Virgil Bucol. Ecl. X, 41.

In the minds of the theologians pollution is synonymous with all
pleasures with persons of the opposite or the same sex, which result in a
waste of the elixir of life. In this sense, love between woman and woman
is pollution and Sappho is a sinner against the Holy Ghost.

(Notwithstanding), however (these caprices of the third person of the
trinity) I cannot see why pleasure should be regulated, or why a woman
who has surveyed all the charms of a young girl of eighteen years should
give herself up to the rude embraces of a man. What comparisons can be
made between those red lips, that mouth which breathes pleasure for the
first time, those snowy and purplous cheeks whose velvet smoothness is
like the Venus flower, half in bloom, that new-born flesh which
palpitates softly with desire and voluptuousness, that hand which you
press so delicately, those round thighs, those plastic buttocks, that
voice sweet and touching,--what comparison can be made between all this
and pronounced features, rough beard, hard breast, hairy body, and the
strong disagreeable voice of man? Juvenal has wonderfully expended all
his bile in depicting, as hideous scenes, these mysteries of the Bona
Dea, where the young and beautiful Roman women, far from the eyes of men,
give themselves up to mutual caresses. Juvenal has painted the eyes of
the Graces with colors which are proper to the Furies; his tableau,
moreover, revolts one instead of doing good.

The only work of Sappho's which remains to us is an ode written to one of
her loved ones and from it we may judge whether the poetess merited her
reputation. It has been translated into all languages; Catullus put it
into Latin and Boileau into French. Here follows an imitation of that of
Catullus: