We have seen that during the later classical period Sappho was suspected of having been a courtesan, which in those times may also have implied lesbian activity. Just when lesbianism became the main charge against her has not been determined. To be sure, a heavy weight of disrepute fell upon her with the establishment of the Christian church, and led to the burning of her work more than once. This was ordered first about 380 A.D. by Gregory Nazianzen as the result of an earlier church father having pronounced her a _gynaion pornikon erotomanes_—lewd nymphomaniac—but the phrase does not necessarily imply lesbian excess. Subsequently Scaliger states that her books were burned in 1073 at both Rome and Constantinople, without specifying the reason.[12] As this date falls shortly after that on which the church had reimposed strict celibacy upon its clergy, it may be that society had been made sensitive to homosexual activity among celibates and turned its suspicion upon her also. But this last surmise defies proof. The lesbian controversy became bitter only in the nineteenth century when homosexuality was a heated issue both in the English-speaking countries and on the continent, and Sappho’s champions felt impelled to prove her innocence. The sole outcome of the voluminous quarrel is certainty that the issue can never be finally resolved without the unearthing of fresh evidence. There is no specific mention of active lesbianism in her verse. By way of implication there are two or three references to her girls as her own or each other’s _hetaerae_, which, since it was the common term for _courtesan_, might be taken to connote physical intimacy. She also mentions more than once the “pure and beautiful things” they all did together, an emphasis which Weigall feels may imply that in her day rumor ran otherwise. But her defenders judge these and a few more tenuous allusions insufficient to support the charge against her. More definite is Maximus of Tyre’s statement, made without animus, that three girls (whom he names) were to Sappho what Alcibiades and others were to Socrates;[13] then there is the epithet _mascula Sappho_ used by Horace,[14] and last, a reference in Ovid’s “Epistle” to “a hundred others [feminine] whom I have loved not without evil imputation.” Certain translators of Ovid, however, omit the _not_, thus completely reversing the sense of the phrase; thus neither reading carries any real weight.[15]