Little is known about Sappho's life for certain.[12] She was from the island of Lesbos[13][b] and lived at the end of the seventh and beginning of the sixth centuries BC.[16] This is the date given by most ancient sources, who considered her a contemporary of the poet Alcaeus and the tyrant Pittacus, both also from Lesbos.[16][c] She therefore may have been born in the third quarter of the seventh century – Franco Ferrari infers a date of around 650 or 640 BC;[18] David Campbell suggests around or before 630 BC.[19] Gregory Hutchinson suggests she was active until around 570 BC.[20]
Tradition names Sappho's mother as Cleïs.[21] This may derive from a now-lost poem or record,[22] though ancient scholars may simply have guessed this name, assuming that Sappho's daughter was named Cleïs after her mother.[d][14] Ancient sources record ten different names for Sappho's father;[e] this proliferation of possible names suggests that he was not explicitly named in any of her poetry.[24] The earliest and most commonly attested name for him is Scamandronymus.[f] In Ovid's Heroides, Sappho's father died when she was six.[21] He is not mentioned in any of her surviving works, but Campbell suggests that this detail may have been based on a now-lost poem.[25] Her own name is found in numerous variant spellings;[g] the form that appears in her own extant poetry is Psappho (Ψάπφω).[27][28]
Sappho (1877) by Charles Mengin (1853–1933). One tradition claims that Sappho committed suicide by jumping off the Leucadian cliff.[29]Sappho was said to have three brothers: Eurygios, Larichos, and Charaxos. According to Athenaeus, she praised Larichos for being a cupbearer in the town hall of Mytilene,[21] an office held by boys of the best families.[30] This indication that Sappho was born into an aristocratic family is consistent with the sometimes-rarefied environments that her verses record. One ancient tradition tells of a relationship between Charaxos and the Egyptian courtesan Rhodopis. In the fifth century BC Herodotus, the oldest source of the story,[31] reports that Charaxos ransomed Rhodopis for a large sum and that Sappho wrote a poem rebuking him for this.[h][33] The names of two of the brothers, Charaxos and Larichos, are mentioned in the Brothers Poem, discovered in 2014; the final brother, Eurygios, is mentioned in three ancient sources but nowhere in the extant works of Sappho.[34]
Sappho may have had a daughter named Cleïs, who is referred to in two fragments.[35] Not all scholars accept that Cleïs was Sappho's daughter. Fragment 132 describes Cleïs as "pais", which, as well as meaning "child", can also refer to the "youthful beloved in a male homosexual liaison".[36] It has been suggested that Cleïs was one of her younger lovers, rather than her daughter,[36] though Judith Hallett argues that the description of Cleis as "agapata" ("beloved") in fragment 132 suggests that Sappho was referring to Cleïs as her daughter, as in other Greek literature the word is used for familial but not sexual relationships.[37]
According to the Suda, Sappho was married to Kerkylas of Andros.[14] This name appears to have been invented by a comic poet: the name Kerkylas appears to be a diminutive of the word kerkos, a possible meaning of which is "penis", and which is not otherwise attested as a name,[38][i] while "Andros", as well as being the name of a Greek island, is a form of the Greek word aner, which means "man".[40] Thus the name, which can mean "Prick (of the isle) of Man", likely comes from comedy.[41]
One tradition said that Sappho was exiled from Lesbos around 600 BC.[13] The only ancient source for this story is the Parian Chronicle,[42] which records her going into exile in Sicily some time between 604 and 595.[43] This may have been as a result of her family's involvement with the conflicts between political elites on Lesbos in this period.[44] It is unknown which side Sappho's family took in these conflicts, but most scholars believe that they were in the same faction as her contemporary Alcaeus, who was exiled when Myrsilus took power.[42]
A tradition going back at least to Menander (Fr. 258 K) suggested that Sappho killed herself by jumping off the Leucadian cliffs due to her unrequited love of Phaon, a ferryman. This story is related to two myths about the goddess Aphrodite. In one, Aphrodite rewarded the elderly ferryman Phaon with youth and good looks as a reward for taking her in his ferry without asking for payment; in the other, Aphrodite was cured of her grief at the death of her lover Adonis by throwing herself off the Leucadian cliffs on the advice of Apollo.[45] The story of Sappho's leap is regarded as ahistorical by modern scholars, perhaps invented by the comic poets or originating from a misreading of a first-person reference in a non-biographical poem.[46] The legend may have resulted in part from a desire to assert her as heterosexual.[47]
