Skala Eressou

The poet Sappho, according to unreliable records, was allegedly born here circa 612 BC. She most likely presided over a finishing school for marriageable young women, and she appears to have been married herself and to have had a daughter. Dubbed the Tenth Muse by Plato because of her skill and sensitivity, Sappho wrote songs that erotically praise women and celebrate their marriages. Sappho's works—proper and popular in their time—were burned by Christians, so that mostly fragments survive; one is "and I yearn, and I desire." Sapphic meter was in great favor in Roman and medieval times; both Catullus and Gregory the Great used it, and in the 19th century, so did Tennyson. Since the 1970s, many gay women have been coming to Skala Eresou to celebrate Sappho (the word "lesbian" derives from Lesvos), although the welcoming town is also filled with plenty of heterosexual couples and other travelers who come to enjoy the delightful setting and appealing, laid-back scene.

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