The earliest surviving biography of Sappho dates to the late second or early third century AD, approximately eight centuries after Sappho's own life the next is the Suda, a Byzantine-era encyclopedia.

Sappho's own poetry is the only contemporary source for her life. Modern knowledge of Sappho comes both from what can be inferred from her own poetry, and from mentions of her in other ancient texts. Beyond her poetry, she is well known as a symbol of love and desire between women, with the English words sapphic and lesbian deriving from her name and that of her home island respectively. Sappho's poetry is still considered extraordinary and her works continue to influence other writers. Her poetry was well-known and greatly admired through much of antiquity, and she was among the canon of Nine Lyric Poets most highly esteemed by scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria. Sappho was a prolific poet, probably composing around 10,000 lines.

According to legend, she killed herself by leaping from the Leucadian cliffs due to her love for the ferryman Phaon. She was exiled to Sicily around 600 BC, and may have continued to work until around 570 BC. Two of them, Charaxos and Larichos, are also mentioned in the Brothers Poem discovered in 2014. Ancient sources say that she had three brothers Charaxos (Χάραξος), Larichos (Λάριχος) and Eurygios (Εὐρύγιος). She was from a wealthy family from Lesbos, though her parents' names are uncertain. Three epigrams attributed to Sappho are extant, but these are actually Hellenistic imitations of Sappho's style. As well as lyric poetry, ancient commentators claimed that Sappho wrote elegiac and iambic poetry.

Most of Sappho's poetry is now lost, and what is extant has mostly survived in fragmentary form only the 'Ode to Aphrodite' is certainly complete.

In ancient times, Sappho was widely regarded as one of the greatest lyric poets and was given names such as the 'Tenth Muse' and 'The Poetess'. Sappho is known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied by music. 570 BC) was an Archaic Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho ( / ˈ s æ f oʊ/ Greek: Σαπφώ Sapphō Aeolic Greek Ψάπφω Psápphō c. Head of a woman from the Glyptothek in Munich, identified as 'probably' a copy of Silanion's fourth-century BC imaginative portrait of Sappho

Sappho and Alcaeus by Sir Denys Page