Wherever responsibility lies, there was certainly a legend subsequent to Ovid’s day that two Sapphos had flourished in Lesbos, one the great poet and the other a courtesan of undisciplined habits. Weigall believes this tale was motivated by rumors of heterosexual irregularities, and was invented by her well-wishers to clear her name of their shadow. But one must consider also that during the period of this myth’s crystallization homosexuality in either sex was no longer tolerated as it had been (within limits) in the earlier Greek period. In Rome its practice among women was associated only with courtesans; thus it may equally well have been rumors of lesbian irregularity which gave rise to the conviction that she must have been a courtesan. When one turns from personal conjecture about Sappho to the text of her work, one is left with no possible doubt about her variant tastes. Consider, for instance, the “Ode” mentioned above: It is to be a god, methinks, to sit before you and listen close by to the sweet accents and winning laughter which have made the heart in my breast beat fast, I warrant you. When I look on you, Brocheo, my speech comes short or fails me quite, I am tongue-tied; in a moment a delicate fire has overrun my flesh, my eyes grow dim and my ears ring, the sweat runs down me and a trembling takes me altogether, till I am as green and pale as grass, and death itself seems not very far away ...[5] Few of her other poems equal this in intensity, and the textual evidences that its object was a woman (the gender of the name Brocheo being for a time in doubt) are meager enough so that during the years when homosexuality was a heinous offense scholars could translate it as addressed to a man without too great a strain on intellectual integrity. Discovery of the Oxyrinchus papyri, however, (so called from the Egyptian town where they were disinterred), added so much variant material to that already preserved in quotations that it rendered honest doubt of her variance impossible. In the many poems and fragments addressed to girls her ardor is evoked oftenest by maidenhood, its moving aspect not virginity so much as physical grace and delicacy and a certain light freedom of spirit. In one fragment, indeed, she describes herself as “eternally maiden” at heart.