It avoids the first person: its heroes don’t speak, but are instead described by the narrator. Epic poetry centers war and the military heroes who make it possible. Homer was, and still is, the best known Greek epic poet, and his works epitomize the values and stylistic characteristics of the genre. Several of Sappho’s poems are in explicit or implicit conversation with the works of Homer, especially The Iliad. Sappho’s connection to Aphrodite is hence inextricably connected to the web of friendships and romances that weave through her poetry. Along with this close personal relationship, several of the Aphrodite fragments implicitly reference a community of devotees. While the speaker often addresses Aphrodite in the context of her love for a woman, her love for Aphrodite is often just as important. It even goes so far as drawing a parallel between “Sappho” and Aphrodite, their two voices mingling in the poem. It develops a striking intimacy between the poet, who refers to herself by name, and the goddess. “Fragment 1,” the only Sappho poem to survive in its entirety, is another address to the goddess Aphrodite. “Fragment 2” is exclusively devoted to the goddess Aphrodite and reads as a kind of incantation summoning the goddess to the speaker(s). Some of her lyrics were likely used in religious ceremonies, where they may have been performed by a chorus of women. Sappho was likely a member of the cult of Aphrodite, a group of women devoted to the worship of the goddess.

Sappho the poems and fragments