Queer History 120: Sappho
How a woman from ancient Lesbos changed literature and sexuality forever
You've probably heard her name tossed around in conversations about queer history, but holy shit, there's so much more to Sappho than just being the woman who gave us the terms "lesbian" and "sapphic." Living on the sun-drenched island of Lesbos around 600 BCE, this poetic genius revolutionized how we understand desire, intimacy, and the female experience – and for centuries, historians tried their damned hardest to erase her truth.
Queer History 120a: The Wild, Messy, and Revolutionary History of Strap-Ons
Look, let's cut through the bullshit right now. You've probably wondered about the history of strap-ons at some point, whether you're curious about using one, already own a drawer full of them, or you're just fascinated by how humans have been getting creative with sex for centuries. And honestly? The story is way more fucking complex and revolutionary than you might think.
Let's cut through the academic bullshit and get real about who Sappho actually was, why her poetry still matters after 2,600 years, and how the fragments of her work that survived religious censorship, patriarchal revisionism, and time itself reveal a psychological complexity that modern readers can still connect with. This isn't just ancient history – this is about reclaiming a voice that spoke truths so raw and powerful that people have been trying to silence it for millennia.
The question we're asking: Who was Sappho, really, and why does her expression of desire between women continue to resonate across centuries despite persistent attempts to heterosexualize, censor, or diminish her work?
The Woman Behind the Fragments: Sappho's Actual Life
History has left us frustratingly little about Sappho's personal life, and that's not a damn accident. What we do know comes from fragments of her poetry, references in other ancient texts, and archaeological evidence from Lesbos.
Born around 630 BCE to an aristocratic family on Lesbos, Sappho lived during a time of political upheaval. Her family was likely exiled to Sicily during her lifetime due to political conflicts, before she eventually returned to Lesbos. Unlike most women of her era who remain completely nameless in historical records, Sappho achieved enough fame in her lifetime to be called "the Tenth Muse" by Plato.
The truth is, Sappho wasn't some fringe figure – she was fucking famous in the ancient world. Her poetry was performed at weddings, festivals, and symposia. She likely ran what scholars call a "thiasos" – a community of young women devoted to artistic and religious education. This wasn't some secret lesbian society (though wouldn't that be amazing?); it was a legitimate social institution where young women learned music, poetry, and cult worship before marriage.
"But was she really attracted to women?" Hell yes. While academics spent centuries trying to "straightwash" her work, her poetry expresses unambiguous desire for female companions. When she writes about "sweet desire dripping down" or trembling at the sight of a beloved woman, she's not being subtle. But her sexuality was likely more complex than our modern labels – she may have been what we'd now call bisexual, as some fragments reference male relationships too.
The Poetry That Changed Everything
What makes Sappho's poetry so groundbreaking that it's still taught in universities worldwide? It's not just her subject matter – it's how she revolutionized poetic expression itself.
Sappho's innovations weren't minor – they were transformative. She created a poetic meter so distinctive that the ancient Greeks named it after her: the "Sapphic stanza." But her technical brilliance isn't what makes her work timeless. It's how she used language to capture the physical sensations of desire:
"Once again limb-loosening love makes me tremble, The bitter-sweet, irresistible creature."
That's not just pretty language – that's someone mapping the fucking neurology of desire in an era before modern science. Sappho understood that love and desire are embodied experiences, and she documented these physical responses with precision: racing heart, inability to speak, trembling, visual fixation. She was essentially documenting what modern psychologists would later identify as physiological arousal patterns in attraction.
While her male contemporaries often objectified women in their poetry, Sappho gave us something different: the female gaze. She wrote about women as active participants in desire, not passive objects. That was revolutionary then and, honestly, still feels radical now.
The Great Erasure: How History Tried to Silence Sappho
Here's where things get infuriating. Sappho was widely published in antiquity – her work filled nine volumes in the great Library of Alexandria. Today, we have just one complete poem and around 200 fragments.
What the hell happened?
Early Christian authorities weren't thrilled about preserving the works of a pagan woman writing about desire for other women. Pope Gregory VII reportedly ordered her works burned in the 11th century. But the erasure wasn't just about destroying physical texts – it was about rewriting her narrative.
For centuries, scholars created a fictional biography for Sappho that included a desperate love for a ferryman named Phaon and a dramatic suicide over her unrequited heterosexual love. This completely fabricated story served to heterosexualize her and remove the threatening aspect of her same-sex desire. Others insisted her poems about women were "chaste" and "maternal" rather than erotic – despite explicit descriptions of physical longing.
Even her island home became a weapon against her. "Lesbian" originally just meant "from Lesbos," but as her poetry became more widely known in the 19th century, the term evolved to describe women who love women. This connection so angered some modern residents of Lesbos that in 2008, they actually filed a damn lawsuit trying to ban LGBTQ+ groups from using the term "lesbian."
Most frustrating of all? The fragments we have survived largely by accident – some preserved as quotations in other works, others found as scraps used to wrap mummies or discovered in ancient garbage dumps. We're literally piecing together her genius from trash and recycled paper.
The Psychological Depth in Sappho's Work
What makes Sappho's work psychologically significant isn't just that she wrote about same-sex desire – it's how she captured the universal experience of longing, jealousy, and love with such precision.
When Sappho writes in "Fragment 31" about watching a woman she desires talking to a man – observing how her own body reacts with speechlessness, burning skin, and dimmed vision – she's documenting what psychologists now recognize as anxiety and arousal responses. She knew 2,600 years ago that emotions live in the body.
"For when I look at you for a moment, then it is no longer possible for me to speak; my tongue has snapped, at once a subtle fire has stolen beneath my flesh, I see nothing with my eyes, my ears hum, cold sweat pours down me, trembling seizes me all over, I am greener than grass, and it seems to me that I am little short of dying."
That's not just poetry – that's a goddamn case study in what happens physiologically during intense attraction.
Her work also explores themes of absence and memory that resonate with modern psychological understanding of attachment. She writes about remembering past intimacies during separation, using sensory details to evoke powerful emotional responses. This aligns with what current attachment theory tells us about how humans process separation from loved ones.
Reclaiming Sappho: Why She Matters Today
Why should you give a shit about a poet from 2,600 years ago? Because erasure is still happening. Because female desire is still policed. Because queer history is still being rewritten or denied.
Sappho's work provides a crucial historical anchor showing that same-sex desire has existed throughout human history, across cultures, and isn't some "modern invention" as some conservative voices claim. Her work stands as evidence against historical revisionism.
But her importance goes beyond identity politics. As poet Anne Carson points out, Sappho created a "technology of reflection" in her poetry – an ability to observe one's own emotional responses with both intensity and detachment. This psychological capacity to witness ourselves remains essential to emotional intelligence and mental health approaches today.
Practically speaking, Sappho's innovations transformed Western literature. The intimate, personal lyric poetry we value today – from Keats to Dickinson to Ocean Vuong – owes a debt to her work. She made it possible to write about personal experience as something worthy of literary attention.
Finding Your Own Connection to Sappho
What can you take from Sappho's story and work into your own life? A few things worth considering:
Embrace fragmentary understanding. Most of what we know about Sappho comes from fragments. Similarly, our understanding of ourselves and others is always incomplete. There's power in acknowledging the gaps while still finding meaning.
Document your felt experience. Sappho wrote about how desire felt in her body. Taking time to notice and express your emotional experiences, especially physically, can build emotional intelligence.
Question historical narratives. The persistent attempts to erase or rewrite Sappho's sexuality remind us to approach "official" histories with healthy skepticism. Whose stories get preserved? Whose get erased or rewritten?
Create your own communities of practice. Sappho's thiasos was a space for women to develop artistically and intellectually together. What spaces might you create or join to nurture creative or intellectual growth?
The Community that Keeps Her Alive
Sappho has survived because communities kept her work alive. From the Alexandrian librarians who preserved her scrolls to Renaissance humanists who rediscovered fragments, to modern LGBTQ+ scholars who fought against heteronormative interpretations – collective effort maintains her legacy.
Today, organizations like the Modern Language Association and classical associations worldwide support ongoing scholarship on Sappho. Digital humanities projects are making her work more accessible than ever. Poetic translations by contemporary queer poets are bringing new life to ancient fragments.
You're part of this legacy too. By reading about her, discussing her work, or simply acknowledging her historical significance, you participate in preserving a crucial part of literary and queer history that has repeatedly faced erasure.
Conclusion: The Unsilenced Voice
After 2,600 years, countless bonfires of her books, and persistent academic gaslighting about her sexuality, Sappho's voice still reaches us. Despite having less than 10% of her original work, what remains is powerful enough that we still call her one of history's greatest poets.
There's something both infuriating and hopeful in this. Infuriating because we've lost so much of her work to deliberate suppression. Hopeful because truth has a stubborn way of surviving.
Sappho reminds us that authentic self-expression creates ripples that travel across millennia. She gives us permission to document our own emotional truths without apology. And she stands as evidence that even when power structures try to erase certain stories, fragments can survive – and sometimes fragments are enough.
The next time someone tries to tell you that LGBTQ+ identities are some new "trend," remember Sappho. Remember that women have been loving women for as long as we have written records – and probably a hell of a lot longer than that.
References
Carson, A. (2002). If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho. Knopf.
Duban, J. (1983). Ancient and Modern Images of Sappho: Translations and Studies in Archaic Greek Love Lyric. University Press of America.
Greene, E. (Ed.). (1996). Reading Sappho: Contemporary Approaches. University of California Press.
Nagy, G. (2007). Did Sappho and Alcaeus Ever Meet? In Literatur und Religion: Wege zu einer mythisch–rituellen Poetik bei den Griechen, vol. 1. Walter de Gruyter.
Parker, H. (1993). Sappho Schoolmistress. Transactions of the American Philological Association, 123, 309-351.
Rayor, D. J., & Lardinois, A. (2014). Sappho: A New Translation of the Complete Works. Cambridge University Press.
Skinner, M. B. (1993). Woman and Language in Archaic Greece, or, Why Is Sappho a Woman? In N. S. Rabinowitz & A. Richlin (Eds.), Feminist Theory and the Classics (pp. 125-144). Routledge.
Winkler, J. J. (1990). The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece. Routledge.
Yatromanolakis, D. (2007). Sappho in the Making: The Early Reception. Harvard University Press.
Good article and Wikipedia focuses its comments on the same themes of literary innovation and sexual freedom. Somewhere in a (blessedly) long lifetime, I encountered, still recall, and for decades have found smug satisfaction in the report that she was also such a formidable intellect that statesmen traveled to her island to consult on matters of state.
I'm wondering if the drive to eradicate Sappho's writings arose not so much against her obvious female to female attraction but rather the rare intimation that women could respond sexually with the same intensity as men. Men surely recognize how immediate and strong their sexual desire can be triggered. Sometimes that desire can morph into aggression with less than desirable results. Imagine men being made aware that that same capacity for sexual immediacy and aggression resided in women. I'm guessing that that's a rather scary thought for them. A scary thought for the patriarchy in general. And not only was Sappho writing about it, women were being made aware also of it's potential. Made aware in poetry that dazzled in it's beauty. I think if I were a man in pre-Christian times or later, I would want to burn that stuff too.