Page:The Poems of Sappho (1924).djvu/21

Rh merchant engaged in exporting the highly prized wine of Lesbos to Naucratis in Egypt, and it was apparently on one of his expeditions in this connection that he met the beautiful Doricha, surnamed Rhodopis, to whose charms he succumbed. At great expense he is said to have ransomed her from bondage. According to Herodotus, she later became very rich, and her name, no doubt without justification, was associated with the building of one of the pyramids. Suidas makes the statement that Charaxus and Doricha were married. If this tradition is founded on fact, it would indicate that there was considerable material prosperity in the family of Sappho. The poetess disapproved of the episode, and expressed herself in verse upon the subject.

There was one important event in the early life of Sappho of which we have direct documentary evidence, and that is her sojourn in Sicily. A celebrated inscription cut in a block of marble and found at Paros, now in the British Museum, professes to give a chronological account of the chief events in Greek history from the sixteenth to the third century B.C. Among the other statements which appear in this chronicle is one which tells us that when Aristocles ruled the Athenians Sappho fled from Lesbos to Sicily. When this flight took place the reason no doubt was that she and her family happened to be involved with the losing side in some political convulsion in her native island. She apparently remained in Sicily for some years, though she was still