for that honour; but it is universally acknowledged that Cleis was her mother. She flourished, according to Suidas, in the 42d olympiad according to Eusebius, in the 44th olympiad, about 600 years B. C. Her
love-affairs form the chief materials of her biography.
Barnes has endeavoured to prove, from the testimonies of
Chameleon and Hermesianax, that Anacreon was one of
her lovers; but from the chronology of both, this has been
generally considered as a poetical fiction. She married
one Cercolas, a man of great wealth and power in the island of Andros, by whom she had a daughter named Cleis.
He leaving her a widow very young, she renounced all
thoughts of marriage, but not of love*; nor was she very
scrupulous in her intrigues. Her chief favourite appears to
have been the accomplished Phaon, a young man of Lesbos; who is said to have been a kind of ferry-man, and
thence fabled to have carried Venus over the stream in his
boat, and to have received from her, as a reward, the favour of becoming the most beautiful man in the world.
Sappho fell desperately in love with him, and went into
Sicily in pursuit of him, he having withdrawn himself thither on purpose to avoid her. It was in that island, and
on this occasion, that she composed her hymn to Venus.
This, however, was ineffectual. Phaon was still obdurate,
and Sappho was so transported with the violence of her
passion, that she had recourse to a promontory in Acarnania called Leucate, on the top of which was a temple
dedicated to Apollo. In this temple it was usual for de* “Sappho formed an academy of culpate her And might she not have
females who excelled*!!) music; and it written the celebrated verses
” Blest
was doubtless this academy which drew as the immortal gods is he,“&c. for
on her the hatred of the women of Mi- another Many of our poetical ladies
tylene, who accused her of being too whom we could name, have written
fond of her own sex; but will not her excellent impassioned songs of cornlove for Phaon, and the fatal termioa- plaint in a male character.
” Dr. Bur*
tioa of her existence, sufficiently ex- ney in Hist, of Music.
spairing lovers to make their vows in secret, and afterwards to fling themselves from the top of the precipice into
the sea, it being an established opinion, that all those who
were taken up alive, would immediately be cured of their
former passion. Sappho perished in the experiment. The
original of this unaccountable humour is not known. Her
genius, however, made her be lamented. The Romans
erected a noble statue of porphyry to her memory; and the
Mitylenians, to express their sense of her worth, paid her
sovereign honours after her death, and coined money with
her head for the impress. She was likewise honoured with
the title of the tenth Muse.