Hector Leroux in his “School of Sappho” represents her standing in the atrium of a Roman house, with lyre in her left hand, on a platform inscribed with the name of the Lesbian Sappho, evidently giving instruction to her many friends and pupils who stand and sit in various postures in the audience. This is only a partial list and could easily be extended, but enough has been said to show that a knowledge of the real Sappho and her writings and the legends connected with her will help one to be a sound and intelligent critic of much in the realm of art. VI. SAPPHO’S INFLUENCE ON GREEK AND ROMAN LITERATURE If Sappho’s influence on art has been considerable, her place in literature has been far more remarkable. Nearly every thought in her fragments, which were known before the recent papyrus additions, has been borrowed or adapted by some ancient Greek or Roman poet or some modern poet in English, Italian, French, German, or modern Greek. Even the Spanish, Scandinavians, and Russians (p. 233) know her, though not so well acquainted with her as the authors of other nations. A very remarkable thing is that her writings have in all the ages been almost never unfavorably criticized from a literary point of view, no matter how her character was regarded. We have already, in giving a résumé of Sappho’s writings, cited many an echo, many a translation, many a dilation or dilution, but have seen that the real flavor of Sappho’s Greek cannot be transferred to any other language. In this and succeeding chapters, however, some of the names of writers who owe much to her will be brought together. She herself was original and coined many a new idea, many a new word, and perfected a new form of metre. Just as a modern poet, Tennyson for example, is indebted to his predecessors, Keats, Shelley, Shakespeare, for images and ideas, she was somewhat indebted in language and thought to Homer,[135] who filled the fancy of the Lesbians and was himself, probably, born at the neighboring Smyrna. She took little from Hesiod, although we find a few echoes of him which I cite in a note.[136] On the other hand, succeeding poets of the next hundred years seem to have taken little from her. Mimnermus probably knew the second ode, and his lines are included in the Corpus of Theognis.[137] If the fragment “Gold is Zeus’ child, no moth nor worm devours it (E. 110)” is Sappho’s and not originally written by Pindar himself, then Pindar took that idea from Sappho.[138] Herodotus tells the story of Rhodopis, and Plato, who would exclude poets from his ideal state, makes Socrates speak in the _Phaedrus_ of the beautiful Sappho as one of the wise ancients, and he calls her the Tenth Muse in his famous epigram.