It was not until 1909 that so considerable an author as Rainer Maria Rilke ventured to exalt Sappho’s loves (without discussing their nature) as nearer the ‘divine intention’ than heterosexual passion, which he pronounced a ‘temporal interruption’ in the evolution of ideal human relations. Taking Ovid’s “Epistle” as a virtual translation from some vanished poem of Sappho’s, Rilke suggests that the original was a lament not for some actual lover, but for the nonexistent man who could satisfy her after her less sensual experience with girls.[16] With this century’s increasing tolerance of all sorts of sexual freedom, prejudice has softened to a relatively untroubled acceptance of Sappho’s probable lesbianism, and to an effort to understand, rather than defend, such behavior. Weigall suggests that one description of her “tiny little body” implies underdevelopment and unfitness for easy childbearing, circumstances which psychiatrists consider likely to induce avoidance of heterosexual relations and motherhood. And Freudians might stress her devotion to her eldest brother, Charaxus. In two surviving poems she attacks him so harshly for marrying a beautiful Alexandrian courtesan, whose freedom he had purchased at great cost, that her vitriolic lines to him and the epithet “black she-dog” for his wife suggest acute jealousy as well as contempt.[17] All this conjecture, like last century’s battles, proves little save the impossibility of objective judgment until new evidence appears. In accordance with the temper of our own time, we may leave it that Sappho was certainly variant, and, quite probably, what modern authorities term bisexual. She experienced marriage and motherhood, and may even have enjoyed other heterosexual relationships, but passion for her own sex inspired most of her poems, to judge from the surviving fragments. Furthermore these poems have been called by some critics the greatest love lyrics ever penned. * * * * * Though the work of Sappho provides a natural introduction, chronological precedence must be granted to the biblical Book of Ruth, written perhaps a few centuries earlier and describing events that antedated King David by three generations. This great short story, long acclaimed as a masterpiece of narrative art, is the first of a thin line of delicate portrayals, by authors seemingly blind to their full significance, of an attachment which, however innocent, is nevertheless still basically variant.