** Sappho of Lesbos.  Plato called her the 10th Muse.  Born circa 620 BC, Sappho was the world’s first recorded female poet, songwriter and performer, whose work is known to have enchanted audiences with a poetic form named “Sapphic meter.”  The founder of women’s literature, legends say she traveled extensively, married a rich businessman named Cercolas, had a daughter named Cleis.  It is believed Sappho started the first female Greek academy for dancers and musicians.  She was prolific, known all over the civilized, pre-Christian western world. Aristophanes gathered nine volumes of Sappho’s epithalamiums (songs to honor brides and bridegrooms).

Hundreds of years later, Sappho was considered Pagan by Christian zealots; her work was denounced, considered so dangerous most of it was destroyed, along with a vast quantity of other Greek writing.  Until the Oxyrhynchus Papyri were found around 1997 in the sands of Egypt, only two poems and a handful of fragments of Sappho’s compositions escaped destruction by time and religious fanaticism. 

Note: The 9 Muses:  Euterpe (lyric poetry), Polyhymnia (songs to the gods), Erato (love poetry), Melpomene (tragedy), Thalia (comedy), Urania (astronomy), Terpsichore (dance), Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history).