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115-488: Leucadia may refer to: Lefkada or Leucadia, a Greek island in the Ionian Sea Leucadia National , a New York City-based holding company Leucadia State Beach , California Leucadia , a district in the city of Encinitas, California Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with

230-539: A Russian protectorate under de jure Ottoman suzerainty. The Russian Empire employed troops recruited from fugitive klephts and armatoloi in the Ionian Islands, particularly of Lefkada. Among these were captains Anastasios Tselios and Apostolos Levendakis, the latter of whom in 1802 offered to raise a company of 60 fighters on Lefkada to support the Russians. Ali Pasha of Ioannina , who coveted possession of

345-434: 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

460-685: A castle there, which became the core of the Castle of Santa Maura . The Orsini family lost Lefkada in 1331 to Walter VI of Brienne , who in 1343 ceded the castrum Sancte Maure and the island to the Venetian Graziano Giorgio . In 1360/62, Leonardo I Tocco seized Lefkada, assuming the title of duke ( dux Lucate ), whence the island is sometimes also referred to as "the Duchy" ( el Ducato and variants thereof) in Western sources of

575-504: 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

690-527: 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

805-522: 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

920-502: 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

1035-645: A hexagonal fortress with large towers as artillery platforms. In the 17th century, Lefkada became a separate sanjak within the Eyalet of the Archipelago, although according to Evliya Çelebi it belonged briefly to the Morea Eyalet in the 15th and 17th centuries. Evliya visited the island in 1670/71 and left a long and accurate description of the fortifications as well as of the town, where Islam had apparently made considerable progress. According to Evliya,

1150-472: 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

1265-416: 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

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1380-573: A mixed population. The western one was far larger, with 300 houses to 40–50 in the eastern one, and had a wooden mosque and masjid , a tekke , a maktab , two caravanserais , as well as seven small churches. Evliya remarks that this suburb had many wineshops, which were popular with both the inhabitants and the garrison. Another suburb (the Varosh-i Lefqada ) was located on the island itself, with some 700 houses, all of them inhabited by Christian Greeks, who had 20 churches. Evliya's account

1495-449: 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

1610-485: 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

1725-508: 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

1840-418: 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

1955-405: 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

2070-444: 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

2185-504: A trench in the 7th century BC on its isthmus. The southernmost tip of the island is called Cape Dukato , a name sometimes applied to the whole island. The island has a typical Mediterranean climate with hot summers and cool winters, or Csa according to the Köppen climate classification system. The stories of Sappho 's suicide and that of Artemisia of Caria jumping from the cliffs at Cape Lefkada are related to other myths linking

2300-519: 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

2415-480: 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

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2530-478: 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

2645-609: 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

2760-453: 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

2875-568: 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

2990-566: Is corroborated by Jacob Spon and George Wheler 's account that the town had about 5,000 to 6,000 inhabitants, mostly Greeks or Turks. According to the descriptions of travellers like Evliya, Lefkada was an urban centre of some importance, boasting "two of the largest works of Ottoman civil and military architecture in the Western Balkans", namely the aqueduct built by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent ( r.  1520–1566 ) and

3105-490: 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

3220-448: 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

3335-433: 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

3450-703: 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

3565-576: 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

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3680-458: 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

3795-523: Is the resort of Vasiliki , a windsurfing center. There are ferries to Kefalonia and Ithaca from Vasiliki. South of Vasiliki is Cape Lefkada, where Cephalus and the Greek female poet Sappho allegedly leapt to their death from the 30 m high cliffs on two separate occasions. The famous beach of Porto Katsiki is located on Lefkada's west coast. Lefkada was attached to mainland Greece (see below about Homer's Ithaca being Lefkada). The Corinthians dug

3910-479: 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 –

4025-731: 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

4140-472: 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

4255-671: The Despotate of Epirus , although this is not explicitly attested until 1259. The name Santa Maura is first attested for the island and its capital in 1292, when Genoese ships in Byzantine employ raided it. In 1295, the Despot of Epirus Nikephoros I Komnenos Doukas ceded the island to his son-in-law, the Count palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos John I Orsini . Orsini soon after received permission from Charles II of Naples to build

4370-472: 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

4485-529: 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

4600-534: The Second Ottoman–Venetian War , but returned it to the Ottomans in the final peace settlement. With about a thousand inhabitants in c.  1530 , the town of Lefkada was both the largest settlement and the main military installation in the sanjak , with 111 soldiers and 9 artillerymen. As with the rest of the sanjak , at the time the entire population appears to have been Christian, and only

4715-415: 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

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4830-460: 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

4945-473: 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 ,

5060-434: 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

5175-590: 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

5290-591: The Castle of Santa Maura, which was completely rebuilt by Kılıç Ali Pasha in the reign of Sultan Selim II ( r.  1566–1574 ). The island was conquered by the Venetians under Francesco Morosini following a sixteen-day siege in 1684, during the opening stages of the Morean War . Morosini evacuated the walled town and demolished both it and the two suburbs directly outside the walls, turning them into

5405-678: The Epirote mainland, where widespread Slavic settlement is attested from the late 6th until mid-8th centuries, only a handful of traces attest to a Slavic settlement in Lefkada. Information continues to be sparse during the middle Byzantine period. The island is attested as a bishopric at the Fourth Council of Constantinople in 879, and was raised to archbishopric under Emperor Leo VI the Wise ( r.  886–912 ). Administratively, it

5520-589: 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

5635-707: The Ionian Islands, besieged Lefkada in 1807. For this purpose he erected two forts on the mainland shore, the Tekke Castle and the St. George's Castle , but his attacks on the Castle of Santa Maura were successfully repulsed by the local Russian and Greek forces of the Septinsular Republic. French rule was restored in 1807 after the Treaty of Tilsit , but in 1810, the British captured the island . In 1815,

5750-407: 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

5865-687: The Ottoman sultans. The last of them, Leonardo III Tocco ( r.  1448–1479 ) was helped to maintain his rule through his marriage to Milica Branković , a niece of the highly esteemed stepmother of the Ottoman sultan Mehmed the Conqueror ( r.  1444–1446, 1451–1481 ); but when she died, he married the Aragonese Francesca Marzano. The couple quickly became hated by their Greek subjects due to their oppressive taxation. Lefkada, along with Cephalonia and Zakynthos,

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5980-426: 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

6095-597: The United Kingdom set up the United States of the Ionian Islands as a protectorate, including Lefkada. Much of the town, including the Ottoman aqueduct, was destroyed in an earthquake in 1825. After this, the town was rebuilt in wood to prevent similar damage. In 1864 the islands were ceded to Greece . The island then numbered about 24,000 inhabitants. The first museum in Europe for Lafcadio Hearn , who

6210-539: 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

6325-428: The castle's glacis . Only the island suburb remained, known as "Amaxiki" until the 19th century. With the evicted inhabitants settling there, this became the main town of the island, the predecessor of the modern city of Lefkada. The Venetians also removed all buildings associated with Islam. The Venetians modernized the castle in the 1710s, removing the last traces of the medieval castle and adding outworks towards

6440-434: The coast of Acarnania was called Leucas in earlier times. The ancient sources call Leucas a Corinthian colony, perhaps with a Corcyraen participation. In medieval British legend , Brutus of Troy found Lefkada abandoned after pirate attacks, and after offering a sacrifice to a statue of Diana in the temple of a ruined city there, was granted a vision telling him to go to Britain and found an empire. The ancient town

6555-403: 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

6670-463: 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

6785-638: The eastern, mainland side. During the Seventh Ottoman–Venetian War , following the Ottoman reconquest of the Morea in 1715, the Venetians initially abandoned Lefkada to focus their resources on the defence of Corfu . The castle was abandoned and partly demolished, but after the Siege of Corfu ended in a Venetian victory, the island was reoccupied and the fortifications restored. Venetian rule over

6900-400: 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

7015-520: 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

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7130-533: 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

7245-536: The entire population lived. Under Ottoman rule, it was initially a kaza of the sanjak of Karli-Eli , which from c.  1550 belonged to the Eyalet of the Archipelago , subordinated to the chief admiral of the Ottoman navy , the Kapudan Pasha . The kaza of Lefkada comprised not only the island, but also part of the adjoining mainland. The Venetians briefly occupied the island in 1502–03 during

7360-411: 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

7475-463: 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

7590-576: The fortified town. In 1413, the Prince of Achaea , Centurione II Zaccaria , launched an attack on Lefkada and its castle with Albanian mercenaries, but were defeated with help from the Republic of Venice . The Ottomans captured most of Epirus and raided the island, leading the Tocci to consider ceding it to the Venetians. Faced with expanding Ottoman power in the mainland, the Tocci became vassals of

7705-451: The fortress garrisons and administrators were Muslim; thus the only mosques were located inside the fortresses. A lack of water led to the construction of a 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) long aqueduct from the island's interior to the town in 1564, during the reign of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent ( r.  1520–1566 ). Bringing water to the walled town as well as to the much larger—some 700–800 houses—open town that had grown around it

7820-536: 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

7935-419: 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

8050-414: 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

8165-516: The island is about 302 square kilometres (117 sq mi), the area of the municipality (including the islands Kalamos , Kastos and several smaller islets) is 333.58 km (128.80 sq mi). Its highest point is the mountain Stavrota , at 1,158 metres (3,799 feet) above sea level , situated in the middle of the island. The east coast section of the island has small resorts of Lygia , Nikiana and Perigiali , all north of Nidri ,

8280-608: The island of Lefkada and the smaller islands of Kastos and Kalamos . Regional Development department, part of Ionian university based in Lefkada. The Island of Lefkada and the town of Vasiliki are known as a hotspot for extreme sport lovers. The island has become a favorite spot for windsurfers. Another sport is the 4X4 events and opportunities for offroad activities. (in chronological order) Sappho Sappho ( / ˈ s æ f oʊ / ; Greek : Σαπφώ Sapphṓ [sap.pʰɔ̌ː] ; Aeolic Greek Ψάπφω Psápphō ; c.  630  – c.  570   BC )

8395-404: The island to the ancient Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite . The island is also linked to Odysseus , the hero of Homer 's Odyssey. The German archaeologist Wilhelm Dörpfeld , having performed excavations at various locations of Lefkada, was able to obtain funding to do work on the island by suggesting that Lefkada was Homer's Ithaca , and the palace of Odysseus was located west of Nydri on

8510-590: The island was uninterrupted, apart from a rebellion of the local Greeks in 1769, until the Fall of the Republic of Venice in 1797. Following the end of the Republic of Venice in 1797, Lefkada, like the other Venetian Ionian Islands , was occupied by the French , who held it until a Russo-Turkish expedition under Fyodor Ushakov captured it in 1799. In 1800, the Septinsular Republic was established,

8625-473: The largest resort on the island. It is set in a sheltered location with views across to Skorpios (formerly owned by Aristotle Onassis ), Meganisi and other small islands, as well as the Greek mainland. The main coastal road from Lefkada to Vasiliki runs through the village, although a bypass has now been completed which skirts the village to the west. There are regular car ferries to Kefalonia , Ithaca and Meganissi . 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of Nidri

8740-443: 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

8855-421: 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

8970-611: The open mind of his lectures, writings and tales. The municipalities of Kumamoto, Matsue, Shinjuku, Yaizu, as well as Toyama University, the Koizumi family, and other people from Japan and Greece contributed to the establishment of the Lafcadio Hearn Historical Center. The present municipality of Lefkada was formed in the 2011 local government reform by the merger of the following 7 former municipalities, which became municipal units: The municipality covers

9085-461: The period. The local Orthodox archbishop was evicted. After Albanian clans took over much of Epirus in the 1350s and 1360s, they launched frequent attacks on the island between 1375 and 1395. Carlo I Tocco ( r.  1376–1429 ) made the island the capital of his domains, which apart from the County palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos also included much of the Epirote mainland, and enlarged

9200-484: 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

9315-616: 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;

9430-420: 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

9545-469: 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

9660-435: 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

9775-536: 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

9890-437: 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

10005-492: The south coast of Lefkada. There have been suggestions by local tourism officials that several passages in the Odyssey point to Lefkada as a possible model for Homeric Ithaca. The most notable of these passages pushed by the local tourism board describes Ithaca as an island reachable on foot, which was the case for Lefkada since it is not really an island, being connected to the mainland by a narrow causeway. According to Strabo ,

10120-469: 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

10235-480: 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

10350-419: 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

10465-633: 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

10580-401: 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

10695-563: The title Leucadia . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Leucadia&oldid=544202321 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Lefkada Lefkada measures 35 kilometres (22 miles) from north to south, and 15 kilometres (9 miles) from east to west. The area of

10810-493: 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

10925-501: 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

11040-422: 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

11155-414: The walled town boasted five Friday mosques , including an Imperial Mosque ( Hünkar Camii ), which was a converted church, a minor mosque ( masjid ), a madrasa , two schools ( maktab ), a bath ( hammam ), and five public fountains ( çeshme ). The walled town with its 200 stone houses was now occupied exclusively by Muslims, while the two suburbs ( varosh ) to the east and west were built of wood and had

11270-414: 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,

11385-462: 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

11500-480: 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

11615-420: 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

11730-410: Was born on the island and is named after it, was inaugurated in Lefkada on July 4, 2014, as Lafcadio Hearn Historical Center. It contains early editions, rare books and Japanese collectibles. The visitors, through photos, texts and exhibits, can wander in the significant events of Lafcadio Hearn's life, and also in the civilizations of Europe, America and Japan of late 19th and early 20th centuries through

11845-412: Was captured by the Ottoman admiral Gedik Ahmed Pasha in 1479. Part of the population was deported to Constantinople as part of Mehmed's policy to repopulate his capital. The Ottomans called the island Levkada ( Ottoman Turkish : لفكادة or لفقادة ), with the name Aya Mavra ( ايامورة , from Greek Αγία Μαύρα , meaning "Santa Maura") reserved for the castle and capital of the island, where almost

11960-412: 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

12075-431: 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

12190-406: 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

12305-628: Was founded in the 7th century BC, somewhat to the south of the modern capital of the island. During the Peloponnesian War , Leucas joined the Peloponnesian League . The town was conquered during the 3rd century by Agathocles of Syracuse . No information survives on the island during the early Byzantine period , when the town possibly disappeared in the turmoils of the Migration Period . Nevertheless, unlike

12420-514: 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

12535-428: 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

12650-566: Was likely part of the Theme of Cephallenia . Liutprand of Cremona visited the island during his 968 embassy to Constantinople. In 1099 it was raided by Dagobert of Pisa , and it is mentioned in al-Idrisi 's geography in the mid-12th century. The Republic of Venice was accorded privileges in the island in 1198 and possession of the island in the treaty of partition of the Byzantine Empire in 1204. Lefkada apparently became part of

12765-630: Was one of the most important works of Ottoman civil architecture in the western Balkans. On top of the aqueduct was a footpath that provided the only access to the island other than by the sea. In the aftermath of the Ottoman defeat at the Battle of Lepanto , the castle was unsuccessfully besieged by the forces of the Holy League . As a result, it was completely rebuilt and enlarged by the Kapudan Pasha Kılıç Ali Pasha in 1572–1574 into

12880-406: 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

12995-405: 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,

13110-445: 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

13225-466: 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

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