Good morning.

Today, a poet ancient scholars ranked beside Homer… whose entire surviving body of work fits on a few dozen scraps of ancient trash.

Let’s begin.

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The Poet the Ancients Called the Tenth Muse

Sappho of Lesbos—Fragments

M	ytilene, Lesbos. c. 600 BCE. A woman composed songs meant to be sung aloud, accompanied by a lyre, for an audience that adored her work enough to keep copying it for a thousand years.

Sappho (c. 630–c. 570 BCE) was born to a wealthy family on the island of Lesbos, in the eastern Aegean. Ancient writers ranked her alongside Homer, and Plato reportedly called her the “Tenth Muse.” Scholars at the Library of Alexandria later organized her complete works into nine papyrus scrolls.

Almost none of it survived. Ancient libraries burned, tastes shifted, and copying stopped. Today, fewer than 650 lines remain out of what was once nine full books, and only a single poem, addressed to the goddess Aphrodite, has come down to us complete.

This is one of the actual scraps that survived, discovered less than fifteen years ago.

Every dollar you own is being replaced

You didn’t vote for this…

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Something strange is happening to your money.

It wasn't voted on. It wasn't debated in the Senate. And most Americans have no idea it's even taking place but…

President Trump is replacing the U.S. dollar.

Not with crypto. Not with a digital currency. Something far bigger than that – and it's already been signed and sealed in the back rooms of D.C., ready to be issued by the U.S. Treasury.

Bypassing every legal and political channel under the guise of "national security," Trump has enacted this total money reset using a landmark executive order (1421).

Whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, whether you support this new money or not, it doesn't matter.

Soon, every U.S. citizen will be forced to use Trump's New Dollar to fill their gas tank, buy groceries, and pay medical bills.

Which is why I've produced a critical new documentary laying out exactly what Trump's New Dollar means for your savings, your investments, and your family's financial future.

Detailing three important steps you can take today to prepare – including the name of a core band of assets connected to Trump’s initiative that could surge as a result.

As you’ll see in my briefing, the last time America reset its money like this – under Richard Nixon’s presidency in the 1970s – it created one of the greatest wealth divides in the history of our nation.

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As Trump rolls out his new dollar, the question is:

Which side will you be on?

Good investing,

Porter Stansberry

PS. If you’re wondering what Trump’s new money will look like, when it will be issued, what it means for your investments – all of those questions are answered in my briefing.

Papyrus fragment preserving Sappho's Brothers Poem

Papyrus preserving Sappho’s “Brothers Poem,” first published 2014.

This scrap of papyrus, recovered from Egypt and published in 2014, preserves a previously unknown poem about Sappho’s brother Charaxos, a sea trader. It is one of the most significant Sappho discoveries in over a century, and it surfaced within living memory, not from some dusty Victorian excavation.

“Someone will remember us, I say, even in another time.”

Sappho, Fragment 147

Most fragments survive by accident, quoted piecemeal in other ancient writers’ work, or preserved on scraps of recycled papyrus, once used to stuff mummy cartonnage or line the linings of Egyptian coffins.

This image is often labeled “Sappho” in museum shorthand, though the identification is almost certainly wrong.

The so-called “Sappho” fresco, Pompeii, c. 50 CE. Naples National Archaeological Museum.

Excavated in 1760, this fresco of a young woman holding a wax tablet and stylus was speculatively labeled “Sappho” by nineteenth-century scholars, purely on romantic hunch. Most historians now agree it depicts an ordinary, literate Pompeiian woman with no connection to the poet at all. The nickname simply never went away.

I used to picture Sappho the way this fresco suggests, elegant and composed. Reading the actual fragments, raw with jealousy, desire, and old age, is a much rougher, more immediate experience than the popular image ever prepared me for.

Sappho’s home island gave English two words still in constant use: “lesbian” and “sapphic,” both drawn from her name and her poetry’s frank attention to women loving women.

Nine books, reduced to six hundred lines… and archaeologists are still, occasionally, finding more.

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Three Things Worth Knowing

I	Art The Invented Face

Every surviving image identified as Sappho, from ancient coins and vases to nineteenth-century academic paintings by artists like John William Godward, was invented centuries or millennia after her death. No verified likeness from her own lifetime exists. Every “portrait” of Sappho is really a portrait of whatever era happened to be imagining her.

II	Le Mot Juste Sapphic Stanza

Sappho gave her name to an entire metrical form: three long lines followed by one short one, a pattern later Roman poets like Catullus and Horace borrowed wholesale for their own Latin verse. A metrical structure invented for songs sung on a Greek island 2,600 years ago is still, technically, a tool working poets can pick up and use today.

III	Philosophy The Fragment as Form

German Romantic thinkers, particularly Friedrich Schlegel, later argued that a deliberately incomplete fragment could carry more meaning than a tidy, finished whole, since it forces the reader to actively participate in completing it. Sappho’s surviving lines were never meant as fragments; time made that choice for her. But the gaps in the papyrus now function almost exactly the way Schlegel described, inviting two and a half thousand years of readers to fill in what’s missing.

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Connoisseur’s Diary

Worth Seeing This Week

The British Library holds an original 3rd-century Sappho papyrus fragment, occasionally on public display and always viewable through their digitized manuscripts collection.

Where: 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB. Tickets: general admission to the library is free; special exhibitions may carry a separate charge. Insider tip: the papyrus itself rotates on and off display for conservation reasons; the library’s Digitised Manuscripts site guarantees access regardless of what’s currently on the gallery floor. Read the British Library’s own account →

Worth Reading

If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho — trans. Anne Carson (2002). The definitive modern translation, printed with the original Greek on facing pages and every gap in the papyrus left visibly intact.

Explore Further

Read: the British Library’s own blog post on the discovery and preservation of Sappho’s papyri, linked above, is a genuinely engaging short read.

Browse: the Poetry Foundation hosts a free biography and selected fragments at poets.org, a good starting point before committing to a full translation.

Test Your Knowledge

1How many of Sappho’s original nine books of poetry survive complete?

None; only one single poem survives complete

All nine, preserved in the Vatican Library

Three, discovered together in a single tomb

Answer: None of the nine books; only one poem survives complete. Fewer than 650 lines remain out of an entire career’s work.

2Is the famous Pompeii “Sappho” fresco actually a portrait of the poet?

Almost certainly not; the label was a 19th-century guess

Yes, confirmed by an inscription on the fresco itself

Yes, it was commissioned specifically as her memorial

Answer: Almost certainly not. Most historians now treat it as a portrait of an ordinary literate Pompeiian woman.

3What does “sapphic stanza” refer to?

A metrical form: three long lines followed by one short one

A style of ancient Greek pottery decoration

The architectural layout of her school on Lesbos

Answer: A metrical form of three long lines and one short one. Roman poets like Catullus and Horace borrowed it wholesale for Latin verse.

If the links above don’t respond in your email app, just reply with your answers—I’ll write back.

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That’s all for today.

Tomorrow, one word… and the accidental discovery it was coined to describe.

In good taste,

Charles T. Mayfair

Editor, Connoisseur Daily

P.S. New Sappho fragments have surfaced twice in the last fifteen years… there is a real, live chance more of her work is still sitting, unread, in some museum’s papyrus drawer.