Editing Sappho (section)

===Surviving poetry===
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| alt1 = Fragments of papyrus
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| image2 = Ostrakon PSI XIII 1300, II sec. ac, frammento di un'ode di saffo sul culto di afrodite.JPG
| alt2 = A fragment of teracotta pottery, written on with black ink.
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| footer = Most of Sappho's poetry is preserved in manuscripts of other ancient writers or on papyrus fragments, but part of one poem survives on a potsherd.{{sfn|Rayor|Lardinois|2014|p=8}}  The papyrus pictured (left) preserves the [[Tithonus poem]] (fragment 58); the potsherd (right) preserves [[Sappho 2|fragment 2]].
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The earliest surviving manuscripts of Sappho, including the potsherd on which [[Sappho 2|fragment 2]] is preserved, date to the third century{{nbsp}}BC, and thus might predate the Alexandrian edition.{{sfn|Winkler|1990|p=166}} The latest surviving copies of her poems transmitted directly from ancient times are written on parchment [[codex]] pages from the sixth and seventh centuries{{nbsp}}AD, and were surely reproduced from ancient papyri now lost.{{sfn|Reynolds|2001|pp=81–2}} Manuscript copies of her works may have survived a few centuries longer, but around the ninth century her poetry appears to have disappeared,{{sfn|Reynolds|2001|p=81}} and by the 12th century, [[John Tzetzes]] could write that "the passage of time has destroyed Sappho and her works".{{refn|1=Tzetzes, ''On the Metres of Pindar'' 20–22 = T. 61}}{{sfn|duBois|2015|p=111}}

According to legend, Sappho's poetry was lost because the church disapproved of her morals.{{sfn|Mendelsohn|2015}} These legends appear to have originated in the [[Renaissance]] – around 1550, [[Jerome Cardan]] wrote that [[Gregory of Nazianzus|Gregory Nazianzen]] had her work publicly destroyed, and at the end of the 16th century [[Joseph Justus Scaliger]] claimed that her works were burned in Rome and Constantinople in 1073 on the orders of [[Pope Gregory VII]].{{sfn|Reynolds|2001|p=81}}

In reality, Sappho's work was probably lost as the demand for it was insufficiently great for it to be copied onto parchment when codices superseded papyrus scrolls as the predominant form of book.{{sfn|Reynolds|2001|p=18}} A contributing factor to the loss of her poems may have been her [[Aeolic dialect]], considered provincial in a period where the [[Attic dialect]] was seen as the true classical Greek,{{sfn|Reynolds|2001|p=18}} and had become the standard for literary compositions.{{sfn|Williamson|1995|page=41}} Consequently, many readers found her dialect difficult to understand: in the second century{{nbsp}}AD, the Roman author [[Apuleius]] specifically remarks on its "strangeness",<ref>Apuleius, [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0501%3Asection%3D9 ''Apologia'' 9] = T. 48</ref> and several commentaries on the subject demonstrate the difficulties that readers had with it.{{sfn|Williamson|1995|pp=41&ndash;42}} This was part of a more general decline in interest in the archaic poets;{{sfn|Williamson|1995|p=42}} indeed, the surviving papyri suggest that Sappho's poetry survived longer than that of her contemporaries such as Alcaeus.{{sfn|Finglass|2021|pp=232, 239}}

Only approximately 650 lines of Sappho's poetry still survive, of which just one poem – the Ode to Aphrodite – is complete, and more than half of the original lines survive in around ten more fragments. Many of the surviving fragments of Sappho contain only a single word{{sfn|Rayor|Lardinois|2014|p=7}} – for example, fragment 169A is simply a word meaning "wedding gifts" ({{lang|grc|ἀθρήματα}}, {{Transliteration|grc|athremata}}),{{sfn|Rayor|Lardinois|2014|p=85}} and survives as part of a dictionary of rare words.{{sfn|Rayor|Lardinois|2014|p=148}} The two major sources of surviving fragments of Sappho are quotations in other ancient works, from a whole poem to as little as a single word, and fragments of papyrus, many of which were rediscovered at [[Oxyrhynchus]] in Egypt.{{sfn|Rayor|Lardinois|2014|pp=7–8}} Other fragments survive on other materials, including parchment and potsherds.{{sfn|Rayor|Lardinois|2014|p=8}} The oldest surviving fragment of Sappho currently known is the Cologne papyrus that contains the Tithonus poem, dating to the third century{{nbsp}}BC.{{sfn|Finglass|2021|p=237}}

Until the last quarter of the 19th century, Sappho's poetry was known only through quotations in the works of other ancient authors. In 1879, the first new discovery of a fragment of Sappho was made at [[Fayum]].{{sfn|Reynolds|2001|p=289}} By the end of the 19th century, [[Bernard Pyne Grenfell]] and [[Arthur Surridge Hunt]] had begun to excavate an ancient rubbish dump at Oxyrhynchus, leading to the discoveries of many previously unknown fragments of Sappho.{{sfn|duBois|2015|p=114}} Fragments of Sappho continue to be rediscovered. Major discoveries were made in 2004 (the "Tithonus poem" and a new, previously unknown fragment){{sfn|Skinner|2011}} and 2014 (fragments of nine poems: five already known but with new readings, four, including the "[[Brothers Poem]]", not previously known).{{sfn|Rayor|Lardinois|2014|p=155}}  Additionally, in 2005 a commentary on her poems on a papyrus from the second or third century AD was published.{{sfn|Finglass|2021|p=238}}