Hence it was quite natural that Sappho, who did not go into seclusion or hide her light, should be decried by the satirists who had never seen her. A hundred years had sufficed to dim the incidents of her life, and left them free to invent any romance they chose. Her supposed love-affairs were a fruitful theme. That men died before she was born, or were born after she died, were impertinent details which were not held to interfere in the least with their tender relations toward her. It is true that she wrote with a pen dipped in fire, but poems and tales of passion are not held even to-day as evidence against the fair fame of the author, whatever might be thought of her good taste. The Greek standards of morality were, at best, far from ours, and the frank naturalism of that age would be likely to shock our sense of decorum. But there is no indication that Sappho fell below these standards, and there is much to show that she rose above them. “I love delicacy,” she writes, “and for me love has the sun’s splendor and beauty.” Alcæus, her fellow-poet and rival, addresses her as “pure, sweetly smiling Sappho.” When he grows too ardent in his love, she rebukes him with gentle dignity: “Hadst thou felt desire for things good or noble, and had not thy tongue framed some evil speech, shame had not filled thine eyes, but thou hadst spoken honestly about it.” And why did she feel her brother’s disgrace so keenly if her own life was open to reproach? We gather from herself that she was simple, amiable, and sunny, with a Greek love of life and all that pertains to it. “I am not of revengeful temper,” she says, “but have a childlike mind.” To this naïve confession she adds a choice bit of wisdom: “When anger spreads through the breast, guard thy tongue from barking idly.” She tells her daughter not to mourn for her, as “a poet’s home is not a fit place for lamentation.” In the spirit of her age and race, she insists that “death is an evil; the gods have so judged; had it been good, they would die.”