by jaybob

Created on: June 29, 2008

"He is More than a Hero," the third of only four existing original copies of the surviving works of Sappho, is an intriguing example of the raw, passionate sexuality that had made Sappho, by Greek reputation, the "tenth muse" of antiquity. The focus of the poem, not the man, but the unnamed woman whose attention he holds, unleashes three feverous stanzas of concupiscent desire. Prior analyses of Sappho's poem have unfairly labeled it as a work of jealousy or, perhaps in an act of latent homophobia, redirected the affections of the infatuated narrator. The work, however, is an enthralling dynamic of the physiological phenomenon of sexual desire and classical Greek culture, with its ancient definitions of erotic love, pouring out in a lyrical melic scandalous by today's standards.

Living in the Seventh Century B.C., on the island of Lesbos, Sappho was a teacher of young aristocratic Greek women in the city of Mytilene. Though excluded from positions in society, women of high birth where expected to be cultured and refined in the arts of music, dance and literature. As a famous writer of Greek lyric love poetry, Sappho was an outstanding contributor to the arts of the Mediterranean as well as to her own reputation as a woman. The name Sappho and the Isle of Lesbos are immortalized in popular literature, and the English language, as the hot springs of female homo-erotic engenderment.

Sappho would also be remembered for her incredible poetry as well. Her writing would often be in a form of melic monodies, or songs that were to be sung by a single musician, singing it as musical poem reading. Her favorite use of the four line stanza using a metric pattern that would come to be known as Sapphic' stanza would be named after its originator. Indeed, she is considered one of the most prominent lyric poets of ancient Greece. Yet, in spite of the historic claims that her writings had filled nine scrolls of papyrus in the Library of Alexandria, only four surviving original copies have ever been found. Two were found incompletely on torn pieces of parchment and the last written on the bindings of a mummy in Egypt, only one poem was actually found complete; a prayer to Aphrodite.

Sappho, because of how little we actually know about who she was, or how she wrote, lives on through reference by Greek and Roman philosophers and poets. Mostly, her name is remembered by her almost fantastic mythology; the sensual female poet with a talent for writing passionate Sapphic' love poetry.

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