Sappho

This page is devoted to understanding the poetry of Sappho. While anyone interested in Sappho will find this information useful, it has been designed primarily for students and teachers of Intellectual Heritage 51, a Core Humanities course at Temple University.

This page is designed and organized by Robin Mitchell-Boyask, Associate Professor of Greek and Roman Classics at Temple University. He can be reached at ROBINM@VM.TEMPLE.EDU. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Images of Sappho

Sappho reading
Sappho and Alcaeus

Information about Sappho

Overview with links (taken from Perseus)
Information about poetry during Sappho's era
Bibliography of scholarship on Sappho
Historical background on social and political conditions during Sappho's era
Information about Sappho's island home, Lesbos
Picture of Lesbos

Aphrodite

Since the goddess Aphrodite is a central figure in Sappho's poetry, you will find it useful to know more about her.
Overview (with links from Perseus)
The myth of the birth of Aphrodite
The myth of Aphrodite and the mortal Anchises
The potential wrath of Aphrodite, as seen in the opening lines of Euripides' tragedy, Hippolytus
An image of Aphrodite from later antiquity


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