Sappho of Lesbos

Around 600 BCE, on the island of Lesbos in the Aegean Sea, the poet Sappho composed lyric poetry of such power and intimacy that Plato would later call her "the tenth Muse." Writing in the Aeolic Greek dialect, Sappho explored love, desire, loss, beauty, and the natural world with a directness and emotional intensity that had no precedent. She led a community of young women devoted to music, poetry, and the worship of Aphrodite. Of her estimated nine volumes of poetry, only fragments survive — most destroyed during the medieval period. Yet even in fragments, her work has influenced poets for 2,600 years. Her most famous surviving poem, the "Ode to Aphrodite," is the only complete poem of hers to survive and remains one of the oldest works of literature by a woman.