The introduction to Andrew M. Miller’s translation of Pindar’s Odes[1] tells us that he is ‘generally reckoned the greatest lyric poet of ancient Greece’. I don’t think many non-Classicists read him now, though he, or the idea of the Pindaric, had a huge influence on poetry in different European languages over centuries in which Sappho was barely a name. Nowadays, positions are reversed: only crumbs of Sappho’s work survive, but her fragments are much translated and widely loved. Her brilliance was acclaimed in her own day, of course, but it seems to me that for later generations the … Continue Reading