The World of Sappho

Sappho composed her songs on the island of Lesbos, in the Aeolian Greek world of the northeastern Aegean, around 600 B.C. The ancient sources describe the island’s position, its relations with the mainland of Asia Minor, the political conflicts of Mytilene, and the Lydian kingdom that dominated the neighboring coast.

Lesbos and the Aeolian coast

Strabo’s Geography, a first-century geographical work, places the island of the Lesbians alongside the coast of the Troad and the Gulf of Adramyttium, and describes Phocaea as the beginning of Ionia and the end of Aeolis. Strabo reports that Aeolian settlers, said to descend from Agamemnon’s line, crossed to Asia under Penthilus and his successors, and that Gras, whom Strabo calls the youngest son of Archelaüs, led the greater part of his army across to Lesbos and occupied it.

Strabo also writes that the Mitylenaeans held a stretch of shore on the Gulf of Adramyttium, with villages belonging to Mitylenaeans living on the mainland, and that in ancient times most of the coast from Abydus to Cymé was subject to the Aeolians.

Herodotus, in his Histories, lists the Aeolian cities of the islands: five cities divided Lesbos among them, and a sixth, Arisba, was enslaved by its kinsfolk of Methymna.

Mytilene, Alcaeus and Pittacus

Strabo reports that the Mytilenaeans and Athenians contested the Troad, and that Pittacus of Mytilene, one of the Seven Wise Men, sailed against the Athenian general Phrynon and for a time carried on the war. Strabo adds that the poet Alcaeus, a contemporary of Sappho from Mytilene, says that he threw away his arms and fled in a battle in the same conflict. According to Strabo, Phrynon later challenged Pittacus to single combat and was entangled in a fishing net and killed with trident and dagger, and Periander was chosen as arbiter by both sides and ended the war. Strabo identifies the Athenian leader as Phrynon, an Olympic victor, who had seized Sigeium.

Herodotus calls Periander the son of Cypselus and ruler of Corinth.

Lydia and Sardis

Herodotus reports that Alyattes the Lydian ended his war with the Milesians and died after a reign of fifty-seven years, and that his son Croesus, then thirty-five, succeeded him. Croesus attacked the Ephesians first and then made war on the Ionian and Aeolian cities in turn, and subdued and made tributary the Greeks of the Asian mainland.

Herodotus reports a story, told of either Bias of Priene or Pittacus of Mytilene, in which the visitor to Sardis dissuaded Croesus from building ships against the islanders. Herodotus further records that Pactyes, a Lydian fugitive, was sent by the Cymaeans to Mytilene, and that the Mytilenaeans prepared to surrender him to the Persian Mazares for a price before he was removed to Chios.

Sappho’s family and Lesbian song

Herodotus reports in his Histories that Charaxus of Mytilene, son of Scamandronymus and brother of Sappho the poetess, freed the courtesan Rhodopis at Naucratis in Egypt for a great sum, and that after returning to Mytilene he was bitterly attacked by Sappho in one of her poems.

Lesbos was also the home of an earlier musical tradition. In Edmonds’s Lyra Graeca, the Doctors at Dinner of Athenaeus quotes Pindar as saying that the Lesbian Terpander invented the barbitos, and the Suda calls Terpander a Lesbian of Antissa. The Parian Chronicle, as printed by Edmonds, records that Terpander changed the style of music in the archonship of Dropides at Athens, which Edmonds gives as 615 B.C. Edmonds prints the proverb, reported by the Suda, “Next to the poet of Lesbos,” which it says arose because the Spartans, torn by faction, sent for Terpander on the advice of an oracle. Edmonds’s collection also includes Plutarch’s On Music, which holds that the form of the lyre was established in the time of Cepion, Terpander’s pupil, and that it was called “Asian” because it was used in Lesbos, adjacent to Asia.