It is natural to begin a study of sex variant women with Sappho, Greek lyric poet of the early sixth century B.C., whose name and that of her native island, Lesbos, have supplied our popular vocabulary with its terms for female homosexuality. Plato, who lived only two centuries later and probably knew her work almost completely, pronounced her the Tenth Muse, and, happily, the high quality of her verse led classical writers to quote it freely. For what with the hazards of time and later prejudice, the twelve thousand lines she is believed to have written are now lost save for these quoted excerpts and some fragments on papyri salvaged during modern excavations in Egypt. The few hundred surviving lines consist largely of lyrics addressed to girls, among them the famous “Ode” which has been pronounced the most economical description of passion to be found in literature. These verses will be considered presently. An amazing quantity has been written about Sappho, translating and re-translating her poetry, eulogizing her poetic genius, and arguing hotly about her emotional life. An exhaustive bibliography would fill yet another volume. The ultimate source upon which all the rest is based may be consulted in the Loeb Classical Library’s _Lyra Graeca_,[1] where J. M. Edmonds gives (with translations) the text of all that is known of her poems, taking into account the latest archaeological findings, as well as every significant allusion to Sappho in classical literature from Plato to Suidas—some seventy references by more than forty authors. A more popular volume is that from the Peter Pauper Press (1948)[2] in which an anonymous compiler has assembled for each of Sappho’s poems and fragments the two or three soundest prose translations along with metrical versions by well-known English poets. As is universally the case with persons so far removed in time, few details of the poet’s life are established beyond question. The most comprehensive biographical effort to date is Arthur Weigall’s _Sappho of Lesbos, Her Life and Times_ (1932),[3] to which its author brings a wide knowledge of classical languages, history and geography. Although perhaps too conjectural in parts to satisfy the rigid scholar, this can be recommended for its careful documentation and its impartiality with regard to Sappho’s emotional temperament.