ShmoopTube

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We speak student!

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by ancient geeks.

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Uh, Greeks.

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Because a society that ran on hedonism and grapes,

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well, they must have known somethin'.

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All right, check out the following passage.

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Sappho.

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[ mumbles ]

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All right, which of the following best describes the main idea of this passage?

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And here are the potential answers.

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[ mumbles ]

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Sappho.

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She had the name of a modern-day pop star,

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but, uh, was about a thousand times more literate.

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All right, well, so which of these statements best summarizes

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the passage on Sappho?

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We can begin by eliminating option B.

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This one's completely false. Only scraps of Sappho's

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work have been left behind.

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Unless we're somehow redefining "fragments" as a great body of work,

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we can rule this choice out.

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While option A is true, it's only mentioned briefly

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in the passage, so this statement can't be the passage's

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main idea.

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Also, Sappho wrote about other things, such as

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a daughter and maybe some other stuff. [ clears throat ]

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Well, with all of the mystery surrounding her,

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she probably had a few hidden talents, too.

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Option D may be an accurate statement, but there's no mention

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of women's freedoms in the passage.

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Pretty safe to assume that if something's not even mentioned,

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it's not the main idea.

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Instead, the passage explains that, while we have

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very little knowledge of Sappho's work,

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what we do have is enough to make her

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a Greek poetry superstar.

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So let's sing an ode on a Grecian urn and select option C.

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And now, let's thank the Greeks for their gifts of

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resplendent poetry and toga parties.

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Yeah. Well, at least some of which live on today.

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Woo! [ hums a tune ]

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