The Tenth Muse, Sappho
In 1879, an Austrian archaeologist dusted off a shard of papyrus buried in the sands of Egypt. The words were faded, incomplete. Just a few lines in ancient Greek. But what was written was electrifying: raw passion, lyrical mastery, with a distinctly feminine voice that had survived over two millennia. The archaeologist had unknowingly revived writings from one of history’s most elusive geniuses—Sappho of Lesbos.
Centuries before Shakespeare, before Dante, before even Virgil, there was Sappho.
She lived on the Aegean island of Lesbos around 620 BC. Plato dubbed her “the Tenth Muse,” and coins were once minted with her likeness - unprecedented honors for a woman in the ancient world. Yet today, she’s unfortunately more often a footnote than a headline.
But who was Sappho, really? Why has her voice endured even when almost all her work was lost? And what does she reveal about power and emotion?
Before Sappho, poetry in Greece was an offering to the gods - grand, public... usually political. Think Homer’s Iliad: tales of war, fate, and divine will. But Sappho broke the mold.
She wrote from the inside out. Her poems weren't epic sagas- they were fragments of inner life. Emotions poured in real time. Love, jealousy, longing, aging - they all found voice in her compact, musical verses. For the first time in literary history, we hear a person, not a persona.
Her works would ripple through Western literature for centuries. Without Sappho, there is no Catullus, no Emily Dickinson, no Sylvia Plath. The confessional mode, the emotional fragment, the internal monologue - these were her inventions.
Take this verse, for instance:
“Again love, the limb-loosener, rattles me
bittersweet, irresistible—
a crawling beast.”
No metaphorical veil, no Homeric heroism… just the raw, disarming truth of how she was feeling.
But who was this woman who dared speak her heart in a world that barely acknowledged women as citizens?
What little we know of Sappho’s biography is pieced together from ancient commentators, fragments of her own poetry, and lots of conjecture. She likely came from an aristocratic family and lived through political upheaval on Lesbos. Possibly exiled to Sicily. She may have married… (she had a daughter.) Or she may have devoted her life entirely to art and teaching. Simply put, we are not entirely sure.
What is clearer is her role as a teacher and cultural leader.
Sappho headed a “thiasos,” a kind of academy for unmarried young women. This was kind of like a finishing school cranked up to 11. It was a sanctuary of poetry, ritual, and learning - centered on the worship of Aphrodite and Eros- the gods of love and passion. Here, Sappho composed verses that celebrated female beauty, friendship, and love.
In an era when most women’s lives went unrecorded, Sappho’s poetry offers a rare glimpse into female experience.
In writing about love, she helped to ignite a culture where women could feel, speak, and be seen.
Sappho was a technician of language and developed what’s now known as the “Sapphic meter,” a tightly structured stanza form that Roman poets like Horace and Catullus would later adopt. The meter carries a subtle tension - each line oscilating between constraint and flow, like love itself.
Consider this fragment, where she compares unrequited love to an unreachable apple:
“Like a sweet-apple turning red
high on the tip of the topmost branch—
forgotten by pickers.
Not forgotten—
they couldn’t reach it.”
It’s a metaphor so poignant, so understated, that you barely notice its technical perfection. That’s the essence of Sappho: multiplied simplicity and intimacy that feels universal.
Of the estimated 10,000 lines she wrote, fewer than 650 survive today - and only one complete poem.
The rest are scraps and quotations from ancient grammarians and fragments etched into broken pots. This loss is one of the great tragedies of literary history.
And yet, in a strange way, it has only deepened her mystique.
She’s become a puzzle - one readers and scholars have longed to complete and most likely never will.
Here’s a rare intact piece—her Ode to Aphrodite:
“You with pattern-woven flowers, immortal Aphrodite,
child of Zeus, weaver of wiles,
I implore you, do not devastate with aches and sorrows,
Mistress, my heart!”
She pleads not for war or glory, but for mercy in love. Even the gods, in Sappho’s world, are personal.
One of the most affecting fragments Sappho left behind is about her daughter, Kleis:
“I have a beautiful daughter
like a golden flower,
my beloved Kleis.
I would not trade her for all Lydia
nor lovely…”
No myth-making. No performance. It’s the universal voice of a parent in awe of her child.
Elsewhere, she reflects on aging:
“Because you are dear to me
marry a younger woman.
I don’t dare live with a young man—
I’m older.”
The tone is tinged with irony, resignation, and affection. She accepts time’s passage, even as she mourns it.
This is what makes her timeless - not just her themes, but her emotional clarity. Her poems are old, but they don’t feel ancient. They feel… close to home.
We live in an age saturated with self-expression. Yet so much of it is clickbait, algorithm-chasing, and vapid of meaning. Sappho reminds us that a poetic voice, the kind that endures, is not about spectacle. It’s about Truth.
What can we learn from her:
That emotion can be an art form.
That femininity is not fragility, but depth.
That intimacy, especially with one’s readers, creates legacy.
Sappho’s poetry was nearly erased. Her voice nearly lost… but not quite. What remains is enough to have moved artists, poets, and thinkers for over 2,500 years.
Raphael painted her into his Renaissance fresco The Parnassus - the only woman among Homer, Virgil, and Dante. In the 19th century, she inspired literary rebels like Baudelaire and Swinburne. And today, her lines are tattooed on bodies, quoted in weddings, and studied in classrooms.
She is proof that truth echoes through time.
So here’s the question:
What fragments of your voice will outlast you?
If Sappho could speak across millennia with just a handful of surviving lines, what’s stopping you from speaking your truth?
Don’t aim for virality. Aim for resonance.
Write what matters. Say what hurts. Speak your mind and leave behind something that sings.
Thank you for reading.
Comment below with your answers to the above questions!
Thank you very much for this succinct introduction to this poetess that sums up so well what is known. I recently bought a new edition of her poetry - the few complete songs we have and all those fragments on papyrus rescued from out of desert and traders' drawers. It's a cheap paperback edited by Anton Bierl, bilingual.
Thank you.
https://scholarstudy.substack.com/p/creating-a-personal-sanctum-the-anatomy?r=28woco