Know too their rights, and knowing, dare maintain;
Prevent the long-aimed blow,
And crush the tyrant, while they rend the chain.”
Sir William Jones.
The Lesbian Poetesses.—Lesbos was the centre of lyric song. To its shores, the waves of ocean are fabled to have borne the lyre of Orpheus, which the people hung in Apollo’s temple: thus traditionally distinguished by fate, it became renowned as the home of Grecian poetesses.
The Lesbian women were not confined to domestic duties, but were allowed to take part in public affairs. They founded societies for the cultivation of their literary tastes, and before all Greece vindicated the genius of their sex. And Lesbos was the very clime for poetry to ripen in. The love of the beautiful was fed on every side. The island was a paradise of groves and rivulets, of blossoms and perfumes. Among its olive-clad hills, at its fountains set in violets and fringed with fern, under its stately pines, and in its temples shining with ivory and gold, its poetesses received their inspiration.
Sappho.—Greatest of these, and queen of her sex in intellectual endowments, was Sappho, “the Lesbian Nightingale,” “spotless, sweetly-smiling, violet-wreathed,” as Alcæus fondly described her, whom all Greece knew as The Poetess.
In her history it is difficult to separate the true from the fabulous. Born at Mytile’ne, the capital of the island, in the latter part of the seventh century B.C., she was deprived of a mother’s care at the age of six. In early womanhood, a new calamity befell her in the loss of her husband, and thenceforth she devoted her genius to letters, making the elevation of her countrywomen the great object of her life. Her reputation soon spread throughout Greece. Mytilene became the seat of a brilliant sisterhood eager in the study of the polished arts; sparkling conversation enlivened its meetings; music and poetry were the branches its members specially cultivated; love was the common subject of their verse; their lives were above reproach. In the centre of this constellation of gifted women blazed Sappho, “Star of Lesbian Song.” Greece, captivated by her sweet numbers, accorded her a place by Homer’s side—then raised her to the level of its goddesses as “the Tenth Muse.”
The Lover’s Leap.