Page:The Poems of Sappho (1924).djvu/27

Rh the organization of academies or classes which reached a high degree of development in the study and production of such poetry, women often took a prominent part, their position among the Aeolian Greeks being better and less subject to social restraint than was the case anywhere else in the then known civilized world. Terpander and Alcaeus were natives of Lesbos, the latter a contemporary of Sappho, and there were several lesser lights among the lyric poets who were women. Sappho even in her own time easily overtopped all others of her sex, and she was called the poetess in the same way that Homer was called the poet. She was called also “the tenth muse,” “the flower of the Graces,” and was credited with having written nine books of lyrics.

We ourselves know from the fragmentary remains of her works left to us after the attrition of centuries that she was incomparable in the perfection of every line, in the felicitous correspondence of the sense and the sound of her words, and that she had a perfect command over all the most delicate resources of versification. This combination of qualities, almost marvellous, is exemplified over and over again in many of the all too truncated fragments with which we must, so far, be satisfied. From the time of her own epoch the works of Sappho have never been entirely forgotten, and since the Renaissance the fragmentary remains of her poems have been eagerly studied by scholars of almost every country. Her metre, her style, her choice of words both as to