100 Places Every Woman Should Go

PLATO CALLED HER THE TENTH MUSE. OVID INCORPORATED HER lyrics into his poetry, and Solon wanted to learn her work—and die. Fast forward many centuries and even TV’s Wonder Woman cried out her name in times of trouble (“Suffering Sappho!”). While only a couple hundred samples of her work remain—totaling just four complete poems—she is a mandatory component of any classical education. She is, of course, Sappho: the Greek poetess and lyricist, and a modern-day icon for feminists the world over.

Born sometime between 630 B.C. and 600 B.C. to an aristocratic family, Sappho lived in great privilege until a violent coup sent her into exile. She later married a wealthy merchant and, according to some scholars, became the headmistress of a girls’ finishing school. She dedicated so much of her sensual work to women, people assumed she had lesbian inclinations. (Indeed her birth island, Lesbos, is where the term “lesbian” comes from.) Sappho was the first Greek poet to write in the first person, daring to reveal her own interior rather than pontificate about the gods, as most of her colleagues did.

“Even when other poets do use the first person, there is still none of the ‛freshness’ and presence that Sappho conveys—her interior seems almost flammable in comparison to other stagey first-person speech,” says Princeton instructor Sarah M. Anderson. “As so many have observed, here surely is a woman speaking for and about herself for the first time.”

Her poetry is also so melodic, it is nearly impossible to translate, and so erotic that the early Roman Catholic and Byzantine churches are said to have destroyed much of it. Remarkably, a poem she wrote 2,600 years ago was recently discovered on the wrapping of an Egyptian mummy. Scholars have interpreted it as a speech to young women that mourns the aging process:

…but my once tender body old age now has seized
my hair’s turned white instead of dark
my heart’s grown heavy,
my knees will not support me,
that once on a time were fleet for the dance as fawns….

Sappho’s modern-day admirers flock to Lesbos—Greece’s third largest island—to soak in her muses. Mountainous and lush, Lesbos is covered with olive groves that produce some of the finest oils in the nation. Other offerings include Roman ruins, hot springs, museums, historical sites, and miles and miles of dusty brown beaches. Hiking here is a joy, with trails linking villages via dells lined with pink hollyhocks and wild pears. The half-mile path from Paleohori to Rahidi includes a fun pit stop at a kafeneio, or coffee house, open in the summer.

Poetry pilgrims especially enjoy Skala Eressos, a relaxed resort. An international community of lesbians has opened shops and cafes here, and women-only hotels abound. The Antiopi Hotel boasts an open-air Jacuzzi and massage studio, while the Mascot Hotel’s rooms have private balconies overlooking citrus groves. Every September, the town throws a two-week Women’s Festival with open-mike nights, concerts, cruises, day trips, Silly Olympics, and workshops on everything from osteopathy to building space rockets (in Natalie’s “Fly Me to the Moon Seminar”).

Come back to me, Gongyla, here tonight,
You, my rose, with your Lydian lyre.
There hovers forever around you delight:
A beauty desired.

Even your garment plunders my eyes.
I am enchanted: I who once
Complained to the Cyprus-born goddess,
Whom I now beseech

Never to let this lose me grace
But rather bring you back to me:
Amongst all mortal women the one
I most wish to see.

—“Please,” Sappho