“Some say a host of horsemen, some of foot-soldiers… but I say it is whatever one loves.”
Fragment 16
Sappho composed monodies — songs for a single voice and lyre — on desire, jealousy, marriage and the gods. She invokes Aphrodite as a personal ally and writes with a directness that ancient critics ranked with Homer.
Her work was collected in nine books at Alexandria, but almost all of it was lost. What survives comes from quotations by other authors and from papyrus fragments recovered in Egypt, including the nearly complete 'Ode to Aphrodite'.
Legacy
Her voice shaped the Western lyric tradition, and the modern word 'lesbian' derives from her island home.