That inadequate and misleading metaphor of fire, as Mackail says, recurs in all her eulogists. Μεμιγμένα πυρὶ φθέγγεται, “her words are mingled with fire,” writes Plutarch,[9] but the “fire” of the burning Sappho is not raging hot, it is an unscorching calm, brilliant lustre that makes other poetry seem cold by comparison. No wonder that Hermesianax[10] (about 290 B.C.) called her “that nightingale of hymns” and Lucian[11] “the honeyed boast of the Lesbians.” Strabo (1 A.D.) said: “Sappho is a marvellous creature (θαυμαστόν τι χρῆμα), in all history you will find no woman who can challenge comparison with her even in the slightest degree.” Antipater of Thessalonica (10 B.C.) named Sappho as one of the nine poetesses who were god-tongued and called her one of the nine muses: “The female Homer: Sappho pride and choice of Lesbian dames, whose locks have earned a name.”[12] In another epigram in the Anthology,[13] probably from the base of a lost statue of Sappho in the famous library at Pergamum,[14] and which Jucundus and Cyriac were able to cite many hundreds of years later, Antipater says,
Sappho my name, in song o’er women held
As far supreme as Homer men excelled.
(Neaves)
Some thoughtlessly proclaim the muses nine;
A tenth is Lesbian Sappho, maid divine,
are the words of Plato in Lord Neaves’ translation of an epigram of which Wilamowitz[15] now timidly defends the genuineness. Antipater of Sidon (150 B.C.)[16] in his encomium on Sappho tells how
Amazement seized Mnemosyne
At Sappho’s honey’d song:
‘What, does a tenth muse,’ then, cried she,