Sappho: The Complete Fragments

A free illustrated PDF of all 38 surviving fragments — the oldest love poetry in the Western world.

Sappho of Lesbos (c. 630–570 BCE) was called “the tenth Muse” by Plato and celebrated throughout the ancient world as the greatest lyric poet of her age. She was said to have composed nine volumes of poetry — yet almost none of it survived.

What we have are fragments: some preserved on tattered papyrus scraps pulled from Egyptian rubbish heaps, others quoted by later writers who admired individual lines. Of an estimated ten thousand lines, fewer than seven hundred survive — roughly 5% of her total output.

The 38 fragments collected here represent the most complete and thematically coherent pieces from this surviving body of work. They are organized into ten sections — from divine invocations through love and desire, friendship, beauty, loss, wedding songs, and closing wisdom.

Only two poems remain substantially complete: the Hymn to Aphrodite and the Ode to Anactoria. The rest are single lines or short passages — yet each one carries the force of a voice that has endured for 2,600 years.

The PDF includes the full text of all fragments with original expressionist artwork, based on the translations of J.M. Edmonds and D.A. Campbell (public domain).