[38.] γέγονε often means flourished, not “was born.” Those who put Sappho’s birth as late as 610 forget this.
[39.] Strabo, 617, also makes Sappho contemporary with Pittacus and Alcaeus. Eusebius puts the floruit of Sappho in the first year of the forty-fifth Olympiad (599 B.C.). Edmonds, Lyra Graeca, I, p. 142, adopts the reading Ol. 45, 2 (598 B.C.), but this would be rather the date of her exile.
[40.] The abbreviation E, is used throughout for Edmonds, Lyra Graeca, vol. I.
[41.] Cf. Prinz, Funde aus Naukratis, 1906, pp. 57 ff.
[42.] II. 134.
[43.] In another fragment (E. 35) Edmonds calls Sappho “an old bird,” but this is a very dubious restoration based on only three preserved letters.
[44.] Flor., XXIX. 58.
[45.] Dioscorides in Anth. Pal., VII. 407 has Eresus; and coins and Suidas give both towns. Cf. Wilamowitz, Sappho und Simonides, 23; Her. II. 135 and references in Jacoby, Das Marmor Parium, 1904, p. 101. Many sources call Sappho a Mytilenaean, Schol. to Pindar (E. p. 144); Schol. Plato, Phaedrus, 235 c; Arist., Rhet., 1398 b; Anth. Pal., VII. 17. Some scholars assume that there were two Sapphos, but the two traditions can easily be reconciled by supposing that Sappho belonged to both cities, born at Eresus but later living at Mytilene. Edmonds thinks that Strabo would have mentioned Sappho when he is speaking of Eresus (618), had he believed her to have been born there, but Strabo omits many famous writers. The tradition of two Sapphos is found also in Aelian, Historical Miscellanies, XII. 19 and in Suidas. Cf. the novel Beulah by Augusta Evans, pp. 216-218: “Do you think that Sappho’s frenzy was established by the Leucadian leap? You confound the poetess with a Sappho, who lived later, and threw herself into the sea from the promontory of Leucate. Doubtless she too had ‘poetic idiosyncrasies,’ but her spotless life, and I believe natural death, afford no indication of an unsound intellect.”
[46.] Studies of the Greek Poets, vol. I., pp. 307 ff. (American ed.)