In the Greek biography, written on Papyrus, Sappho is being called a Woman-lover.
Female homosexuality did not let to outrage around the time Sappho lived. Yet it should be a love between an elderly scholar with a high status and a social inferior younger, in Sappho's poems Sappho refers to her lovers as her darlings. But she also falls in love with Alcaeus, a man who loves man without beards. Pretty Queer :
Beautiful-throned, immortal Aphrodite,
Daughter of Zeus, beguiler, I implore thee.
Weigh me not down with weariness and anguish,
thou most holy!
Come to me now, if ever thou in kindness
Hearkenedst my words, — and often hast thou hearkened —
Heeding, and coming from the mansions golden
Of thy great Father,
Yoking thy chariot, borne by thy most lovely
Consecrated birds, with dusky-tinted pinions,
Waving swift wings from utmost heights of heaven
Through the mid-ether;
Swiftly they vanished, leaving thee, O goddess.
Smiling, with face immortal in its beauty,
Asking why I grieved, and why in utter longing
1 had dared call thee;
Asking what I sought, thus hopeless in desiring,
Wildered in brain, and spreading nets of passion —
Alas, for whom? and saidst thou, "Who has harmed thee?
O my poor Sappho!
Though now he flies, erelong he shall pursue thee;
Fearing thy gifts, he too in turn shall bring them;
Loveless to-day, to-morrow he shall woo thee.
Though thou shouldst spurn him."
Thus seek me now, O holy Aphrodite!
Save me from anguish; give me all I ask for,
Gifts at thy hand; and thine shall be the glory.
Sacred protector!