Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/784

770 of hers on the art of good writing, is preserved in the library of the Escurial. . excellent poetess, who enjoyed the title of the tenth muse, was a native of Mitylene, the capital of the Molian cities in the Island of Lesbos. She flourished, about 500 years before our Saviour, and was cotemporary with Pittacus, tyrant of Mitylene and one of the seven Grecian Sages, and with the two famous poets Stesichorus and Alcæus. The last of these is said to have been her suitor; and a rebuke which she gave him is still extant in Aristotle. He informs us that Alcæus one day accosting Sappho, told her he had something to say to her, but was afraid to utter it: "was it any thing good," answered she, "you would not be ashamed to disclose it."

Diphilus the comic poet, and Hermesianax the Colophonian, assure us that Anacreon of Teos was one of her lovers; but this is supposed too repugnant to chronology to be admitted, as Sappho was probably dead before Anacreon was born. What perhaps was the origin of this, is the latter having mentioned her name in one of his odes.

We have no records by which we can judge of her quality, whether she was of noble or vulgar extraction; for though Strabo informs us, that her brother Charaxus traded in wines from Lesbos to Egypt, yet we can conclude nothing from this anecdote, since people of the highest rank among the ancients employed themselves in traffic, and frequently used it as an expedient to travel. She had two other