This is an accepted version of this page
140-515: Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several tree species from the genus Cinnamomum . Cinnamon is used mainly as an aromatic condiment and flavouring additive in a wide variety of cuisines , sweet and savoury dishes, breakfast cereals , snack foods , bagels , teas , hot chocolate and traditional foods . The aroma and flavour of cinnamon derive from its essential oil and principal component, cinnamaldehyde , as well as numerous other constituents including eugenol . Cinnamon
280-402: A phenolic typically low in content in true cinnamon – but market samples contained coumarin with levels as high as 3462 mg/kg, indicating probable contamination with cassia in the counterfeit cinnamon. ConsumerLab.com found the same problem in a 2020 analysis; "a supplement that contained the highest amount of coumarin was labeled as Ceylon cinnamon". Cinnamon bark is used as a spice. It
420-434: A big man". Kurke groups Sappho with those archaic Greek poets from what has been called the "élite" ideological tradition, which valued luxury ( habrosyne ) and high birth. These elite poets tended to identify themselves with the worlds of Greek myths, gods, and heroes, as well as the wealthy East, especially Lydia . Thus in fragment 2 she has Aphrodite "pour into golden cups nectar lavishly mingled with joys", while in
560-420: A coffee or spice grinder, whereas cassia sticks are much harder. Indonesian cinnamon is often sold in neat quills made up of one thick layer, capable of damaging a spice or coffee grinder. Saigon cinnamon ( C. loureiroi ) and Chinese cinnamon ( C. cassia ) are always sold as broken pieces of thick bark, as the bark is not supple enough to be rolled into quills. The powdered bark is harder to distinguish, but if it
700-504: A cupbearer in the town hall of Mytilene, an office held by boys of the best families. This indication that Sappho was born into an aristocratic family is consistent with the sometimes-rarefied environments that her verses record. One ancient tradition tells of a relationship between Charaxos and the Egyptian courtesan Rhodopis . In the fifth century BC Herodotus , the oldest source of the story, reports that Charaxos ransomed Rhodopis for
840-577: A daily basis for good health at a time of recurrent pandemics . In addition to being desired by those using medieval medicine , the European elite also craved spices in the Middle Ages, believing spices to be from and a connection to "paradise". An example of the European aristocracy's demand for spice comes from the King of Aragon , who invested substantial resources into importing spices to Spain in
980-527: A few centuries longer, but around the ninth century her poetry appears to have disappeared, and by the 12th century, John Tzetzes could write that "the passage of time has destroyed Sappho and her works". According to legend, Sappho's poetry was lost because the church disapproved of her morals. These legends appear to have originated in the Renaissance – around 1550, Jerome Cardan wrote that Gregory Nazianzen had her work publicly destroyed, and at
1120-522: A fifth-century red-figure vase by either the Dokimasia Painter or Brygos Painter includes Sappho and Alcaeus with barbitoi. Sappho mentions the aulos , a wind instrument with two pipes, in fragment 44 as accompanying the song of the Trojan women at Hector and Andromache 's wedding, but not as accompanying her own poetry. Later Greek commentators wrongly believed that she had invented
1260-502: A friendly affection": Glenn Most comments that "one wonders what language Sappho would have used to describe her feelings if they had been ones of sexual excitement", if this theory were correct. By 1970, the psychoanalyst George Devereux argued that the same poem contained "proof positive of [Sappho's] lesbianism". Today, it is generally accepted that Sappho's poetry portrays homoerotic feelings: as Sandra Boehringer puts it, her works "clearly celebrate eros between women". Toward
1400-489: A ground spice can be much shorter. Ground spices are better stored away from light. Some flavor elements in spices are soluble in water; many are soluble in oil or fat. As a general rule, the flavors from a spice take time to infuse into the food so spices are added early in preparation. This contrasts to herbs which are usually added late in preparation. A study by the Food and Drug Administration of shipments of spices to
1540-472: A large sum and that Sappho wrote a poem rebuking him for this. The names of two of the brothers, Charaxos and Larichos, are mentioned in the Brothers Poem , discovered in 2014; the final brother, Eurygios, is mentioned in three ancient sources but nowhere in the extant works of Sappho. Sappho may have had a daughter named Cleïs, who is referred to in two fragments. Not all scholars accept that Cleïs
SECTION 10
#17327658931371680-416: A literary coterie", but that "evidence for a formal appointment as priestess or teacher is hard to find". None of Sappho's own poetry mentions her teaching, and the earliest source to support the idea of Sappho as a teacher comes from Ovid, six centuries after Sappho's lifetime. So you hate me now, Atthis, and Turn towards Andromeda. — Sappho 131, trans. Edward Storer In the second half of
1820-449: A papyrus from the second or third century AD was published. He seems like a god to me the man who is near you, Listening to your sweet voice and exquisite laughter That makes my heart so wildly beat in my breast. If I but see you for a moment, then all my words Leave me, my tongue is broken and a sudden fire Creeps through my blood. No longer can I see. My ears are full of noise. In all my body I Shudder and sweat. I am pale as
1960-485: A pedogogic role and as part of a circle of friends. The word lesbian is an allusion to Sappho, originating from the name of the island of Lesbos , where she was born. However, though in modern culture Sappho is seen as a lesbian, she has not always been considered so. In classical Athenian comedy (from the Old Comedy of the fifth century to Menander in the late fourth and early third centuries BC), Sappho
2100-508: A period where the Attic dialect was seen as the true classical Greek, and had become the standard for literary compositions. Consequently, many readers found her dialect difficult to understand: in the second century AD, the Roman author Apuleius specifically remarks on its "strangeness", and several commentaries on the subject demonstrate the difficulties that readers had with it. This
2240-431: A powerful blender . The flavour of cinnamon is due to the aromatic essential oils that makes up 0.5 to 1% of its composition. Cinnamon bark can be macerated, then extracted in 80% ethanol, to a tincture. Cinnamon essential oil can be prepared by roughly pounding the bark, macerating it in sea water, and then quickly distilling the whole. It is of a golden-yellow colour, with the characteristic odour of cinnamon and
2380-783: A price of 125 denarii for a pound of cassia, while an agricultural labourer earned 25 denarii per day. Cinnamon was too expensive to be commonly used on funeral pyres in Rome, but the Emperor Nero is said to have burned a year's worth of the city's supply at the funeral for his wife Poppaea Sabina in AD 65. Through the Middle Ages , the source of cinnamon remained a mystery to the Western world. From reading Latin writers who quoted Herodotus, Europeans had learned that cinnamon came up
2520-467: A relative of cardamom which mostly replaced pepper in late medieval north French cooking, long pepper , mace , spikenard , galangal , and cubeb . Voyagers from Spain and Portugal were interested in seeking new routes to trade in spices and other valuable products from Asia. The control of trade routes and the spice-producing regions were the main reasons that Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama sailed to India in 1499. When da Gama discovered
2660-601: A result of cinnamon use reported gastrointestinal disorders and allergic reactions as the most frequently reported side effects. In 2008, the European Food Safety Authority considered the toxicity of coumarin, a component of cinnamon, and confirmed a maximum recommended tolerable daily intake (TDI) of 0.1 mg of coumarin per kg of body weight. Coumarin is known to cause liver and kidney damage in high concentrations and metabolic effect in humans with CYP2A6 polymorphism . Based on this assessment,
2800-418: A result of her family's involvement with the conflicts between political elites on Lesbos in this period. It is unknown which side Sappho's family took in these conflicts, but most scholars believe that they were in the same faction as her contemporary Alcaeus, who was exiled when Myrsilus took power. A tradition going back at least to Menander (Fr. 258 K) suggested that Sappho killed herself by jumping off
2940-414: A spice is derived in part from compounds (volatile oils) that oxidize or evaporate when exposed to air. Grinding a spice greatly increases its surface area and so increases the rates of oxidation and evaporation. Thus, the flavor is maximized by storing a spice whole and grinding when needed. The shelf life of a whole dry spice is roughly two years; of a ground spice roughly six months. The "flavor life" of
SECTION 20
#17327658931373080-510: A symbol of wealth and social class. The most popular explanation for the love of spices in the Middle Ages is that they were used to preserve meat from spoiling, or to cover up the taste of meat that had already gone off. This compelling but false idea constitutes something of an urban legend, a story so instinctively attractive that mere fact seems unable to wipe it out... Anyone who could afford spices could easily find meat fresher than what city dwellers today buy in their local supermarket. It
3220-405: A sympotic context, it is doubtful that the cultic hymns or poems about family would have been. Despite scholars' best attempts to find one, Yatromanolakis argues that there is no single performance context to which all of Sappho's poems can be attributed. Camillo Neri argues that it is unnecessary to assign all of her poetry to one context, and suggests that she could have composed poetry both in
3360-444: A tragic heroine, driven to suicide by her unrequited love for Phaon. A fragment of a play by Menander says that Sappho threw herself off of the cliff at Leucas out of her love for him. Ovid's Heroides 15 is written as a letter from Sappho to Phaon, and when it was first rediscovered in the 15th century was thought to be a translation of an authentic letter by Sappho. Sappho's suicide was also depicted in classical art, for instance on
3500-519: A variety of occasions both public and private, and probably encompassed both solo and choral works. Most of her best-preserved fragments, such as the Ode to Aphrodite, are usually thought to be written for solo performance – though some scholars, such as André Lardinois, believe that most or all of her poems were originally composed for choral performances. These works, which Leslie Kurke describes as "private and informal compositions" in contrast to
3640-615: A very hot aromatic taste. Cinnamon oil nanoemulsion can be made with polysorbate 80 , cinnamon essential oil, and water, by ultrasonic emulsification. Cinnamon oil macroemulsion can be made with a dispersing emulsifying homogenizer. The pungent taste and scent come from cinnamaldehyde, about 90% of the essential oil from cinnamon bark. Cinnamaldehyde decomposes, in high humidity and high temperatures, to styrene , and, by reaction with oxygen as it ages, it darkens in colour and forms resinous compounds. Cinnamon constituents include some 80 aromatic compounds , including eugenol, found in
3780-528: A whole pig cost about the same as a pound of the cheapest spice, pepper. There is also no evidence of such use from contemporary cookbooks: "Old cookbooks make it clear that spices weren't used as a preservative. They typically suggest adding spices toward the end of the cooking process, where they could have no preservative effect whatsoever." Indeed, Cristoforo di Messisbugo suggested in the 16th century that pepper may speed up spoilage. Though some spices have antimicrobial properties in vitro, pepper—by far
3920-480: Is Scamandronymus. In Ovid 's Heroides , Sappho's father died when she was six. He is not mentioned in any of her surviving works, but Campbell suggests that this detail may have been based on a now-lost poem. Her own name is found in numerous variant spellings; the form that appears in her own extant poetry is Psappho ( Ψάπφω ). Sappho was said to have three brothers: Eurygios, Larichos, and Charaxos. According to Athenaeus , she praised Larichos for being
4060-478: Is a characteristic feature of her style. An example is from fragment 96 : "now she stands out among Lydian women as after sunset the rose-fingered moon exceeds all stars", a variation of the Homeric epithet "rosy-fingered Dawn". Her poetry often uses hyperbole , according to ancient critics "because of its charm": for example, in fragment 111 she writes that "The groom approaches like Ares [...] Much bigger than
4200-609: Is a form of the Greek word aner , which means "man". Thus the name, for which an English equivalent could be "Prick (of the isle) of Man", is likely to have originated from a comic play. One tradition said that Sappho was exiled from Lesbos around 600 BC. The only ancient source for this story is the Parian Chronicle , which records her going into exile in Sicily some time between 604 and 595. This may have been as
4340-453: Is best known for her lyric poetry , written to be accompanied by music. The Suda also attributes to her epigrams , elegiacs , and iambics ; three of these epigrams are extant, but are in fact later Hellenistic poems inspired by Sappho. The iambic and elegiac poems attributed to her in the Suda may also be later imitations. Ancient authors claim that she primarily wrote love poetry, and
Cinnamon - Misplaced Pages Continue
4480-445: Is commonly used as an ingredient in fragrance manufacturing. Plant-based sweeteners such as sugar are not considered spices. Spices may be used fresh and whole, after drying, grating, chopping, crushing, or grinding, or by extraction into a tincture . Such processing may happen before a spice is offered for sale, while preparing a dish in a kitchen, or after a dish has been presented for consumption (such as peppercorns ground at
4620-568: Is conceivable. One longstanding suggestion of a social role for Sappho is that of "Sappho as schoolmistress". This view, popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was advocated by the German classicist Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff , to "explain away Sappho's passion for her 'girls ' " and defend her from accusations of homosexuality. More recently the idea has been criticised by historians as anachronistic and has been rejected by several prominent classicists as unjustified by
4760-399: Is derived from four other species, usually and more correctly referred to as "cassia": C. burmanni (Indonesian cinnamon or Padang cassia), C. cassia (Chinese cinnamon or Chinese cassia), C. loureiroi (Saigon cinnamon or Vietnamese cassia), and the less common C. citriodorum (Malabar cinnamon). In 2021, world production of cinnamon was 226,753 tonnes , led by China with 43% of
4900-496: Is in a well-ventilated and relatively warm environment. Once dry, the bark is cut into 5 to 10 cm (2 to 4 in) lengths for sale. A less than ideal drying environment encourages the proliferation of pests in the bark, which may then require treatment by fumigation with sulphur dioxide . In 2011, the European Union approved the use of sulphur dioxide at a concentration of up to 150 mg/kg (0.0024 oz/lb) for
5040-611: Is incorporated into vegetable stews and desserts such as tishpishti and travados , both of which are soaked in honey. In Ashkenazi cuisine , cinnamon features in dishes like honey cakes , and kugels . It is also one of "four sibling spices" ( rempah empat beradik ) essential in Malay cuisine along with clove , star anise and cardamom . Ground cinnamon is 11% water, 81% carbohydrates (including 53% dietary fiber ), 4% protein and 1% fat . Ceylon cinnamon may be crushed into small pieces by hand while Indonesian cinnamon requires
5180-490: Is known of it apart from its name. As these comedies survive only in fragments, it is uncertain exactly how they portrayed Sappho, but she was likely characterised as a promiscuous woman. In Diphilos' play, she was the lover of the poets Anacreon and Hipponax . Sappho was also a favourite subject in the visual arts. She was the most commonly depicted poet on sixth and fifth-century Attic red-figure vase paintings – though unlike male poets such as Anacreon and Alcaeus, in
5320-448: Is maligned for having been a tribad ". By the third century AD, the difference between Sappho's literary reputation as a poet and her moral reputation as a woman had become so significant that the suggestion that there were in fact two Sapphos began to develop. In his Historical Miscellanies , Aelian wrote that there was "another Sappho, a courtesan, not a poetess". By the medieval period, Sappho's works had been lost, though she
5460-433: Is no evidence that she held a priesthood. More recent scholars have proposed that Sappho was part of a circle of women who took part in symposia, for which she composed and performed poetry, or that she wrote her poetry to be performed at men's symposia. Though her songs were certainly later performed at symposia, there is no external evidence for archaic Greek women's symposia, and even if some of her works were composed for
5600-505: Is often claimed that spices were used either as food preservatives or to mask the taste of spoiled meat , especially in the European Middle Ages . This is false. In fact, spices are rather ineffective as preservatives as compared to salting , smoking , pickling , or drying , and are ineffective in covering the taste of spoiled meat. Moreover, spices have always been comparatively expensive: in 15th century Oxford,
5740-524: Is principally employed in cookery as a condiment and flavouring material. It is used in the preparation of chocolate , especially in Mexico. Cinnamon is often used in savoury dishes of chicken and lamb. In the United States and Europe, cinnamon and sugar are often used to flavour cereals , bread-based dishes such as toast, and fruits, especially apples ; a cinnamon and sugar mixture ( cinnamon sugar )
Cinnamon - Misplaced Pages Continue
5880-634: Is sold separately for such purposes. It is also used in Portuguese and Turkish cuisine for both sweet and savoury dishes. Cinnamon can also be used in pickling , and in Christmas drinks such as eggnog . Cinnamon powder has long been an important spice in enhancing the flavour of Persian cuisine , used in a variety of thick soups, drinks and sweets. Cinnamon is a common ingredient in Jewish cuisine across various communities. In Sephardic cooking , it
6020-703: Is still debated: André Lardinois has described it as the "Great Sappho Question". Early translators of Sappho sometimes heterosexualised her poetry. Ambrose Philips ' 1711 translation of the Ode to Aphrodite portrayed the object of Sappho's desire as male, a reading that was followed by virtually every other translator of the poem until the 20th century, while in 1781 Alessandro Verri interpreted fragment 31 as being about Sappho's love for Phaon. Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker argued that Sappho's feelings for other women were "entirely idealistic and non-sensual", while Karl Otfried Müller wrote that fragment 31 described "nothing but
6160-576: Is the Cologne papyrus that contains the Tithonus poem, dating to the third century BC. Until the last quarter of the 19th century, Sappho's poetry was known only through quotations in the works of other ancient authors. In 1879, the first new discovery of a fragment of Sappho was made at Fayum . By the end of the 19th century, Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt had begun to excavate an ancient rubbish dump at Oxyrhynchus, leading to
6300-506: Is the name for several species of trees and the commercial spice products that some of them produce. All are members of the genus Cinnamomum in the family Lauraceae . Only a few Cinnamomum species are grown commercially for spice. Cinnamomum verum (alternatively C. zeylanicum ), known as "Ceylon cinnamon" after its origins in Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), is considered to be "true cinnamon", but most cinnamon in international commerce
6440-458: Is the only contemporary source for her life. The earliest surviving biography of Sappho dates to the late second or early third century AD, approximately eight centuries after her own lifetime; the next is the Suda , a tenth-century Byzantine encyclopedia. Other sources that mention details of her life were written much closer to her own era, beginning in the fifth century BC; one of
6580-560: Is treated with tincture of iodine (a test for starch ), little effect is visible with pure Ceylon cinnamon; however, when Chinese cinnamon is present, a deep-blue tint is produced. The Sri Lankan grading system divides the cinnamon quills into four groups: These groups are further divided into specific grades. For example, Mexican is divided into M00000 special, M000000 and M0000, depending on quill diameter and number of quills per kilogram. Any pieces of bark less than 106 mm (4.2 in) long are categorized as quillings. Featherings are
6720-545: Is usually more flavorful than its dried form, but fresh spices are more expensive and have a much shorter shelf life. There is not enough clinical evidence to indicate that consuming spices affects human health. India contributes to 75% of global spice production. This is reflected culturally through its cuisine . Historically, the spice trade developed throughout the Indian subcontinent as well as in East Asia and
6860-479: Is well known as a symbol of love and desire between women , with the English words sapphic and lesbian deriving from her name and that of her home island, respectively. Modern knowledge of Sappho comes both from what can be inferred from her own poetry and from mentions of her in other ancient texts. Her poetry – which, with the exception of a single complete poem, survives only in fragments –
7000-731: Is widely referenced in Latin literature: as well as by Catullus, it is alluded to by authors including Lucretius in the De rerum natura , Plautus in Miles Gloriosus , and Virgil in book 12 of the Aeneid . Latin poets also referenced other fragments: the section on Eppia in Juvenal 's sixth satire references fragment 16, a poem in Sapphic stanzas from Statius ' Silvae may reference
7140-763: The Banda Islands in Southeast Asia , was introduced to Europe in the 6th century BCE. The Romans had cloves in the 1st century CE, as Pliny the Elder wrote about them. Spices were among the most demanded and expensive products available in Europe in the Middle Ages , the most common being black pepper , cinnamon (and the cheaper alternative cassia ), cumin , nutmeg , ginger, and cloves . Given medieval medicine's main theory of humorism , spices and herbs were indispensable to balance "humors" in food, on
SECTION 50
#17327658931377280-472: The Brothers Poem discovered in 2014. She was exiled to Sicily around 600 BC, and may have continued to work until around 570 BC. According to legend, she killed herself by leaping from the Leucadian cliffs due to her unrequited love for the ferryman Phaon . Sappho was a prolific poet, probably composing around 10,000 lines. She was best-known in antiquity for her love poetry; other themes in
7420-476: The European Union set a guideline for maximum coumarin content in foodstuffs of 50 mg per kg of dough in seasonal foods, and 15 mg per kg in everyday baked foods. The maximum recommended TDI of 0.1 mg of coumarin per kg of body weight equates to 5 mg of coumarin (or 5.6 g C. verum with 0.9 mg coumarin per gram) for a body weight of 50 kg. C as shown in the table below: Due to
7560-472: The Leucadian cliffs due to her unrequited love of Phaon , a ferryman. This story is related to two myths about the goddess Aphrodite. In one, Aphrodite rewarded the elderly ferryman Phaon with youth and good looks as a reward for taking her in his ferry without asking for payment; in the other, Aphrodite was cured of her grief at the death of her lover Adonis by throwing herself off the Leucadian cliffs on
7700-731: The Middle East . Europe's demand for spices was among the economic and cultural factors that encouraged exploration in the early modern period . The word spice originated in Middle English , from the Old French words espece , espis(c)e , and espis(c)e . According to the Middle English Dictionary , the Old French words came from Anglo-French spece ; according to Merriam Webster ,
7840-682: The Moluccas to East Africa (see also Rhapta ), where local traders then carried it north to Alexandria in Egypt. Venetian traders from Italy held a monopoly on the spice trade in Europe, distributing cinnamon from Alexandria. The disruption of this trade by the rise of other Mediterranean powers, such as the Mamluk sultans and the Ottoman Empire , was one of many factors that led Europeans to search more widely for other routes to Asia. During
7980-529: The Ode to Aphrodite is certainly complete. As well as lyric poetry, ancient commentators claimed that Sappho wrote elegiac and iambic poetry. Three epigrams formerly attributed to Sappho are extant, but these are actually Hellenistic imitations of Sappho's style. Little is known of Sappho's life. She was from a wealthy family from Lesbos, though her parents' names are uncertain. Ancient sources say that she had three brothers: Charaxos, Larichos and Eurygios. Two of them, Charaxos and Larichos, are mentioned in
8120-619: The Red Sea to the trading ports of Egypt, but where it came from was less than clear. When the Sieur de Joinville accompanied his king, Louis IX of France to Egypt on the Seventh Crusade in 1248, he reported—and believed—what he had been told: that cinnamon was fished up in nets at the source of the Nile out at the edge of the world (i.e., Ethiopia ). Marco Polo avoided precision on
8260-415: The first person narrator in the poems was meant to express the experiences and feelings of the poets. Some scholars, such as Mary Lefkowitz , argue that almost nothing can be known about the lives of early Greek poets such as Sappho; most scholars believe that ancient testimonies about poets' lives contain some truth but must be treated with caution. Little is known about Sappho's life for certain. She
8400-460: The plectrum . One of the major focuses of scholars studying Sappho has been to attempt to determine the cultural context in which Sappho's poems were composed and performed. Various cultural contexts and social roles played by Sappho have been suggested: primarily teacher, priestess, chorus leader, and symposiast . However, the performance contexts of many of Sappho's fragments are not easy to determine, and for many more than one possible context
8540-473: The "tenth Muse ". The earliest surviving text to do so is a third-century BC epigram by Dioscorides , but poems are preserved in the Greek Anthology by Antipater of Sidon and attributed to Plato on the same theme. She was sometimes referred to as "The Poetess", just as Homer was "The Poet". The scholars of Alexandria included her in the canon of nine lyric poets. According to Aelian ,
SECTION 60
#17327658931378680-567: The 12th century. He was specifically looking for spices to put in wine and was not alone among European monarchs at the time to have such a desire for spice. Spices were all imported from plantations in Asia and Africa, which made them expensive. From the 8th until the 15th century, the Republic of Venice held a monopoly on spice trade with the Middle East, using this position to dominate
8820-614: The 1500s, Ferdinand Magellan was searching for spices on behalf of Spain; in the Philippines , he found Cinnamomum mindanaense , which was closely related to C. zeylanicum , the cinnamon found in Sri Lanka. This cinnamon eventually competed with Sri Lankan cinnamon, which was controlled by the Portuguese. In 1638, Dutch traders established a trading post in Sri Lanka, took control of the manufactories by 1640, and expelled
8960-434: The 19th century, ancient biographical accounts of archaic poets' lives were largely accepted as factual. In the 19th century, classicists began to be more sceptical of these traditions, and instead tried to derive biographical information from the poets' own works. In the latter half of the 20th century, scholars became increasingly sceptical of Greek lyric poetry as a source of autobiographical information, questioning whether
9100-590: The Athenian lawmaker and poet Solon asked to be taught a song by Sappho "so that I may learn it and then die". This story may well be apocryphal, especially as Ammianus Marcellinus tells a similar story about Socrates and a song of Stesichorus , but it is indicative of how highly Sappho's poetry was considered in the ancient world. Sappho's poetry also influenced other ancient authors. Plato cites Sappho in his Phaedrus , and Socrates ' second speech on love in that dialogue appears to echo Sappho's descriptions of
9240-668: The British East India Company established the Anjarakkandy Cinnamon Estate near Anjarakkandy in the Kannur district of Kerala , India. It later became Asia's largest cinnamon estate. The British took control of Ceylon from the Dutch in 1796. Cinnamon is an evergreen tree characterized by oval-shaped leaves, thick bark and a berry fruit. When harvesting the spice, the bark and leaves are
9380-756: The Cochrane review, the U.S. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health stated: "Studies done in people don't support using cinnamon for any health condition." However, the results of the studies are difficult to interpret because it is often unclear what type of cinnamon and what part of the plant were used. A meta-analysis of cinnamon supplementation trials with lipid measurements reported lower total cholesterol and triglycerides, but no significant changes in LDL-cholesterol or HDL-cholesterol . Another reported no change to body weight or insulin resistance. A systematic review of adverse events as
9520-589: The French printer Robert Estienne produced an edition of the Greek lyric poets that contained around 40 fragments attributed to Sappho. In 1652, the first English translation of a poem by Sappho was published, in John Hall 's translation of On the Sublime . In 1681 Anne Le Fèvre 's French edition of Sappho made her work even more widely known. Theodor Bergk 's 1854 edition became the standard edition of Sappho in
9660-485: The Hebrew word קציעה qetsīʿāh , a form of the verb קצע qātsaʿ , "to strip off bark". Early Modern English also used the names canel and canella , similar to the current names of cinnamon in several other European languages, which are derived from the Latin word cannella , a diminutive of canna , "tube", from the way the bark curls up as it dries. Cinnamon has been known from remote antiquity . It
9800-577: The Mediterranean world for centuries by those in the spice trade , in order to protect their monopoly as suppliers. Cinnamomum verum , which translates from Latin as "true cinnamon", is native to India , Sri Lanka , Bangladesh and Myanmar . Cinnamomum cassia (cassia) is native to China. Related species, all harvested and sold in the modern era as cinnamon, are native to Vietnam (" Saigon cinnamon "), Indonesia and other southeast Asian countries with warm climates. In Ancient Egypt, cinnamon
9940-403: The Middle East, and the east coast of Africa. Arab merchants facilitated the routes through the Middle East and India. This resulted in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria being the main trading center for spices. The most important discovery prior to the European spice trade was the monsoon winds (40 CE). Sailing from Eastern spice cultivators to Western European consumers gradually replaced
10080-655: The New World came new spices, including allspice , chili peppers , vanilla , and chocolate . This development kept the spice trade, with the Americas as a latecomer with their new seasonings, profitable well into the 19th century. Spices are primarily used as food flavoring or to create variety. They are also used to perfume cosmetics and incense . At various periods, many spices were used in herbal medicine . Finally, since they can be expensive, rare and exotic commodities, their conspicuous consumption has often been
10220-407: The Ode to Aphrodite, and Horace 's Ode 3.27 alludes to fragment 94. Other ancient poets wrote about Sappho's life. She was a popular character in ancient Athenian comedy , and at least six separate comedies called Sappho are known. The earliest known ancient comedy to take Sappho as its main subject was the early-fifth or late-fourth century BC Sappho by Ameipsias , though nothing
10360-1341: The Old-French words came from Anglo-French espece, and espis . Both publications agree that the Anglo-French words are derived from Latin species . Middle English spice had its first known use as a noun in the 13th century. The spice trade developed throughout the Indian subcontinent and Middle East by 2000 BCE with cinnamon and black pepper , and in East Asia with herbs and pepper. The Egyptians used herbs for cuisine and mummification . Their demand for exotic spices and herbs helped stimulate world trade. Cloves were used in Mesopotamia by 1700 BCE. The earliest written records of spices come from ancient Egyptian, Chinese, and Indian cultures. The Ebers Papyrus from early Egypt dating from 1550 BCE describes some eight hundred different herbal medicinal remedies and numerous medicinal procedures. By 1000 BCE, medical systems based upon herbs could be found in China , Korea , and India . Early uses were associated with magic, medicine, religion, tradition, and preservation. Indonesian merchants traveled around China, India,
10500-703: The Portuguese to take control of the sea routes to India. In 1506, he took the island of Socotra in the mouth of the Red Sea and, in 1507, Ormuz in the Persian Gulf . Since becoming the viceroy of the Indies , he took Goa in India in 1510, and Malacca on the Malay Peninsula in 1511. The Portuguese could now trade directly with Siam , China , and the Maluku Islands . With the discovery of
10640-426: The Tithonus poem she explicitly states that "I love the finer things [ habrosyne ]". According to Page duBois , the language, as well as the content, of Sappho's poetry evokes an aristocratic sphere. She contrasts Sappho's "flowery,[...] adorned" style with the "austere, decorous, restrained" style embodied in the works of later classical authors such as Sophocles , Demosthenes , and Pindar . Sappho's poetry
10780-638: The US. The FDA determined that cinnamon was adulterated with lead chromate . Spice In the culinary arts , a spice is any seed , fruit , root , bark , or other plant substance in a form primarily used for flavoring or coloring food. Spices are distinguished from herbs , which are the leaves, flowers, or stems of plants used for flavoring or as a garnish . Spices are sometimes used in medicine , religious rituals , cosmetics , or perfume production. They are usually classified into spices, spice seeds, and herbal categories. For example, vanilla
10920-415: The United States during fiscal years 2007–2009 showed about 7% of the shipments were contaminated by Salmonella bacteria, some of it antibiotic-resistant. As most spices are cooked before being served salmonella contamination often has no effect, but some spices, particularly pepper, are often eaten raw and are present at the table for convenient use. Shipments from Mexico and India, a major producer, were
11060-539: The advice of Apollo . The story of Sappho's leap is regarded as ahistorical by modern scholars, perhaps invented by the comic poets or originating from a misreading of a first-person reference in a non-biographical poem. It was used to reassure ancient audiences of Sappho's heterosexuality, and became particularly important in the nineteenth century to writers who saw homosexuality as immoral and wished to construct Sappho as heterosexual. Sappho probably wrote around 10,000 lines of poetry; today, only about 650 survive. She
11200-403: The discoveries of many previously unknown fragments of Sappho. Fragments of Sappho continue to be rediscovered. Major discoveries were made in 2004 (the "Tithonus poem" and a new, previously unknown fragment) and 2014 (fragments of nine poems: five already known but with new readings, four, including the " Brothers Poem ", not previously known). Additionally, in 2005 a commentary on her poems on
11340-463: The earliest is Herodotus ' account of the relationship between the Egyptian courtesan Rhodopis and Sappho's brother Charaxos. The information about her life recorded in ancient sources was derived from statements in her own poetry that ancient authors assumed were autobiographical, along with local traditions. Some of the ancient traditions about her, such as those about her sexuality and appearance, may derive from ancient Athenian comedy . Until
11480-400: The edition by Aristophanes, but are silent on whether Sappho's work also went through multiple editions. The Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poetry may have been based on an Athenian text of her poems, or one from her native Lesbos, and was divided into at least eight books, though the exact number is uncertain. Many modern scholars have followed Denys Page , who conjectured a ninth book in
11620-469: The end of the 16th century Joseph Justus Scaliger claimed that her works were burned in Rome and Constantinople in 1073 on the orders of Pope Gregory VII . In reality, Sappho's work was probably lost as the demand for it was insufficiently great for it to be copied onto parchment when codices superseded papyrus scrolls as the predominant form of book. A contributing factor to the loss of her poems may have been her Aeolic dialect , considered provincial in
11760-533: The end of the 20th century, though, some scholars began to reject the question of whether Sappho was a lesbian — Glenn Most wrote that Sappho herself "would have had no idea what people mean when they call her nowadays a homosexual", André Lardinois stated that it is "nonsensical" to ask whether Sappho was a lesbian, and Page duBois calls the question a "particularly obfuscating debate". Some scholars argue that although Sappho would not have understood modern conceptions of sexuality, lesbianism has always existed and she
11900-411: The evidence. In 1959, Denys Page, for example, stated that Sappho's extant fragments portray "the loves and jealousies, the pleasures and pains, of Sappho and her companions"; and he adds, "We have found, and shall find, no trace of any formal or official or professional relationship between them... no trace of Sappho the principal of an academy." Campbell in 1967 judged that Sappho may have "presided over
12040-463: The first-century BC Porta Maggiore Basilica in Rome. While Sappho's poetry was admired in the ancient world, her character was not always so well considered. In the Roman period, critics found her lustful and perhaps even homosexual. Horace called her " mascula Sappho " ("masculine Sappho") in his Epistles , which the later Porphyrio commented was "either because she is famous for her poetry, in which men more often excel, or because she
12180-536: The four surviving vases in which she is identified by an inscription she is never shown singing. She was also shown on coins from Mytilene and Eresos from the first to third centuries AD, and reportedly depicted in a sculpture by Silanion at Syracuse, statues in Pergamon and Constantinople, and a painting by the Hellenistic artist Leon. From the fourth century BC, ancient works portray Sappho as
12320-529: The growing plants. The stems must be processed immediately after harvesting while the inner bark is still wet. The cut stems are processed by scraping off the outer bark, then beating the branch evenly with a hammer to loosen the inner bark, which is then pried off in long rolls. Only 0.5 mm (0.02 in) of the inner bark is used; the outer, woody portion is discarded, leaving metre-long cinnamon strips that curl into rolls ("quills") on drying. The processed bark dries completely in four to six hours, provided it
12460-419: The heat of her heart". Some scholars theorize that the Tithonus poem was among her works meant for a solo singer. Only fragments of Sappho's choral works are extant; of these, her epithalamia (wedding songs) survive better than her cultic hymns. The later compositions were probably meant for antiphonal performance between either a male and female choir or a soloist and choir. In Sappho's time, sung poetry
12600-414: The indirect transmission of her work supports this notion. However, the papyrus tradition suggests that this may not have been the case: a series of papyri published in 2014 contains fragments of ten consecutive poems from an ancient edition of Sappho, of which only two are certainly love poems, while at least three and possibly four are primarily concerned with family. It is uncertain when Sappho's poetry
12740-539: The inner bark of twigs and twisted shoots. Chips are trimmings of quills, outer and inner bark that cannot be separated, or the bark of small twigs. In 2021, four countries accounted for 98% of the world's cinnamon production, a total of 226,753 tonnes : China , Indonesia , Vietnam , and Sri Lanka . True cinnamon from C. verum bark can be mixed with cassia ( C. cassia ) as counterfeit and falsely marketed as authentic cinnamon. In one analysis, authentic Ceylon cinnamon bark contained 12-143 mg/kg of coumarin –
12880-745: The land-locked spice routes once facilitated by the Middle East Arab caravans. Spices were prominent enough in the ancient world that they are mentioned in the Old Testament . In Genesis , Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers to spice merchants. In Exodus , manna is described as being similar to coriander in appearance. In the Song of Solomon , the male narrator compares his beloved to many saffron, cinnamon, and other spices. The ancient Indian epic Ramayana mentions cloves. Historians believe that nutmeg , which originates from
13020-470: The layers of bark are used. Ceylon cinnamon, using only the thin inner bark, has a lighter brown colour and a finer, less dense, and more crumbly texture. It is subtle and more aromatic in flavour than cassia and it loses much of its flavour during cooking. The barks of the species are easily distinguished when whole, both in macroscopic and microscopic characteristics. Ceylon cinnamon sticks (quills) have many thin layers and can easily be made into powder using
13160-443: The lock of Berenice's hair from Berenice herself. In the first century BC, the Roman poet Catullus established the themes and metres of Sappho's poetry as a part of Latin literature, adopting the Sapphic stanza, believed in antiquity to have been invented by Sappho, giving his lover in his poetry the name " Lesbia " in reference to Sappho, and adapting and translating Sappho's 31st fragment in his poem 51 . Fragment 31
13300-421: The love poetry for which she is best known, her surviving works include poetry focused on the family, epic-influenced narrative, wedding songs, cult hymns, and invective. With the exception of a few songs, where the performance context can be deduced from the surviving fragments with some degree of confidence, scholars disagree on how and where Sappho's works were performed. They seem to have been composed for
13440-485: The most common spice—is relatively ineffective, and in any case, salt, which is far cheaper, is also far more effective. A mortar and pestle is the classic set of tools for grinding a whole spice. Less labor-intensive tools are more common now: a microplane or fine grater can be used to grind small amounts; a coffee grinder is useful for larger amounts. A frequently used spice such as black pepper may merit storage in its own hand grinder or mill . The flavor of
13580-564: The most frequently contaminated. Food irradiation is said to minimize this risk. The International Organization for Standardization addresses spices and condiments , along with related food additives, as part of the International Classification for Standards 67.220 series. Sappho Sappho ( / ˈ s æ f oʊ / ; Greek : Σαπφώ Sapphṓ [sap.pʰɔ̌ː] ; Aeolic Greek Ψάπφω Psápphō ; c. 630 – c. 570 BC )
13720-619: The neighboring Italian maritime republics and city-states. The trade made the region rich. It has been estimated that around 1,000 tons of pepper and 1,000 tons of other common spices were imported into Western Europe each year during the Late Middle Ages . The value of these goods was the equivalent of a yearly supply of grain for 1.5 million people. The most exclusive was saffron , used as much for its vivid yellow-red color as for its flavor. Spices that have now fallen into obscurity in European cuisine include grains of paradise ,
13860-696: The oil from leaves or bark of cinnamon trees. Cinnamon is used as a flavoring in cinnamon liqueur , such as cinnamon-flavored whiskey in the United States, and rakomelo , a cinnamon brandy in Greece. Cinnamon has a long history of use in traditional medicine as a digestive aid. However, contemporary studies are unable to find evidence of any significant medicinal or therapeutic effect. Reviews of clinical trials reported lowering of fasting plasma glucose and inconsistent effects on hemoglobin A1C (HbA1c, an indicator of chronically elevated plasma glucose). Four of
14000-608: The pepper market in India, he was able to secure peppers for a much cheaper price than the ones demanded by Venice . At around the same time, Christopher Columbus returned from the New World . He described to investors the new spices available there. Another source of competition in the spice trade during the 15th and 16th centuries was the Ragusans from the maritime republic of Dubrovnik in southern Croatia. The military prowess of Afonso de Albuquerque (1453–1515) allowed
14140-484: The phrase "by some" implies that even the full corpus of Sappho's poetry did not provide conclusive evidence of whether she described herself as having sex with women. These ancient authors do not appear to have believed that Sappho did, in fact, have sexual relationships with other women, and as late as the 10th century the Suda records that Sappho was "slanderously accused" of having sexual relationships with her "female pupils". Among modern scholars, Sappho's sexuality
14280-616: The physical effects of desire in fragment 31. Many Hellenistic poets alluded to or adapted Sappho's works. The Locrian poet Nossis was described by Marilyn B. Skinner as an imitator of Sappho, and Kathryn Gutzwiller argues that Nossis explicitly positioned herself as an inheritor of Sappho's position as a female poet. Several of Theocritus ' poems allude to Sappho, including Idyll 28, which imitates both her language and meter. Poems such as Erinna 's Distaff and Callimachus ' Lock of Berenice are Sapphic in theme, being concerned with separation – Erinna from her childhood friend;
14420-420: The poems themselves. Some time in the second or third century BC, Alexandrian scholars produced a critical edition of her poetry. There may have been more than one Alexandrian edition – John J. Winkler argues for two, one edited by Aristophanes of Byzantium and another by his pupil Aristarchus of Samothrace . This is not certain – ancient sources tell us that Aristarchus' edition of Alcaeus replaced
14560-469: The potsherd on which fragment 2 is preserved, date to the third century BC, and thus might predate the Alexandrian edition. The latest surviving copies of her poems transmitted directly from ancient times are written on parchment codex pages from the sixth and seventh centuries AD, and were surely reproduced from ancient papyri now lost. Manuscript copies of her works may have survived
14700-597: The primary parts of the plant used. However, in Japan, the more pungent roots are harvested in order to produce nikki (ニッキ) which is a product distinct from cinammon (シナモン shinamon ). Cinnamon is cultivated by growing the tree for two years, then coppicing it, i.e., cutting the stems at ground level. The following year, about a dozen new shoots form from the roots, replacing those that were cut. A number of pests such as Colletotrichum gloeosporioides , Diplodia species and Phytophthora cinnamomi (stripe canker) can affect
14840-435: The public ritual nature of cultic hymns and wedding songs, tend to avoid giving details of a specific chronological, geographical, or occasional setting, which Kurke suggests facilitated their reperformance by performers outside Sappho's original context. Sappho's poetry is known for its clear language and simple thoughts, sharply-drawn images, and use of direct quotation that brings a sense of immediacy. Unexpected word-play
14980-536: The publication of the standard Alexandrian edition, Sappho's poetry continued to circulate in other poetry collections. For instance, the Cologne Papyrus on which the Tithonus poem is preserved was part of a Hellenistic anthology of poetry, which contained poetry arranged by theme, rather than by metre and incipit, as it was in the Alexandrian edition. The earliest surviving manuscripts of Sappho, including
15120-453: The remaining Portuguese by 1658. "The shores of the island are full of it," a Dutch captain reported, "and it is the best in all the Orient. When one is downwind of the island, one can still smell cinnamon eight leagues out to sea." The Dutch East India Company continued to overhaul the methods of harvesting in the wild and eventually began to cultivate its own trees. In 1767, Lord Brown of
15260-460: The reviews reported a decrease in fasting plasma glucose, only two reported lower HbA1c, and one reported no change to either measure. The Cochrane review noted that trial durations were limited to 4 to 16 weeks, and that no trials reported on changes to quality of life , morbidity or mortality rate . The Cochrane authors' conclusion was: "There is insufficient evidence to support the use of cinnamon for type 1 or type 2 diabetes mellitus ." Citing
15400-437: The seventh-century BC poet Terpander . The Aeolic metrical tradition in which she composed her poetry was distinct from that of the rest of Greece as its lines always contained a fixed number of syllables – in contrast to other traditions that allowed for the substitution of two short syllables for one long or vice versa. Sappho was one of the first Greek poets to adopt the "lyric 'I'" – to write poetry adopting
15540-496: The source of cinnamon; they recounted that giant " cinnamon birds " collected the cinnamon sticks from an unknown land where the cinnamon trees grew and used them to construct their nests. Pliny the Elder wrote that cinnamon was brought around the Arabian Peninsula on "rafts without rudders or sails or oars", taking advantage of the winter trade winds . He also mentioned cassia as a flavouring agent for wine, and that
15680-469: The standard edition; Dimitrios Yatromanolakis doubts this, noting that though ancient sources refer to an eighth book of her poetry, none mention a ninth. The Alexandrian edition of Sappho probably grouped her poems by their metre: ancient sources tell us that each of the first three books contained poems in a single specific metre. Book one of the Alexandrian edition, made up of poems in Sapphic stanzas, seems to have been ordered alphabetically. Even after
15820-480: The subject of scholarly debate; the most influential suggestions have been that she had some sort of educational or religious role, or wrote for the symposium . Sappho's poetry was well-known and greatly admired through much of antiquity , and she was among the canon of Nine Lyric Poets most highly esteemed by scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria. Sappho's poetry is still considered extraordinary and her works continue to influence other writers. Beyond her poetry, she
15960-419: The sun-scorched Grass. In my fury I seem like a dead woman, But I would dare... — Sappho 31, trans. Edward Storer Sappho worked within a well-developed tradition of poetry from Lesbos, which had evolved its own poetic diction, metres, and conventions. Prior to Sappho and her contemporary Alcaeus, Lesbos was associated with poetry and music through the mythical Orpheus and Arion , and through
16100-581: The surviving fragments of Sappho contain only a single word – for example, fragment 169A is simply a word meaning "wedding gifts" ( ἀθρήματα , athremata ), and survives as part of a dictionary of rare words. The two major sources of surviving fragments of Sappho are quotations in other ancient works, from a whole poem to as little as a single word, and fragments of papyrus, many of which were rediscovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. Other fragments survive on other materials, including parchment and potsherds. The oldest surviving fragment of Sappho currently known
16240-401: The surviving fragments of her work include family and religion. She probably wrote poetry for both individual and choral performance. Most of her best-known and best-preserved fragments explore personal emotions and were probably composed for solo performance. Her works are known for their clarity of language, vivid images, and immediacy. The context in which she composed her poems has long been
16380-405: The table as a condiment ). Some spices such as turmeric are seldom available either fresh or whole and so must be purchased in ground form. Small seeds such as fennel or mustard may be used either whole or in powdered form. A whole dried spice has the longest shelf life, so it can be purchased and stored in larger amounts, making it cheaper on a per-serving basis. A fresh spice, such as ginger ,
16520-481: The tales of cinnamon being collected from the nests of cinnamon birds was a traders' fiction made up to charge more. However, the story remained current in Byzantium as late as 1310. According to Pliny the Elder, a Roman pound (327 grams [11.5 oz]) of cassia, cinnamon ( serichatum ), cost up to 1,500 denarii , the wage of fifty months' labour. Diocletian 's Edict on Maximum Prices from 301 AD gives
16660-580: The topic. The first mention that the spice grew in the area of India was in Maimonides 's Mishneh Torah , about 1180. The first mention that the spice grew specifically in Sri Lanka was in Zakariya al-Qazwini 's Athar al-bilad wa-akhbar al-'ibad ("Monument of Places and History of God's Bondsmen") about 1270. This was followed shortly thereafter by John of Montecorvino in a letter of about 1292. Indonesian rafts transported cinnamon directly from
16800-521: The total. The English word "cinnamon", attested in English since the 15th century, deriving from the Ancient Greek κιννάμωμον ( kinnámōmon , later κίνναμον : kínnamon ), via Latin and medieval French intermediate forms. The Greek was borrowed from a Phoenician word, which was similar to the related Hebrew word קנמון ( qinnāmōn ). The name "cassia", first recorded in late Old English from Latin, ultimately derives from
16940-436: The treatment of C. verum bark harvested in Sri Lanka. A number of species are often sold as cinnamon: Cassia induces a strong, spicy flavour and is often used in baking, especially associated with cinnamon rolls , as it handles baking conditions well. Among cassia, Chinese cinnamon is generally medium to light reddish-brown in colour, hard and woody in texture, and thicker (2–3 mm (0.079–0.118 in) thick), as all of
17080-493: The twentieth century, scholars began to interpret Sappho as involved in the ritual education of girls, for instance as a trainer of choruses of girls. Though not all of her poems can be interpreted in this light, Lardinois argues that this is the most plausible social context to site Sappho in. Another interpretation which became popular in the twentieth century was of Sappho as a priestess of Aphrodite. However, though Sappho wrote hymns, including some dedicated to Aphrodite, there
17220-501: The use of lengthy melismata developed in the later classical period. Sappho wrote both songs for solo and choral performance. With Alcaeus, she pioneered a new style of sung monody (single-line melody) that departed from the multi-part choral style that largely defined earlier Greek music. This style afforded her more opportunities to individualize the content of her poems; the historian Plutarch noted that she "speaks words mingled truly with fire, and through her songs, she draws up
17360-561: The variable amount of coumarin in C. cassia , usually well over 1.0 mg of coumarin per g of cinnamon and sometimes up to 12 times that, C. cassia has a low safe-intake-level upper limit to adhere to the above TDI. In contrast, C. verum has only trace amounts of coumarin. In March 2024, the US Food and Drug Administration recommended a voluntary recall on 6 brands of cinnamon due to contamination with lead , after an investigation stemming from 500 reports of child lead poisoning across
17500-422: The viewpoint of a specific person, in contrast to the earlier poets Homer and Hesiod , who present themselves more as "conduits of divine inspiration". Her poetry explores individual identity and personal emotions – desire, jealousy, and love; it also adopts and reinterprets the existing imagery of epic poetry in exploring these themes. Much of her poetry focuses on the lives and experiences of women. Along with
17640-414: The word is used for familial but not sexual relationships. According to the Suda , Sappho was married to Kerkylas of Andros . This name appears to have been invented by a comic poet: the name Kerkylas appears to be a diminutive of the word kerkos , a possible meaning of which is "penis", and which is not otherwise attested as a name, while "Andros", as well as being the name of a Greek island,
17780-462: Was Sappho's daughter. Fragment 132 describes Cleïs as " pais ", which, as well as meaning "child", can also refer to the "youthful beloved in a male homosexual liaison". It has been suggested that Cleïs was one of her younger lovers, rather than her daughter, though Judith Hallett argues that the description of Cleis as " agapata " ("beloved") in fragment 132 suggests that Sappho was referring to Cleïs as her daughter, as in other Greek literature
17920-480: Was active until around 570 BC. Tradition names Sappho's mother as Cleïs. This may derive from a now-lost poem or record, though ancient scholars may simply have guessed this name, assuming that Sappho's daughter was named Cleïs after her mother. Ancient sources record ten different names for Sappho's father; this proliferation of possible names suggests that he was not explicitly named in any of her poetry. The earliest and most commonly attested name for him
18060-420: Was an Archaic Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos . Sappho is known for her lyric poetry , written to be sung while accompanied by music. In ancient times, Sappho was widely regarded as one of the greatest lyric poets and was given names such as the "Tenth Muse " and "The Poetess". Most of Sappho's poetry is now lost, and what is extant has mostly survived in fragmentary form; only
18200-412: Was caricatured as a promiscuous heterosexual woman, and the earliest surviving sources to explicitly discuss Sappho's homoeroticism come from the Hellenistic period. The earliest of these is a fragmentary biography written on papyrus in the late third or early second century BC, which states that Sappho was "accused by some of being irregular in her ways and a woman-lover". Denys Page comments that
18340-482: Was considered sorrowful; it was commonly used in Greek tragedy , and Aristoxenus believed that the tragedians learned it from Sappho. Aristoxenus attributed to Sappho the invention of this mode, but this is unlikely. While there are no attestations that she used other modes , she presumably varied them depending on the poem's character. When originally sung, each syllable of her text likely corresponded to one note as
18480-406: Was first written down. Some scholars believe that she wrote her own poetry down for future readers; others that if she wrote her works down it was as an aid to reperformance rather than as a work of literature in its own right. In the fifth century BC, Athenian book publishers probably began to produce copies of Lesbian lyric poetry , some including explanatory material and glosses as well as
18620-514: Was from the island of Lesbos and lived at the end of the seventh and beginning of the sixth centuries BC. This is the date given by most ancient sources, who considered her a contemporary of the poet Alcaeus and the tyrant Pittacus , both also from Lesbos. She therefore may have been born in the third quarter of the seventh century – Franco Ferrari infers a date of around 650 or 640 BC; David Campbell suggests around or before 630 BC. Gregory Hutchinson suggests she
18760-428: Was fundamentally a lesbian. Others, influenced by Michel Foucault 's work on the history of sexuality, believe that it is incoherent to project the concept of lesbianism onto an ancient figure like Sappho. Melissa Mueller argues that Sappho's poetry can be read as queer even if the question of her lesbianism is undecidable. In antiquity, Sappho's poetry was highly admired, and several ancient sources refer to her as
18900-409: Was imported to Egypt as early as 2000 BC, but those who reported that it had come from China had confused it with Cinnamomum cassia , a related species. Cinnamon was so highly prized among ancient nations that it was regarded as a gift fit for monarchs and even for a deity; an inscription records the gift of cinnamon and cassia to the temple of Apollo at Miletus . Its source was kept a trade secret in
19040-406: Was part of a more general decline in interest in the archaic poets; indeed, the surviving papyri suggest that Sappho's poetry survived longer than that of her contemporaries such as Alcaeus. Only approximately 650 lines of Sappho's poetry still survive, of which just one poem – the Ode to Aphrodite – is complete, and more than half of the original lines survive in around ten more fragments. Many of
19180-405: Was still quoted in later authors. Her work became more accessible in the 16th century through printed editions of those authors who had quoted her. In 1508 Aldus Manutius printed an edition of Dionysius of Halicarnassus , which contained Sappho 1, the Ode to Aphrodite, and the first printed edition of Longinus' On the Sublime , complete with his quotation of Sappho 31, appeared in 1554. In 1566,
19320-680: Was used to embalm mummies . From the Ptolemaic Kingdom onward, Ancient Egyptian recipes for kyphi , an aromatic used for burning, included cinnamon and cassia. The gifts of Hellenistic rulers to temples sometimes included cassia and cinnamon. The first Greek reference to κασία kasía is found in a poem by Sappho in the 7th century BC. According to Herodotus , both cinnamon and cassia grew in Arabia, together with incense, myrrh and labdanum , and were guarded by winged serpents . Herodotus, Aristotle and other authors named Arabia as
19460-445: Was usually accompanied by musical instruments , which usually doubled the voice in unison or played homophonically an octave higher or lower. Her poems mention numerous instruments, including the pektis , a harp of Lydian origin, and lyre . Sappho is most closely associated with the barbitos , a lyre-like string instrument that was deep in pitch. Euphorion of Chalcis reports that she referred to it in her poetry, and
19600-466: Was written to be sung, but its musical content is largely uncertain. As it is unlikely that any system of musical notation existed in Ancient Greece before the fifth century, the original music that accompanied her songs probably did not survive until the classical period , and no ancient musical scores to accompany her poetry survive. Sappho reportedly wrote in the mixolydian mode , which
#136863