Sappho

Ancient Greek poet, from the island of Lesbos (now Mytilene). She wrote mainly love poems, of which only fragments survive. The Greeks were so enamoured of her poetry that they referred to her as the "tenth Muse?". Some of her love poems were addressed to women, from which she developed a reputation for lesbianism; the word "lesbian" itself derives from her, being the adjective for the island from which she came. (As does another much rarer word for for lesbian, sapphic.) For this reason--and because of its explicit eroticism--her work was disapproved of by the Christian church, which is arguably the main reason most of it has not survived (due to a combination of neglecting to copy it and in some cases purposeful destruction.)

Many existing Sappho works were gained from Arabic versions of her writing. The Arab scholarly world was immune to the purges of the Christian community, so many works lost in the original Greek came from them.

She was also noted during her life as the headmistress of a sort of Greek finishing school for girls. Most likely the objects of her poetry were her students.

In ancient and mediaeval times she was more famous for (according to legend) throwing herself off a cliff due to unrequited love for a male sailor. However, this legend has no substantiation in Greek history, and it is generally believed that the legend was a fiction created by the Christian church to misdirect attention away from the overtones of her writing.

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