“Sappho is best known for erotic poety, for she expressed her love frankly and without shame. She was bisexual, and much of her poetry deals with her homosexual love affairs. In one of her poems she remembers the words of her lover:

Sappho, if you do not come out,
I swear, I will love you no more.
O rise and free your lovely strength
From the bed and shine upon us.
Lifting off your Chian nightgown, and
Like a pure lily by a spring,
Bathe in the water.

In antiquity Sappho’s name became linked with female homosexual love. Today the English word lesbian is derived from Sappho’s island home.”

—McKay, Hill and Buckler, A History of Western Society, sixth edition, 1999. Quoting from Sappho by W. Barnstable, 1965.