Peter Adamson

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1,235 appearances 6 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 13 Sep

Peter Adamson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.

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History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · HoP 500a Marguerite Johnson on Sappho · 27 Sep 2026 podcast

Needless to say, we don't.

So here, I think actually the comparison to the pre-Socratics is maybe useful because the earliest pre-Socratics around the same time.

Actually, some of them were from the coast of Turkey, so not far away.

And like them, her work is preserved in fragmentary form, basically.

So can you just tell us how much do we have?

What kind of poems are we talking about?

And maybe also, why do we still have them?

Because we don't have a collection of her works.

So why do we have anything at all?

Yeah, I always say the question is not why did these things not survive, but why did they survive when you think about what had to happen for them to still exist today, right?

Yeah.

Something you mentioned actually just now is that there are very recent discoveries of Sappho fragments that weren't known before.

And I was really amazed by this when I was reading up on this to prepare for our discussion, that if I had...

covered Sappho when I started the podcast I started in 2010 the autumn of 2010 so I would have covered her around Christmas 2010 which means that there has been Sappho discovered since I would have covered her in the podcast right so I think it's something like 2014 right

do you agree that these things are authentic and like what are they what can you tell us about them

Right, okay.

I got the impression you were choosing your words very carefully there, so well done.

So let's move on to the content of the poems.

And I think probably what listeners will know about Sappho, if they know just one thing, is that she wrote about the experience of being in love.

with other women, but I think it could apply to any experience of being in love, probably, a lot of what she says.

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