Sappho
Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome - An Anthology - Ian Plant
Ian Plant [+ ]
Macquarie University
Dr Ian Plant is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Ancient History, Division of Humanities. He studied Classics (including Ancient Greek and Latin) and Ancient History at the University of Canterbury, where he completed his doctoral studies under the supervision of Dr Katherine Adshead and Professor Kevin Lee. He taught at the University of Western Australia before taking up the post at Macquarie.
His fields of research are Greek history and historiography, especially the study of Thucydides. He also works on women writers from Ancient Greece and Rome, and more recently on Egyptian religion in Greek and Latin writers. He teaches Ancient Greek, Latin, Mythology, Greek Heroes, Women Writers, Thucydides and Herodotus.
Among his current research projects are:
Thucydides and the writing of history
Greek and Roman writers on Egyptian Religion-a project he is working on in collaboration with A/Professor Boyo Ockinga.
Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome.
Description
(born about 630 BC) Sappho was by far the most famous woman writer in antiquity.1 Plato called her the tenth Muse, Antipater said that she surpassed all other women poets, Strabo that no other woman came close to rivalling her as a poet.2 She was honoured with portraits on coins from both Mytilene and Eresus (two cities on Lesbos which both claimed to be her birthplace)3 and with a bronze statue outside the prytaneion (town hall) in Syracuse, where she also lived for a while.4 Her early popularity in Athens is illustrated by an extant Athenian vase dated between 510–500 BC that shows her playing the lyre.