ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the editorial reception of Sappho's poems by the Alexandrians in the third and second centuries B.C., that is, to focus on that determinative stage when the first known scholarly enterprise towards a definitive textual fixation of Sappho's poetry took place. Alexandrian editorial activities on the poems of Sappho is based on sources whose significance is hard to determine, and, for this reason, these sources should be examined as critically as possible. The obscure information that the Suda provides about Sappho's oeuvre is probably due to the frequent tendency of its compiler to collect and assemble all the material that might have been available to him, even if this material was entirely inconsistent. Since the evidence adduced by the modern defenders of this view seems equivocal, a re-examination of all the available literary and papyrological references to the total number of Sappho's Alexandrian books will prove helpful.
