Una giovane Greca a paro a paro Coi nobili poeti già cantando Ed aveva un suo stil leggiadro e raro.
In his Tenth Eclogue he dedicated four verses to her:
Altera solliciti laqueos cantabit amoris Docta puella, choris doctorum immixta virorum Cinnameus roseo calamus cui semper ab ore Pendulus et dulces mulcebant astra querelae.
Petrarch’s friend, Domenico di Bandino of Arezzo (1340-c. 1415), professor at Bologna, gave her a brief article in his encyclopaedic _Fons Memorabilium Universi_. The other commentators on Petrarch ignore her. Giorgio Merula (1424-1494), Poliziano’s adversary, accepts the whole Ovidian legend as historical fact and even adds a new item to Sappho’s life by giving her a son Didas by her wealthy Andrian husband, Cercylas.
THE RENAISSANCE. There was now a second “floruit” of Sappho’s fame, but like her previous popularity among the Romans the second renaissance was not favorable to Sappho, and there was no true understanding of the historical Sappho. It was in the fifteenth century that Ovid’s perverse epistle was discovered and from that time on it biased all Sapphic literature. The great humanist Poliziano knew her slightly and has left a Latin version of the epigram on Timas. Domizio Calderini (1447-1477), the learned though not overcritical humanist, based his little knowledge of Sappho on an uncritical use of Suidas. He even falsified Horace’s _querentem_ by forging in its place _gaudentem_, and transformed Sappho from the leader of a sacred sorority into a tribade[163] or lover of her pupils, even of the famous poetess Erinna. The result was that the great injustice done Sappho by Horace and especially by Ovid was much aggravated. Thanks to Tatian and Calderini, working at different times and in different fields, Sappho was even more misjudged in the seventeenth century. It would be idle to cite the many authors who mention or malign her but who give us little material of literary importance: Giraldi (1489-1552), Ludovico di Castelvetro (1505-1571), Giorgio Carraria (1514 A.D.), Iacopo Filippo Pellenagra (1517 A.D.), Francesco Anguillac (1572), who well renders the second ode, “Parmi quell’uomo equale essere à i Dei,” Lorenzo Crasso (1625?), Ugo Foscolo (1776-1827), and many another.[164] One needs only to read the long account with many references in the famous _Dictionnaire historique et critique_ (1696) by that learned compiler, Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), who because of his scepticism lost his professorship of philosophy three years before (1693). In his ignorance he assumed that Sappho must have been bad and repeated the usual errors about her. I quote what he says ironically with regard to the charity of Madame Dacier: “charité de Mlle Le Fèvre qui a tâché pour l’honneur de Sappho de rendre le fait incertain; mais je la crois trop raisonnable pour se fâcher que nous en croyons nos propres yeux.” Anne Le Fèvre[165] in 1681 had made the first real defense of Sappho’s character, long before Wilhelm Heinse’s _Ardinghello_, and one hundred and thirty-five years before Johannes Friedrich Welcker,[166] who so influenced Goethe and Comparetti and Wilamowitz.