From the epilogue to the first three books of Odes it is clear that Horace saw his principal lyric achievement in terms of Aeolium carmen (3.30.13). The commentators on this passage, if they say anything at all, explain that the reference is to Sappho and Alcaeus. Horace uses a similar phrase, Lesboum … barbiton, in the very first ode of the collection (1.1.34), but here the commentators are divided in their explanation. The majority of those writing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including (most recently) Quinn and West, refer likewise to Sappho and Alcaeus; but in the major commentaries of Kiessling–Heinze and Nisbet–Hubbard reference is made only to Alcaeus. This division of opinion is reflected in the statements of distinguished Horatian scholars which are enshrined in successive editions of the Oxford Classical Dictionary. Writing in 1970, Williams said that ‘Horace claims the early Greek lyric poets, Sappho and Alcaeus, as his model’, whereas according to Syndikus, writing in 1996, ‘Horace declares that his main literary model in the Odes was the early Greek lyric poetry from Lesbos, especially that of Alcaeus.’ What seems to be at issue is the degree to which, or even the question whether, Sappho is important for Horace in his Odes.

It may be pertinent that the word barbitos, used by Horace at the end of his first ode, is not found in the extant remains of Alcaeus and was associated particularly with Sappho.