Description: Sappho, the earliest and most famous Greek woman poet, sang her songs around 600 BCE on the island of Lesbos. Of what survives from the approximately nine papyrus scrolls collected in antiquity, all is translated here: substantial poems and fragments, including three poems discovered in the last two decades. The power of Sappho's poetry ‒ her direct style, rich imagery, and passion ‒ is apparent even in these remnants. Diane Rayor's translations of Greek poetry are graceful, modern in diction yet faithful to the originals. Sappho's voice is heard in these poems about love, friendship, rivalry, and family. In the introduction and notes, André Lardinois plausibly reconstructs Sappho's life and work, the performance of her songs, and how these fragments survived. This second edition incorporates thirty-two more fragments primarily based on Camillo Neri's 2021 Greek edition and revisions of over seventy fragments.
Brief description: Diane J. Rayor is Professor Emerita of Classics at Grand Valley State University, Michigan, where she received the Niemeyer Outstanding Faculty Award for excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service, and the Women's Impact Award. She was granted the Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship for translating Euripides' Helen and served as the University of Colorado's Roe Green Visiting Theatre Artist for Euripides' Hecuba. Her published translations include Euripides' 'Medea' (Cambridge, 2013); Sophocles' 'Antigone' (Cambridge, 2011); Homeric Hymns (2nd ed. 2014); Sappho's Lyre: Archaic Lyric and Women Poets of Ancient Greece (1991); and Callimachus (with S. Lombardo, 1988). She is coeditor of Latin Lyric and Elegiac Poetry (2nd ed. 2018). In her thirtieth year of teaching at GVSU she retired from the Classics Department that she co-founded.