Chapter 7 of The Cambridge Companion to Sappho considers the generic identity of Sappho’s poetry, noting the elusiveness of this idea in many of her fragments and proposing a new approach to the question.

“Not for me are the things of Gyges, rich in gold, a concern, / Nor has envy yet taken me, nor do I resent / The works of the gods, and I do not desire great tyranny; / For [these things] are far from my eyes.” Archilochus fr. 19 W [= 122 W2] / “Eros again the limb-loosener whirls me, / sweet-bitter, impossible, creeping thing...” Sappho fr. 130 LP / Archaic Greek poetry confronts the reader with a sudden explosion of distinctive, individual voices from all over the Greek world, in contrast to what came before - the two great lone voices of the Greek epic tradition, Homer and Hesiod - and to what followed - the almost total dominance of Athens in the literary record of the classical period. Thus, in addition to Archilochus of Paros and Sappho of Mytilene on Lesbos (quoted above), the remains of Archaic poetry include verse composed by Hipponax of Clazomenae, Semonides of Amorgos, Xenophanes of Colophon, Solon of Athens, Theognis of Megara, Alcman of Sparta, Alcaeus of Mytilene, Stesichorus of Himera, Ibycus of Rhegion, Anacreon of Teos, Pindar of Thebes, and Simonides and Bacchylides of Ceos, spanning a period from roughly 700 to 450 BCE.