Lefkada

The poet Sappho is said to have committed suicide on the island. Sappho was a lyric poet from ancient Greece. Anacreon calls her "the sweet-singing one," Lucian "the honey-sweet glory of Lesbos," and an epigram attributed to Plato (Anthologia Palatina IX 506) calls her the "tenth muse." Sappho's poetry is ambiguous about her sexual orientation, as she wrote about both heterosexual and homosexual relationships. The image of Sappho as a lesbian poet, which was common among the general public until at least the 19th century, probably finds its roots in a poem by Ovid, in which Sappho writes a letter to Phaon and implicitly mentions her love for the girls in her circle. Until the 19th century it was believed that this letter was originally from Sappho himself and that Ovid translated it. So that Sappho was a lesbian has been assumed for centuries on the basis of a fictitious letter.

Pascal Brackman