flourished с 610–с 580 BC, Lesbos, Asia Minor
Greek lyric poet.
Little is known of her life beyond the facts that she was born on the island of Lesbos and became the leading spirit of an informal women's society, of a type common among women of good family in her era, formed to pursue graceful pleasures, among them composing and reciting verse. Her principal themes are the loves, jealousies, and hates that flourished in that atmosphere. Her writing, mostly vernacular and not formally literary, is concise, direct, and picturesque and expresses a range of feelings, including her love for other women, which produced the word lesbian (from the island's name). Though she was much admired in antiquity, most of her work was lost by the early Middle Ages; only quotations by other authors of two poems and a number of fragments survive.