Many of the descriptions of desire and erotic interaction in Sappho’s songs are mediated - transformed and perpetuated - by the way she represents memory. In male lyric poetry, time was rep­ resented as a relentless enemy, love was temporary, exhilarating, and often violent.1 For Sappho the manipulation of time through memory extended sweetbitter moments of love into a poetic eter­ nity. In this chapter I investigate this mediating force and the effect it has on many of her representations. Not only those concerned with erotic exchanges, but also the time-oriented divisions in a woman’s life, and the myths and rituals that Sappho reconstructs, that construct modes of poetic and communal interaction which defy temporal categories. In the context of love memory is conso­ latory, renewing, idealising; it also has the power to negate the pain of present anguish or separation or time-ridden distinctions such as old age. As a primary constituent of oral poetry it is represented by a divinity, Mnemosyne.2 Association with Mnemosyne, and with the power that attends her, glorifies both song and singer.