Episode 2: “Poetry, Power, and Petty Drama — Sappho in Her Era” 🎭📜

Sappho wasn’t just the original lesbian poet — she was also the center of some serious ancient drama. In this episode, Rowan and Jules dive into the messy middle of Sappho’s story: the love affairs, rivalries, and possible exile that made her life as legendary as her verses.

From the longing poems to Anactoria and Atthis, to the thiasos (her circle of young women poets), to the rumors of political banishment to Sicily, we explore the real evidence behind the chaos. Along the way, we debunk the myth that Sappho threw herself off a cliff for a man (spoiler: Ovid made that up) and look at how much of her poetry has been tragically lost — and miraculously rediscovered.

💬 What you’ll hear in this episode:

• Why Lesbos was the cultural hotspot of 600 BCE
• The women Sappho loved (and the heartbreaks she turned into poetry)
• How her thiasos became both a literary school and a queer community
• Theories behind her exile to Sicily
• How Sappho’s nine books of poetry became fragments, and why every scrap matters

It’s love, power, and petty drama — ancient Greece style.

Step onto the sun-soaked island of Lesbos, where a woman with a lyre and a pen reshaped the way the world talks about love. In this episode, we dive into the life of Sappho — the ancient Greek poet whose verses of passion and longing for women were so unforgettable that her name gave rise to the very word “lesbian.” From aristocratic beginnings to running her own poetry school (basically the queerest summer camp of 600 BCE), Sappho’s story is both timeless and revolutionary.

But as dazzling as her rise was, history wasn’t kind to her. Nearly all of her poems were lost, her life became the subject of scandal, and rumors twisted her legacy. In Episode 2, “Exile, Scandal, and the Lost Poems,” we’ll unravel the myths — including the biggest lie ever told about Sappho — and how her work survived despite centuries of erasure. And in Episode 3, we’ll explore how Sappho became a queer icon for every generation that followed.