Note to teachers/kids under ten: this post contains some images of nudity.

We don’t know a lot about the life of the poet Sappho, but we know that she was one of the most admired poets of ancient Greece. Plato called her the Tenth Muse.

Born on the island of Lesbos to a wealthy family, she married, had a daughter, and then, when her husband died, opened a school for girls.

According to other writers of the time, Sappho wrote a lot, to the tune of twelve thousand lines of verse that filled nine books. She wrote her poems to be accompanied by the music of a lyre—hence the origin of “lyric poetry.”

Sadly, only six hundred fragmented lines have survived. In 1073 (1600 years after her death), church authorities in Constantinople and Rome burned her poetry because it portrayed love for other women.

The lines that survive were discovered in Cairo in 1897. Scraps of old papyrus rolls, many of which contained fragments of Sappho’s poems, had been torn into strips and used for lining coffins as a kind of papier-mâché, or used as stuffing for mummies and for crocodile carcasses.

Sappho as a subject seems to have been an endless source of fascination for artists, for centuries. There are endless paintings that show her in thoughtful poses, hair flowing, her very un-Greek-like dress tumbling off one shoulder and exposing her snow-white bosom. As if. Greek men did a lot of parading around naked, but “respectable” Greek women were expected to remain demurely wrapped in their chitons. Here are a few examples:

Artists especially love to portray the legend of her death. According to this legend (which seems highly unlikely), Sappho fell in love with the young Phaon, a boatman. When he spurned her love, she flung herself into the sea from the Leucadian cliff. There are many renditions of Sappho about to hurl herself and her lyre into the sea. Here are just a few:And then there are those that combine the bare bosom and the edge of the cliff motif. Poor Sappho. I wish she were better known for her poetry than for her ignominious–and most likely fictionalized–end.