Sappho (ca. 610–ca. 580 b.c.) With His Venom LINKS Poetry of Sappho http://www.sappho.com/poetry/historical/sappho.html From a site devoted to lesbian poetry, this page offers biographical and bibliographical information, the texts of some poems, along with a few links to sites with additional works online. BIOGRAPHY Sappho (ca. 610–ca. 580 b.c.) Almost nothing certain is known of the finest woman lyric poet of the ancient world. She was born to an aristocratic family and had three brothers, one of whom was a court cupbearer (a position limited to the sons of good families). She is associated with the island of Lesbos, set in the Aegean Sea. She married and had a daughter. Until recently, her reputation depended on fragments of her work quoted by other ancient authors. However, in the late nineteenth century a cache of papyrus and vellum codices (dating from the second to the sixth centuries a.d.) containing authentic transcriptions of a few of her lyrical poems was discovered in Egypt. Unlike other ancient Greek poets, she wrote in ordinary Greek rather than an exalted literary dialect; her lyrics, despite their simple language, conveyed women's concerns with intense emotion.