Ancient story made Sappho the victim of disappointed love. Overcome with passion for Pha’on, a beautiful Mytilenean youth notorious for his heart-breaking propensities, and finding Phaon indifferent to her advances, she is said to have thrown herself from the Leuca’dian promontory[27] and drowned her passion in the Ionian Sea. There is, however, no evidence to support the story; on the contrary, the poetess seems to have been implicated with Alcæus in a conspiracy against Pittacus, who then ruled in Lesbos, and to have been banished in consequence. (On the Æolic school of Sappho, consult Donaldson’s “History of the Literature of Ancient Greece,” p. 218.)
Sappho’s Style.—Simplicity, tenderness, concentrated passion, and brilliancy of description, are characteristic of Sappho’s verse. Her poetry is the very language of harmony; no more musical measures than hers were known to the Greeks. Her favorite stanza, an invention of her own, consisted of four lines with a cadence like the following:—
Tenderest mistress | of the heart’s emotion,
Over whom love sweeps | as the mighty ocean,
Unto thee pour we | all our soul’s devotion,
Glorious Sappho!
In depicting love, Sappho is unmatched. Her utterances, indeed, were so intense as to be misconstrued by the sensual Greeks of a later day, and give rise to reports injurious to her good name; or possibly she may have been confounded with another Sappho, of a different character; but we have no doubt that her life was as pure as her poetry is charming. Her imagery, when imagery she used, Sappho gathered from the bright-tinted flowers, the starry skies, and fragrant zephyrs of Lesbos, where, as she sung,
“Through orchard plots, with fragrance crowned,
The clear cold fountain murmuring flows;
And forest leaves, with rustling sound,