Whether the names of her parents were or were not Scamandronymus and Clêis is an unimportant question. We may simply remark that both those names are of aristocratic colour, and both are more or less authenticated. Whether again she was born at Mitylene itself, or at the smaller town of Eresos, is of little moment, since we know that at any rate Mitylene was the scene of her life’s work. That she belonged to the ranks of the well-born, and that good looks were in the family, is proved by the choice of her brother Larichus as cup-bearer of Mitylene, an office which was bestowed only on handsome and noble youth. That at least one member of the family possessed considerable means is known from the rather romantic history of a second brother, Charaxus. This young man sailed away in his ship, laden with the famous Lesbian wine--the _innocentis pocula Lesbii_ of Horace--as far as Egypt. There he traded in that merchandise at the Pan-Grecian free-town of Naucratis, which had been established in the Delta under a permission somewhat similar to that by which settlement was first allowed in the treaty-ports of China. Here, however, he fell in love with the world-famed _demi-mondaine_ whose name, Doricha, is less familiar than her sobriquet Rhodôpis--“complexion of a rose”--and his gains were spent in chivalrously ransoming that lady from a degrading slavery. It is of interest to know, though the verses are not preserved to us, that his poetess sister reproved him sharply for this conduct. Her “love of love” did not blind her to the claims of family honour and dignity. It is gratifying to learn that at a later time she expresses her reconciliation to her brother in a poem which, like those of Herondas and Bacchylides, has but recently been disgorged, though in a sadly mutilated state, by the omnivorous sands of Egypt. Sappho herself is said to have married a wealthy islander of Andros, and to have had at least one daughter, whose name, according to Greek custom, was the name of the grandmother, Clêis. It is apparently this Clêis whom she is addressing in a fragment which we may venture to translate thus---- “I have a maid, a bonny maid, As dainty as the golden flowers, My darling Clêis. Were I paid All Lydia, and the lovely bowers Of Cyprus, ’twould not buy my maid.” An inscription on the Parian marbles informs us that, at some uncertain date, Sappho fled, or was driven, into banishment to Sicily. There is nothing unlikely in the circumstance, and it is worth noting that more than 500 years later, in the days of Cicero, Verres, the governor of that island, appropriated a bronze statue of Sappho, wrought by a Grecian master and greatly prized at Syracuse. As _Aberglaube_ which has gathered about Sappho’s history, there are two strange legends, or rather there is one strange legend in two parts, which must here be told briefly.