Page:The Poems of Sappho (1924).djvu/20

14 part of her life. Herodotus, who wrote within about one hundred and fifty years of her death, tells us that the name of her father was Scamandronymus, and in the absence of any trustworthy evidence to the contrary this statement may be accepted as true. Suidas, in his Greek Lexicon, written in the eleventh century, mentions other names, but great importance need not be attached to his statements in the face of what Herodotus has written upon the subject. The place of Sappho’s birth was either Eresus or Mytilene, but if it were the former, she apparently did not remain there long, for tradition soon and ever afterwards associated her with Mytilene.

Among events contemporary with her life were the prophecies of Jeremiah about 628 B.C., the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 B.C., the period of Solon in Athens, and of Pittacus in Mytilene. Terpander, the first important lyric poet of Lesbos, of whose works we have also only the scantiest remains, preceded her by about a century, and when she flourished Gautama Buddha had not been born. Sappho had two brothers, Charaxus and Larichus, and, according to Suidas, a third, named Eurygius, of whom, if he really existed, nothing is known. From Athenaeus we learn that Larichus held the office of cup-bearer at Mytilene, and as this office appears to have been a perquisite of the aristocracy, it is therefore with good reason inferred that Sappho and her family were patricians. Charaxus, the other brother, was a