Sappho

Today I am in love with Sappho..
"If you forget me,
think of our gifts to Aphrodite
and all the loveliness that we shared
all the violet tiaras,
braided rosebuds, dill and
crocus twined around your young neck

 

Sappho (săf'ō), fl. early 6th cent. B.C., Sappho circa 630 B.C. She was the greatest of the early Greek lyric poets.  (Plato calls her “the tenth Muse”), b. Mytilene on Lesbos.  

She was an aristocrat, who wrote poetry for her circle of friends, mostly but not exclusively women. 

Image by Mezza - Honeysuckle in bloom

One of the great Greek lyricists and few known female poets of the ancient world, Sappho was born some time between 630 and 612 BC. 

She was an aristocrat who married a prosperous merchant, and she had a daughter named Cleis. 

The ancients had seven or nine books of her poetry (the first book originally consisted of 330 Sapphic stanzas). 

 Only fragments survive; the longest (seven stanzas) is an invocation to Aphrodite asking her to help the poet in her relation with a beloved woman. 

She wrote in Aeolic dialect in a great many meters, one of which has been called, after her, the Sapphic. Her verse is a classic example of the love lyric, and is characterized by her passionate love of women, a love of nature, a direct simplicity, and perfect control of meter.  

She influenced many later poets, e.g., Catullus, Ovid, and Swinburne.

The term lesbian, her presumed sexual orientation, is derived from the name of her island home, Lesbos.
Today I am in love with Sappho still.  What a woman.