he herself invented."

Writers in the Greek Anthology continually sing her praises, calling her
"the Tenth Muse," "pride of Hellas," "comrade of Apollo," "child of
Aphrodite and Eros," "nursling of the Graces and Persuasion." Nor have
modern critics been less restrained in their praises, notwithstanding
the fact that they possess merely a handful of fragments by which to
judge "The Poetess." Addison, for example, says: "Among the mutilated
poets of antiquity there is none whose fragments are so beautiful as
those of Sappho." John Addington Symonds is even more enthusiastic. "The
world has suffered no greater literary loss," says he, "than the loss of
Sappho's poems. So perfect are the smallest fragments preserved, that we
muse in a sad rapture of astonishment to think what the complete poems
must have been." And Swinburne, her best modern interpreter, calls
Sappho "the unapproachable poetess," and says: "Her remaining verses are
the supreme success, the final achievement, of the poetic art."

Sappho was at the zenith of her fame about the beginning of the sixth
century before the Christian era. Her home was at Mytilene, on the
island of Lesbos. The lapse of twenty-five centuries has left us few
authentic records of her life. There is a tradition that she was born at
Eresus, on the island of Lesbos, and later established herself in the
capital city, Mytilene. She was of a wealthy and aristocratic family.
Herodotus says that she was the daughter of Scamandronymus, and Suidas
states that her mother's name was Cleis, that she was the wife of a rich
citizen of Andros, Cercylas or Cercolas by name, and that she had a
daughter named after her grandmother, Cleis. Sappho refers to a daughter
by this name in one of the extant fragments, but none of these other
statements are corroborated. She had two brothers, Larichus, a public
cupbearer at Mytilene,--an office reserved for noble youths,--and
Charaxus, a wine merchant, of whom we shall speak more fully later. From
one source we learn that she went into exile to Sicily along with other
aristocrats of Lesbos, but the date is a matter of conjecture. Pittacus
was tyrant of Mytilene at this time, and Sappho probably returned to
Lesbos at the time when he granted amnesty to political exiles. How
long she lived we cannot tell, while how and when she died are also
unknown. Judging from the allusions of the writers in the Anthology, her
tomb, erected in the city of her adoption, was for