Homosexuality in Ancient Greece - Sapphic Love

Sapphic Love

Sappho, a poet from the island of Lesbos, wrote many love poems addressed to women and girls. The love in these poems is sometimes requited, and sometimes not. Sappho is thought to have written close to 12,000 lines of poetry on her love for other women. Of these, only about 600 lines have survived. As a result of her fame in antiquity, she and her land have become emblematic of love between women.

In addition to being a poet, Sappho was the head of what was known as a thiasos. Thiasoi were communities of women in which Greek women could receive a limited form of education. Critically, however, girls in these communities also experienced homosexual love, sometimes for their mistresses (Sappho writes of her love for various students of hers) and sometimes for each other. As the polis evolved, however, marriage came to be an integral instrument for the organization of the culture, and women were confined to their houses; the thiasoi were no more. Girls were taught from their infancies that it was their duty and destiny in life to give their love to the men who would one day be their husbands. Female homosexuality had no place within the constraints of this new social organization.

Pedagogic erotic relationships are also documented for Sparta, together with athletic nudity for women. Plato's Symposium mentions women who "do not care for men, but have female attachments." In general, however, the historical record of love and sexual relations between women is sparse.