Sappho (the Greek Poet)

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and Sappho was known only through quotations in other ancient writers until 1900, when considerable fragments of her work began to be found on papyrus in Egypt and so only a few hundred lines of her poetry remain. In her lifetime, she invented a 21-string lyre which she used to accompany herself when she sang her poems. She also founded a "thiasos", a society of women bound by religious and secular oaths. Her Sapphic stanza which consists of three long lines and one short one was greatly
emulated by later poets such as Horace and Catullus.
Sappho was called a lyrist because, as was the custom of the time, she wrote her poems to be performed with the accompaniment of a lyre. Sappho composed her own music and refined the prevailing lyric meter to a point that it is now known as Sapphic meter. She innovated lyric poetry both in technique and style, becoming part of a new wave of Greek lyrists who moved from writing poetry from the point of view of gods and muses to the personal ...

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