Sappho was an ancient Greek lyric poet from the island of Lesbos. She wrote around 10,000 lines of poetry, only a small fraction of which survives. Only one poem is known to be complete; in some cases as little as a single word survives. Modern editions of Sappho's poetry are the product of centuries of scholarship, first compiling quotations from surviving ancient works, and from the late 19th century rediscovering her works preserved on fragments of ancient papyri and parchment. Along with the poems which can be attributed with confidence to Sappho, a small number of surviving fragments in her Aeolic dialect may be by either her or her contemporary Alcaeus. Modern editions of Sappho also collect ancient "testimonia" which discuss Sappho's life and works. Textual history Ancient editions Sappho probably wrote around 10,000 lines of poetry; today, only 650 survive. They were originally composed for performance, and it is unclear precisely when they were first written down. Some scholars argue that books of Sappho's poetry were produced in or shortly after her own lifetime; others believe that if they were written down in that time, it was only as an aid to reperformance rather than as a literary work in their own right. In the third or second century BC, Sappho's poems were edited into a critical edition by scholars in Alexandria. This may have been based on an Athenian text of her poems, or one from her native island of Lesbos. It is uncertain which of the Alexandrian scholars was responsible for the edition of Sappho; both Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace are reported to have produced editions of Alcaeus, and one or both of these may have been responsible for the Alexandrian edition of Sappho. The Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poetry was divided into eight or nine books: the exact number is uncertain. Ancient testimonia mention an eighth book of the Alexandrian edition of Sappho; an epigram by mentions nine books of Sappho, though it is not certain that he is referring to the Alexandrian edition. These books were probably divided up by metre, as ancient sources tell us that each of the first three books contained poems in a single specific metre. Information about the contents of the later books is less certain: the fourth book appears to have contained many poems in acephalous hipponacteans with double choriambic expansion, and possibly in other metres;