Sappho

Ancient sources place Sappho on Lesbos, especially around the city of Mytilene, in the archaic Greek period. Her connection to Lesbos is also why later words such as lesbian entered European languages.

Most of Sappho's work survives only in fragments quoted by ancient authors or recovered from papyri. One major exception is the Hymn to Aphrodite, the only complete poem generally accepted as hers.

Aeolic was a Greek dialect associated with regions including Lesbos, and it gives Sappho's poems a sound and grammar different from Attic Greek. Ancient readers treated her lyric style as distinctive enough that she was counted among the canonical Nine Lyric Poets.

Fragment 31 describes the speaker's intense physical reaction while watching a beloved person speak with someone else. The poem became famous because Longinus quoted it in antiquity, helping preserve one of the most vivid examples of Sappho's personal lyric voice.