Many critics consider Sappho the greatest female poet of the classical world and the most accomplished of an influential group of lyric poets who were active in Greece between 650 B.C. and 450 B.C.—a period often designated the Lyric Age of Greece. Though most of her work survives only in fragments, the imagery and phrasing of those fragments have been striking enough to inspire readers from her own time to the present day to deem her one of the greatest poets of all time. Many of her poems discuss the female speaker's feelings for another woman, making Sappho an important figure in homosexual literary history. (Sappho's homeland of Lesbos lent its name to the modern term "lesbian.") Moreover, as one of the first female authors of the West, Sappho has been embraced by many later authors as an icon of the feminine poetic voice.

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