Sappho was an ancient Greek poet from the island of Lesbos in the northern Aegean Sea, between Greece and Turkey. Highly prolific in her time, she was known as “the Tenth Muse” and “The Poetess,” a surprising feat given very few, if any, poets in ancient Greece were female. She specialized in lyric poetry, the type of poetry that would be sung along with accompaniment from a lyre. While she was obviously well-loved, and very talented, very little of her poetry survived the test of time from 600 BCE to today. For the most part, what pieces of her poetry we have uncovered are fragmented and difficult to read due to damage to the tablets. However, there is one poem we have in its entirety: "The Ode to Aphrodite." 
       What is significant about Sappho’s poetry is that several of her poems, and memorably "Ode to Aphrodite," discuss woman-woman desires. In "Ode to Aphrodite," Sappho asks Aphrodite to help her win the love of another woman (Sappho and O’Hara). While homosexual relationships were not unheard of in ancient Greece, as seen in the practice of pederasty, these relationships were always male-male. Women were not allowed the same sexual freedom as men. They could not hire prostitutes or have sex outside their married relationship as men could. Therefore, woman-woman desires are not well-documented in ancient Greek culture, which is what makes Sappho’s poetry so significant. It is a rare example of desires that almost certainly existed in ancient Greece. Another interesting thing to note about Sappho and her home island of Lesbos is, even if one is not familiar with ancient Greek literature, the names Sappho and Lesbos may sound familiar, as they are the root words for the terms “sapphic” and “lesbian.”
       Originally, the word “Lesbian” was capitalized, and at first it referred to someone who lived on the island of Lesbos (“Sappho”). This was in the 16th century. Later, though, when it first originated in its modern usage, it was still capitalized. André Lardinois notes, “the noun 'lesbianism', in relation to the homosexuality of women, is slightly older [than the term Lesbian]. It dates from 1870. It is written with a capital letter, thus revealing the connection which was felt with the island of Lesbos” (Lardinois 1991). Even before the modern use of the term, however, ancient scholars had already made the connection between the term and those who participated in acts that were considered unclean. 
       In ancient times, the word was instead ‘Lesbiari,’ once again sharing the root ‘lesbo-.’ Aristophanes in the Wasps, as quoted by Erasmus in his Adages, refers to ‘Lesbiari’ as “she who already pollutes her drinking companions,” and Erasmus notes in the same paragraph that the Lesbians, as in people of Lesbos, are said to have invented the practice of fellatio. Based on Erasmus’ means of qualifying an adage for his collection, Paula Blank concludes that the ancient habitant of Lesbos was known in Erasmus’ time as the inventors of fellatio, and further notes that while Erasmus believed the practice to be eradicated, the connections to “defilement and obscenity” remained (Blank 2011). The relationship to woman-woman desires existed even before the more modern definition of the word came to be.
       This ancient use of the term, resurfacing in part thanks to the adages of Erasmus, while important to understanding the history of the term as we know it, came with connotations that would likely not be appreciated today. The word has changed in connotation over the years for a majority of people; however, as any modern word, it is sometimes used as an insult. Now, most would know it for simply referring to a woman who experiences sexual attraction to other women. This is the definition that is first documented in 1890 (Lardinois 1991). 
       Sappho’s poems speak volumes about how the community of Lesbos reacted to and treated lesbians, in the sense of women who love other women. Lardinois makes the point that Sappho wrote hymns. While several of the remaining fragments of her work refer to woman-woman desires, there are just as many that are hymns. If Sappho was not accepted by the community of Lesbos for her works referencing woman-woman desires, then it is “inconceivable that she was granted the honour of writing songs for the gods” (Lardinois 1991). This further informs us that there may have been more to the ‘thiasoi’ of the Lesbian community.
       ‘Thiasoi’ were small communities of women with educational and religious backgrounds, usually having a leader or teacher, Sappho being one leader of a Lesbian thiasos. These groups would have been a sort of rite of passage for young maidens in ancient Greece. While there was not necessarily always an erotic or sexual component to these groups, Mary Coombs notes one description of the thiasoi as being a place where girls “loved other women . . . with a passionate love, experienced with exceptional sensibility and ecstasy” (Coombs 1996). 
       All this is not to say, however, that lesbianism was only found on the island of Lesbos, or that Sappho is the founder of modern lesbianism. It comes down to two important factors. First, Sappho’s poetry is one of the most abundant examples of ancient Greek lesbianism ever uncovered. The fact that we have seen it mentioned in works written long after her life is evidence that her work was important, and the theme of woman-woman desire in her work was not problematic for the Greeks. Secondly, Greece did not have regions, cities, or states like most modern countries. Instead, ancient Greece had city-states, independent states with their own fortifications, laws, cultural expectations, and social norms. While often traditions and norms would have slowly diffused between city-states, that was not always the case. Lesbos was an island city-state. It is not connected to mainland Greece in any way, which means the diffusion of cultural norms was less dense than it would have been for a mainland city-state such as Athens or Sparta. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude this was part of the reason Sappho was not only accepted by her community, but was a significant contributor to it through her poetry and her role as a teacher for a thiasos, considering there is such negligible evidence elsewhere in Greece for these woman-woman desires. 
       It is easy to see why the term ‘lesbian’ remained in use to refer to those who experience woman-woman desires. Why, however, did Sappho remain such an important figure to lesbian communities, becoming the root word for ‘sapphic,’ meaning “of, relating to, or characterized by sexual or romantic attraction to other women or between women” (“Lesbian”)? One instance from late 19th-century Europe had at least some effect on the “rebirth” of Sappho for modern homosexual women. One man, Pierre Louÿs, born Pierre-Felix Louis, contributed to this rebirth. In 1894, Louÿs published Les Chansons de Bilitis in Paris. Les Chansons de Bilitis or The Songs of Bilitis claimed to be a translation of a set of poetry by an ancient poet named Bilitis who lived at the same time as Sappho. The poems, extremely erotic in nature, sparked interest in many fans of lesbian literature, including lesbians themselves, who then made the connection that perhaps the two writers were related in some way or in a relationship together. As it turned out, though, Bilitis never existed, and the poems were purely a creation of Louÿs’.
       One example of how this book had a significant effect on the lesbian community can be seen in the creation of the Daughters of Bilitis. While little is known about her now, and even less was known in the mid-20th century, Sappho’s poetry still held a special significance to the lesbian community at the time, being one of few publicly acknowledged examples of lesbian literature, even if there is debate over Sappho’s actual sexuality. The Daughters of Bilitis were a lesbian social club which originated in San Francisco in 1955. They named themselves after the fictional poetess from Louÿs’ book due to her connection to Sappho, the intense eroticism of “her” poetry, as well as her relative obscurity. “We thought that Daughters of Bilitis' would sound like any other women's lodge--you know, like the Daughters of the Nile or the DAR," Priscilla added. "Bilitis would mean something to us, but not to any outsider.” (Valentine 2008) The Daughters of Bilitis did go on to more outwardly present their lesbian identity by actively adopting Sapphic connections in their newsletter The Ladder. This was done through columns named for the author such as “Sapphistries” and a film critique column called “Sapphic Cinema.” This connection to Sappho provided the newly self-accepting lesbian readers of The Ladder a safe space where they could be “transported” to ancient Lesbos, a place where society would accept them (Valentine 2008). Eventually, though, the connections to Sappho grew less instrumental to the women of The Ladder as their aims changed to instead encourage society to accept them rather than have the need to retreat to the safe beaches of proverbial Lesbos.
       In the times that Sappho lived, there is not much historians can say about her effects on her community, one can conclude that she was accepted, and the themes of her poetry accepted, simply in the fact that her poetry survived, and future authors in ancient Greece wrote about her and her notable poetry style. Sappho continues to impact more modern lesbians and lesbian communities. Unfortunately, writers and historians of the Renaissance period connected Sappho with impurity and cleanliness, but that is not an unfamiliar phenomenon in cultures and societies with a heavy presence of Christianity, particularly the more conservative Catholic communities where the church not only had a strong religious presence but also a political presence. This would have been the case for Erasmus and his adages, Erasmus himself being a Christian priest in Renaissance-era Denmark (Tracy). It was during this same time period in Europe, the end of the Middle Ages, that the Christian Church introduced the term “sodomy” to describe any kind of “non-procreative sexual act,” which was considered a form of heresy as it “offended against God, nature, and the Church” (Fone 2000). As Byrne Fone also states in Homophobia: A History, “what had once been a remedial sin was now unforgivable.” This line of thinking was predominant for hundreds of years, and it was not until the modern-day Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, etc. (LGBT+) civil rights movement of the mid-20th century that these opinions began to be overturned.
       The fight to overturn these ideas that have been so pervasive in Western culture since the European Renaissance is ongoing even today with the introduction of legislation both for and against the progression of LGBT+ civil rights. Despite this, Sappho’s poetry has been a light in the darkness for lesbians and LGBT+ people alike throughout the ongoing movement. This is especially true for lesbians that lived in the early 20th century, before the LGBT+ civil rights movement first gained significant traction with the New York City Stonewall Riots in June 1969. For instance, the Daughters of Bilitis found significant comfort on the Island of Lesbos through Sappho’s poetry, sparse though it may be today. Despite two thousand years separating us from the time in which Sappho lived and wrote, she has still had a significant impact on modern lesbians, and likely will continue to for years to come.

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