Poetry of Sappho

Along with the poems which can be attributed with confidence to Sappho, a small number of surviving fragments in her Aeolic dialect may be by either her or her contemporary Alcaeus.

Some scholars argue that books of Sappho's poetry were produced in or shortly after her own lifetime; others believe that if they were written down in that time, it was only as an aid to reperformance rather than as a literary work in their own right.

[13] Fragment 103 preserves 10 incipits of poems by Sappho, possibly from book 8, of which the first is in a different metre from the remaining nine; those nine may or may not all be in the same meter.

The Cologne papyrus on which the Tithonus poem is preserved was part of a Hellenistic anthology of poetry,[16] and predates the Alexandrian edition.

213C Campbell quotes openings to poems by Sappho, Alcaeus, and Anacreon; both might be related to anthological collections.

[21] The oldest surviving fragment of Sappho currently known is the Cologne papyrus which contains the Tithonus poem;[22] it dates to the third century BC.

[23] Though the Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poetry made the transition from papyrus rolls to the codex, while less popular authors were not reproduced in this new format,[24] and a significant amount of her poetry survived until the seventh century,[25] her work appears to have disappeared around the ninth century,[26] and did not make the transition to minuscule handwriting.

[31] The last quarter of the nineteenth century began a new period in the rediscovery of Sappho's poetry, with the discovery of a parchment fragment at Crocodilopolis (modern Faiyum) published by Friedrich Blass in 1880.

[33] The most recent major editions of Sappho, by Edgar Lobel and Denys Page in 1955, and Eva-Maria Voigt in 1971, in conjunction with Lobel and Page's Supplementa Lyra Graeca, collect all of the material published by 1974; despite the publication of further papyrus fragments in 1997, 2004, 2005 and 2014, Voigt's remains the standard modern edition.

The testimonia are ancient accounts of Sappho, her life, and her poetry, which are conventionally included in critical editions of her work.

The Cologne papyrus, on which Sappho's Tithonus poem is partially preserved
Friedrich Blass , whose publication of a parchment fragment of Sappho's poetry in 1880 marked the beginning of a new era in the rediscovery of her work
Sappho and Alcaeus, illustrated on an Attic red-figure kalathos by the Brygos Painter . The two poets were contemporaries, and both wrote in the same Aeolic dialect; there are several fragments where it is uncertain which of the two is the author.