The names of fourteen of her girl-friends (ἑταῖραι) and pupils (μαθήτριαι) are preserved. The most celebrated was Erinna of Telos, a poetess of whose genius too few lines are left for us to judge; but we know what the ancients thought of her from this Epigram in the Greek Anthology:
These are Erinna's songs: how sweet, though slight!—
For she was but a girl of nineteen years:—
Yet stronger far than what most men can write:
Had Death delayed, whose fame had equalled hers?
(J. A. Symonds.)
Probably fr. [77] refers to her. Of the other poetess, Damophyla of Pamphylia, not a word survives; but Apollonius of Tyana says she lived in close friendship with Sappho, and made poems after her model. Suidas says Sappho's 'companions and friends were three, viz., Atthis, Telesippa, and Megara; and her pupils were Anagora of the territory of Miletus, Gongyla of Colophon, and Euneica of Salamis.' She herself praises Mnasidica along with Gyrinna (as Maximus Tyrius spells the name) in fr. [76]; she complains of Atthis preferring Andromeda to her in fr. [41]; she gibes at Andromeda in fr. [70], and again refers to her in fr. [58], apparently rejoicing over her discomfiture. Of Gorgo, in fr. [48], she seems to say, in Swinburne's paraphrase,
I am weary of all thy words and soft strange ways.
Anactoria's name is not mentioned in any fragment we have, although tradition says that fr. [2] was addressed to her; but Maximus Tyrius and others place her in the front rank of Sappho's intimates: 'What Alcibiades,' he says, 'and Charmides and Phaedrus were to Socrates, Gyrinna and Atthis and Anactoria were to the Lesbian.' Another, Dica, we find her (in fr. [78]) praising for her skill in weaving coronals. And in fr. [86] a daughter of Polyanax is addressed as one of her maidens. The name is not preserved of her whom (in fr. [68]) she reproaches as disloyal to the service of the Muses. The text of Ovid's Sappho to Phaon is so corrupt that we know not whom she is enumerating there of those she loved; even the name of her 'fair Cydno' varies in the MSS. Nor can we tell who 'those other hundred maidens' were whom Ovid (cf. p. [188]) makes her say she 'blamelessly loved' before Phaon satisfied her heart. But the preservation of the names or so many of her associates is enough to prove the celebrity of her teaching.
Little more can be learnt about Sappho's actual life. In fr. [72] she says of herself, 'I am not one of a malignant nature, but have a quiet temper.' Antiphanes, in his play Sappho, is said by Athenaeus to have represented her proposing absurd riddles,[[5]] so little did the Comic writers understand her genius. Fr. [79] is quoted by Athenaeus to show her love for beauty and honour. Compare also fr. [11] and 31 for his testimony to the purity of her love for her girl-friends: πάντα καθαρα τοῖς καθαροῖς, 'unto the pure all things are pure.'