title: Heavy water

text: Semiheavy water, HDO, exists whenever there is water with light hydrogen (protium, ) and deuterium (D or ) in the mix. This is because hydrogen atoms (hydrogen-1 and deuterium) are rapidly exchanged between water molecules. Water containing 50% H and 50% D in its hydrogen actually contains about 50% HDO and 25% each of and , in dynamic equilibrium.


title: Heavy water

text: In normal water, about 1 molecule in 3,200 is HDO (one hydrogen in 6,400 is in the form of D), and heavy water molecules () only occur in a proportion of about 1 molecule in 41 million (i.e. one in 6,400). Thus semiheavy water molecules are far more common than "pure" (homoisotopic) heavy water molecules.


title: Heavy water

text: Water enriched in the heavier oxygen isotopes and is also commercially available. It is "heavy water" as it is denser than normal water ( is approximately as dense as , is about halfway between and )—but is rarely called heavy water, since it does not contain the deuterium that gives DO its unusual nuclear and biological properties. It is more expensive than DO due to the more difficult separation of O and O. HO is also used for production of fluorine-18 for radiopharmaceuticals and radiotracers and for positron emission tomography. Small amounts of and are naturally present in water and most processes enriching heavy water also enrich the heavier isotopes of oxygen as a side-effect. This is undesirable if the heavy water is to be used as a neutron moderator in nuclear reactors, as can undergo neutron capture, followed by emission of an alpha particle, producing radioactive . However, doubly labeled water, containing both a heavy oxygen and heavy hydrogen, is useful as a non-radioactive isotopic tracer.


title: Heavy water

text: Compared to the isotopic change of hydrogen atoms, the isotopic change of oxygen has a smaller effect on the physical properties.


title: Heavy water

text: Tritiated water contains tritium (H) in place of protium (H) or deuterium (H), and, as tritium itself is radioactive, tritiated water is also radioactive.


title: Heavy water

text: The physical properties of water and heavy water differ in several respects. Heavy water is less dissociated than light water at given temperature, and the true concentration of D ions is less than ions would be for a light water sample at the same temperature. The same is true of OD vs. ions. For heavy water Kw DO (25.0 °C) = 1.35 × 10, and [D] must equal [OD] for neutral water. Thus pKw DO = p[OD] + p[D] = 7.44 + 7.44 = 14.87 (25.0 °C), and the p[D] of neutral heavy water at 25.0 °C is 7.44.


title: Heavy water

text: The pD of heavy water is generally measured using pH electrodes giving a pH (apparent) value, or pHa, and at various temperatures a true acidic pD can be estimated from the directly pH meter measured pHa, such that pD+ = pHa (apparent reading from pH meter) + 0.41. The electrode correction for alkaline conditions is 0.456 for heavy water. The alkaline correction is then pD+ = pH(apparent reading from pH meter) + 0.456. These corrections are slightly different from the differences in p[D+] and p[OD-] of 0.44 from the corresponding ones in heavy water.


title: Heavy water

text: Heavy water is 10.6% denser than ordinary water, and heavy water's physically different properties can be seen without equipment if a frozen sample is dropped into normal water, as it will sink. If the water is ice-cold the higher melting temperature of heavy ice can also be observed: it melts at 3.7 °C, and thus does not melt in ice-cold normal water.


title: Heavy water

text: A 1935 experiment reported not the "slightest difference" in taste between ordinary and heavy water. One study has concluded that heavy water tastes "distinctly sweeter" for humans, and is mediated by the TAS1R2/TAS1R3 taste receptor. Rats given a choice between distilled normal water and heavy water were able to avoid the heavy water based on smell, and it may have a different taste. Some people report that minerals in water affect taste, e.g. potassium lending a sweet taste to hard water, but there are many factors of a perceived taste in water besides mineral contents.


title: Heavy water

text: Heavy water lacks the characteristic blue color of light water; this is because the molecular vibration harmonics, which in light water cause weak absorption in the red part of the visible spectrum, are shifted into the infrared and thus heavy water does not absorb red light.


title: Heavy water

text: No physical properties are listed for "pure" semi-heavy water, because it is unstable as a bulk liquid. In the liquid state, a few water molecules are always in an ionised state, which means the hydrogen atoms can exchange among different oxygen atoms. Semi-heavy water could, in theory, be created via a chemical method, but it would rapidly transform into a dynamic mixture of 25% light water, 25% heavy water, and 50% semi-heavy water. However, if it were made in the gas phase and directly deposited into a solid, semi-heavy water in the form of ice could be stable. This is due to collisions between water vapor molecules being almost completely negligible in the gas phase at standard temperatures, and once crystallized, collisions between the molecules cease altogether due to the rigid lattice structure of solid ice.


title: Heavy water

text: The US scientist and Nobel laureate Harold Urey discovered the isotope deuterium in 1931 and was later able to concentrate it in water. Urey's mentor Gilbert Newton Lewis isolated the first sample of pure heavy water by electrolysis in 1933. George de Hevesy and Erich Hofer used heavy water in 1934 in one of the first biological tracer experiments, to estimate the rate of turnover of water in the human body. The history of large-quantity production and use of heavy water, in early nuclear experiments, is described below.


title: Heavy water

text: Different isotopes of chemical elements have slightly different chemical behaviors, but for most elements the differences are far too small to have a biological effect. In the case of hydrogen, larger differences in chemical properties among protium (light hydrogen), deuterium, and tritium occur, because chemical bond energy depends on the reduced mass of the nucleus–electron system; this is altered in heavy-hydrogen compounds (hydrogen-deuterium oxide is the most common species) more than for heavy-isotope substitution involving other chemical elements. The isotope effects are especially relevant in biological systems, which are very sensitive to even the smaller changes, due to isotopically influenced properties of water when it acts as a solvent.


title: Heavy water

text: Heavy water affects the period of circadian oscillations, consistently increasing the length of each cycle. The effect has been demonstrated in unicellular organisms, green plants, isopods, insects, birds, mice, and hamsters. The mechanism is unknown.


title: Heavy water

text: To perform their tasks, enzymes rely on their finely tuned networks of hydrogen bonds, both in the active center with their substrates, and outside the active center, to stabilize their tertiary structures. As a hydrogen bond with deuterium is slightly stronger than one involving ordinary hydrogen, in a highly deuterated environment, some normal reactions in cells are disrupted.


title: Heavy water

text: Particularly hard-hit by heavy water are the delicate assemblies of mitotic spindle formations necessary for cell division in eukaryotes. Plants stop growing and seeds do not germinate when given only heavy water, because heavy water stops eukaryotic cell division. The deuterium cell is larger and is a modification of the direction of division. The cell membrane also changes, and it reacts first to the impact of heavy water. In 1972, it was demonstrated that an increase in the percentage content of deuterium in water reduces plant growth. Research conducted on the growth of prokaryote microorganisms in artificial conditions of a heavy hydrogen environment showed that in this environment, all the hydrogen atoms of water could be replaced with deuterium. Experiments showed that bacteria can live in 98% heavy water. Concentrations over 50% are lethal to multicellular organisms, however a few exceptions are known such as switchgrass ("Panicum virgatum") which is able to grow on 50% DO; the plant "Arabidopsis thaliana" (70% DO); the plant "Vesicularia dubyana" (85% DO);


title: Heavy water

text: the plant "Funaria hygrometrica" (90% DO); and the anhydrobiotic species of nematode "Panagrolaimus superbus" (nearly 100% DO). A comprehensive study of heavy water on the fission yeast "Schizosaccharomyces pombe" showed that the cells displayed an altered glucose metabolism and slow growth at high concentrations of heavy water. In addition, the cells activated the heat-shock response pathway and the cell integrity pathway, and mutants in the cell integrity pathway displayed increased tolerance to heavy water.


title: Heavy water

text: Experiments with mice, rats, and dogs have shown that a degree of 25% deuteration causes (sometimes irreversible) sterility, because neither gametes nor zygotes can develop. High concentrations of heavy water (90%) rapidly kill fish, tadpoles, flatworms, and "Drosophila". The only known exception is the anhydrobiotic nematode "Panagrolaimus superbus", which is able to survive and reproduce in 99.9% DO. Mammals (for example, rats) given heavy water to drink die after a week, at a time when their body water approaches about 50% deuteration. The mode of death appears to be the same as that in cytotoxic poisoning (such as chemotherapy) or in acute radiation syndrome (though deuterium is not radioactive), and is due to deuterium's action in generally inhibiting cell division. It is more toxic to malignant cells than normal cells, but the concentrations needed are too high for regular use. As may occur in chemotherapy, deuterium-poisoned mammals die of a failure of bone marrow (producing bleeding and infections) and of intestinal-barrier functions (producing diarrhea and loss of fluids).


title: Heavy water

text: Despite the problems of plants and animals in living with too much deuterium, prokaryotic organisms such as bacteria, which do not have the mitotic problems induced by deuterium, may be grown and propagated in fully deuterated conditions, resulting in replacement of all hydrogen atoms in the bacterial proteins and DNA with the deuterium isotope.


title: Heavy water

text: In higher organisms, full replacement with heavy isotopes can be accomplished with other non-radioactive heavy isotopes (such as carbon-13, nitrogen-15, and oxygen-18), but this cannot be done for deuterium. This is a consequence of the ratio of nuclear masses between the isotopes of hydrogen, which is much greater than for any other element.


title: Heavy water

text: Deuterium oxide is used to enhance boron neutron capture therapy, but this effect does not rely on the biological or chemical effects of deuterium, but instead on deuterium's ability to moderate (slow) neutrons without capturing them.


title: Heavy water

text: Recent experimental evidence indicates that systemic administration of deuterium oxide (30% drinking water supplementation) suppresses tumor growth in a standard mouse model of human melanoma, an effect attributed to selective induction of cellular stress signaling and gene expression in tumor cells.


title: Heavy water

text: Because it would take a very large amount of heavy water to replace 25% to 50% of a human being's body water (water being in turn 50–75% of body weight) with heavy water, accidental or intentional poisoning with heavy water is unlikely to the point of practical disregard. Poisoning would require that the victim ingest large amounts of heavy water without significant normal water intake for many days to produce any noticeable toxic effects.


title: Heavy water

text: Oral doses of heavy water in the range of several grams, as well as heavy oxygen O, are routinely used in human metabolic experiments. (See doubly labeled water testing.) Since one in about every 6,400 hydrogen atoms is deuterium, a human containing of body water would normally contain enough deuterium (about ) to make of pure heavy water, so roughly this dose is required to double the amount of deuterium in the body.


title: Heavy water

text: A loss of blood pressure may partially explain the reported incidence of dizziness upon ingestion of heavy water. However, it is more likely that this symptom can be attributed to altered vestibular function.


title: Heavy water

text: Although many people associate heavy water primarily with its use in nuclear reactors, pure heavy water is not radioactive. Commercial-grade heavy water is slightly radioactive due to the presence of minute traces of natural tritium, but the same is true of ordinary water. Heavy water that has been used as a coolant in nuclear power plants contains substantially more tritium as a result of neutron bombardment of the deuterium in the heavy water (tritium is a health risk when ingested in large quantities).


title: Heavy water

text: In 1990, a disgruntled employee at the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station in Canada obtained a sample (estimated as about a "half cup") of heavy water from the primary heat transport loop of the nuclear reactor, and loaded it into a cafeteria drink dispenser. Eight employees drank some of the contaminated water. The incident was discovered when employees began leaving bioassay urine samples with elevated tritium levels. The quantity of heavy water involved was far below levels that could induce heavy water toxicity, but several employees received elevated radiation doses from tritium and neutron-activated chemicals in the water. This was not an incident of heavy water poisoning, but rather radiation poisoning from other isotopes in the heavy water.


title: Heavy water

text: Some news services were not careful to distinguish these points, and some of the public were left with the impression that heavy water is normally radioactive and more severely toxic than it actually is. Even if pure heavy water had been used in the water cooler indefinitely, it is not likely the incident would have been detected or caused harm, since no employee would be expected to get much more than 25% of their daily drinking water from such a source.


title: Heavy water

text: On Earth, deuterated water, HDO, occurs naturally in normal water at a proportion of about 1 molecule in 3,200. This means that 1 in 6,400 hydrogen atoms is deuterium, which is 1 part in 3,200 by weight (hydrogen weight). The HDO may be separated from normal water by distillation or electrolysis and also by various chemical exchange processes, all of which exploit a kinetic isotope effect. With the partial enrichment also occurring in natural bodies of water under particular evaporation conditions. (For more information about the isotopic distribution of deuterium in water, see Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water.)


title: Heavy water

text: In theory, deuterium for heavy water could be created in a nuclear reactor, but separation from ordinary water is the cheapest bulk production process.


title: Heavy water

text: The difference in mass between the two hydrogen isotopes translates into a difference in the zero-point energy and thus into a slight difference in the speed of the reaction. Once HDO becomes a significant fraction of the water, heavy water becomes more prevalent as water molecules trade hydrogen atoms very frequently. Production of pure heavy water by distillation or electrolysis requires a large cascade of stills or electrolysis chambers and consumes large amounts of power, so the chemical methods are generally preferred.


title: Heavy water

text: The most cost-effective process for producing heavy water is the dual temperature exchange sulfide process (known as the Girdler sulfide process) developed in parallel by Karl-Hermann Geib and Jerome S. Spevack in 1943.


title: Heavy water

text: An alternative process, patented by Graham M. Keyser, uses lasers to selectively dissociate deuterated hydrofluorocarbons to form deuterium fluoride, which can then be separated by physical means. Although the energy consumption for this process is much less than for the Girdler sulfide process, this method is currently uneconomical due to the expense of procuring the necessary hydrofluorocarbons.


title: Heavy water

text: As noted, modern commercial heavy water is almost universally referred to, and sold as, deuterium oxide. It is most often sold in various grades of purity, from 98% enrichment to 99.75–99.98% deuterium enrichment (nuclear reactor grade) and occasionally even higher isotopic purity.


title: Heavy water

text: Argentina is the main producer of heavy water, using an ammonia/hydrogen exchange based plant supplied by Switzerland's Sulzer company. It is also a major exporter to Canada, Germany, the US and other countries. The heavy water production facility located in Arroyito is the world's largest heavy water production facility. Argentina produces of heavy water per year using the "monothermal ammonia-hydrogen isotopic exchange" method.


title: Heavy water

text: In October 1939, Soviet physicists Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich and Yulii Borisovich Khariton concluded that heavy water and carbon were the only feasible moderators for a natural uranium reactor, and in August 1940, along with Georgy Flyorov, submitted a plan to the Russian Academy of Sciences calculating that 15 tons of heavy water were needed for a reactor. With the Soviet Union having no uranium mines at the time, young Academy workers were sent to Leningrad photographic shops to buy uranium nitrate, but the entire heavy water project was halted in 1941 when German forces invaded during Operation Barbarossa.


title: Heavy water

text: By 1943, Soviet scientists had discovered that all scientific literature relating to heavy water had disappeared from the West, which Flyorov in a letter warned Soviet leader Joseph Stalin about, and at which time there was only 2–3 kg of heavy water in the entire country. In late 1943, the Soviet purchasing commission in the U.S. obtained 1 kg of heavy water and a further 100 kg in February 1945, and upon World War II ending, the NKVD took over the project.


title: Heavy water

text: In October 1946, as part of the Russian Alsos, the NKVD deported to the Soviet Union from Germany the German scientists who had worked on heavy water production during the war, including Karl-Hermann Geib, the inventor of the Girdler sulfide process. These German scientists worked under the supervision of German physical chemist Max Volmer at the Institute of Physical Chemistry in Moscow with the plant they constructed producing large quantities of heavy water by 1948.


title: Heavy water

text: During the Manhattan Project the United States constructed three heavy water production plants as part of the P-9 Project at Morgantown Ordnance Works, near Morgantown, West Virginia; at the Wabash River Ordnance Works, near Dana and Newport, Indiana; and at the Alabama Ordnance Works, near Childersburg and Sylacauga, Alabama. Heavy water was also acquired from the Cominco plant in Trail, British Columbia, Canada. The Chicago Pile-3 experimental reactor used heavy water as a moderator and went critical in 1944. The three domestic production plants were shut down in 1945 after producing around 81,470lb of product. The Wabash plant resumed heavy water production in 1952.


title: Heavy water

text: In 1953, the United States began using heavy water in plutonium production reactors at the Savannah River Site. The first of the five heavy water reactors came online in 1953, and the last was placed in cold shutdown in 1996. The SRS reactors were heavy water reactors so that they could produce both plutonium and tritium for the US nuclear weapons program.


title: Heavy water

text: The U.S. developed the Girdler sulfide chemical exchange production process—which was first demonstrated on a large scale at the Dana, Indiana plant in 1945 and at the Savannah River Plant, South Carolina, in 1952. DuPont operated the SRP for the USDOE until 1 April 1989, when Westinghouse took it over.


title: Heavy water

text: India is one of the world's largest producers of heavy water through its Heavy Water Board. It exports heavy water to countries including the Republic of Korea, China, and the United States.


title: Heavy water

text: In the 1930s, it was suspected by the United States and Soviet Union that Austrian chemist Fritz Johann Hansgirg built a pilot plant for the Empire of Japan in Japanese ruled northern Korea to produce heavy water by using a new process he had invented.


title: Heavy water

text: In 1934, Norsk Hydro built the first commercial heavy water plant at Vemork, Tinn, eventually producing per day. From 1940 and throughout World War II, the plant was under German control and the Allies decided to destroy the plant and its heavy water to inhibit German development of nuclear weapons. In late 1942, a planned raid called Operation Freshman by British airborne troops failed, both gliders crashing. The raiders were killed in the crash or subsequently executed by the Germans.


title: Heavy water

text: On the night of 27 February 1943 Operation Gunnerside succeeded. Norwegian commandos and local resistance managed to demolish small, but key parts of the electrolytic cells, dumping the accumulated heavy water down the factory drains.


title: Heavy water

text: On 16 November 1943, the Allied air forces dropped more than 400 bombs on the site. The Allied air raid prompted the Nazi government to move all available heavy water to Germany for safekeeping. On 20 February 1944, a Norwegian partisan sank the ferry M/F "Hydro" carrying heavy water across Lake Tinn, at the cost of 14 Norwegian civilian lives, and most of the heavy water was presumably lost. A few of the barrels were only half full, hence buoyant, and may have been salvaged and transported to Germany.


title: Heavy water

text: Recent investigation of production records at Norsk Hydro and analysis of an intact barrel that was salvaged in 2004 revealed that although the barrels in this shipment contained water of pH 14—indicative of the alkaline electrolytic refinement process—they did not contain high concentrations of DO. Despite the apparent size of the shipment, the total quantity of pure heavy water was quite small, most barrels only containing 0.5–1% pure heavy water. The Germans would have needed a total of about 5 tons of heavy water to get a nuclear reactor running. The manifest clearly indicated that there was only half a ton of heavy water being transported to Germany. "Hydro" was carrying far too little heavy water for one reactor, let alone the 10 or more tons needed to make enough plutonium for a nuclear weapon. The German nuclear weapons program was much less advanced than the Manhattan project and no reactor constructed in Nazi Germany ever came close to reaching criticality. No amount of heavy water would have changed that.


title: Heavy water

text: Israel admitted running the Dimona reactor with Norwegian heavy water sold to it in 1959. Through re-export using Romania and Germany, India probably also used Norwegian heavy water.


title: Heavy water

text: During the second World War, the company Fosfatbolaget in Ljungaverk, Sweden, produced 2,300 liters per year of heavy water. The heavy water was then sold both to Germany and to the Manhattan project in the USA for the price of 1,40 SEK per gram of heavy water.


title: Heavy water

text: As part of its contribution to the Manhattan Project, Canada built and operated a to per month (design capacity) electrolytic heavy water plant at Trail, British Columbia, which started operation in 1943.


title: Heavy water

text: The Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) design of power reactor requires large quantities of heavy water to act as a neutron moderator and coolant. AECL ordered two heavy water plants, which were built and operated in Atlantic Canada at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia (by Deuterium of Canada Limited) and Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia (by General Electric Canada). These plants proved to have significant design, construction and production problems. Consequently, AECL built the Bruce Heavy Water Plant (), which it later sold to Ontario Hydro, to ensure a reliable supply of heavy water for future power plants. The two Nova Scotia plants were shut down in 1985 when their production proved unnecessary.


title: Heavy water

text: The Bruce Heavy Water Plant (BHWP) in Ontario was the world's largest heavy water production plant with a capacity of 1600 tonnes per year at its peak (800 tonnes per year per full plant, two fully operational plants at its peak). It used the Girdler sulfide process to produce heavy water, and required 340,000 tonnes of feed water to produce one tonne of heavy water. It was part of a complex that included eight CANDU reactors, which provided heat and power for the heavy water plant. The site was located at Douglas Point/Bruce Nuclear Generating Station near Tiverton, Ontario, on Lake Huron where it had access to the waters of the Great Lakes.


title: Heavy water

text: AECL issued the construction contract in 1969 for the first BHWP unit (BHWP A). Commissioning of BHWP A was done by Ontario Hydro from 1971 through 1973, with the plant entering service on June 28, 1973, and design production capacity being achieved in April 1974. Due to the success of BHWP A and the large amount of heavy water that would be required for the large numbers of upcoming planned CANDU nuclear power plant construction projects, Ontario Hydro commissioned three additional heavy water production plants for the Bruce site (BHWP B, C, and D). BHWP B was placed into service in 1979. These first two plants were significantly more efficient than planned, and the number of CANDU construction projects ended up being significantly lower than originally planned, which led to the cancellation of construction on BHWP C & D. In 1984, BHWP A was shut down. By 1993 Ontario Hydro had produced enough heavy water to meet all of its anticipated domestic needs (which were lower than expected due to improved efficiency in the use and recycling of heavy water), so they shut down and demolished half of the capacity of BHWP B. The remaining capacity continued to operate in order to fulfil demand for heavy water exports until it was permanently shut down in 1997, after which the plant was gradually dismantled and the site cleared.


title: Heavy water

text: AECL is currently researching other more efficient and environmentally benign processes for creating heavy water. This is relevant for CANDU reactors since heavy water represented about 15–20% of the total capital cost of each CANDU plant in the 1970s and 1980s.


title: Heavy water

text: Since 1996 a plant for production of heavy water was being constructed at Khondab near Arak. On 26 August 2006, Iranian President Ahmadinejad inaugurated the expansion of the country's heavy-water plant. Iran has indicated that the heavy-water production facility will operate in tandem with a 40 MW research reactor that had a scheduled completion date in 2009.


title: Heavy water

text: Iran is permitted to store only of heavy water. Iran exports excess production after exceeding their allotment making Iran the world's third largest exporter of heavy water.


title: Heavy water

text: The 50 MW heavy water and natural uranium research reactor at Khushab, in Punjab province, is a central element of Pakistan's program for production of plutonium, deuterium and tritium for advanced compact warheads (i.e. thermonuclear weapons). Pakistan succeeded in acquiring a tritium purification and storage plant and deuterium and tritium precursor materials from two German firms.


title: Heavy water

text: Romania produced heavy water at the now-decommissioned Drobeta Girdler sulfide plant for domestic and export purposes.


title: Heavy water

text: Heavy water exists in elevated concentration in the hypolimnion of Lake Tanganyika in East Africa. It is likely that similar elevated concentrations exist in lakes with similar limnology, but this is only 4% enrichment (24 vs. 28) and surface waters are usually enriched in by evaporation to an even greater extent by faster evaporation.


title: Heavy water

text: Deuterium oxide is used in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy when using water as solvent if the nuclide of interest is hydrogen. This is because the signal from light-water (HO) solvent molecules interferes with the signal from the molecule of interest dissolved in it. Deuterium has a different magnetic moment and therefore does not contribute to the H-NMR signal at the hydrogen-1 resonance frequency.


title: Heavy water

text: For some experiments, it may be desirable to identify the labile hydrogens on a compound, that is hydrogens that can easily exchange away as H ions on some positions in a molecule. With addition of DO, sometimes referred to as a "DO shake", labile hydrogens exchange away and are substituted by deuterium (H) atoms. These positions in the molecule then do not appear in the H-NMR spectrum.


title: Heavy water

text: Deuterium oxide is often used as the source of deuterium for preparing specifically labelled isotopologues of organic compounds. For example, C-H bonds adjacent to ketonic carbonyl groups can be replaced by C-D bonds, using acid or base catalysis. Trimethylsulfoxonium iodide, made from dimethyl sulfoxide and methyl iodide can be recrystallized from deuterium oxide, and then dissociated to regenerate methyl iodide and dimethyl sulfoxide, both deuterium labelled. In cases where specific double labelling by deuterium and tritium is contemplated, the researcher must be aware that deuterium oxide, depending upon age and origin, can contain some tritium.


title: Heavy water

text: Deuterium oxide is often used instead of water when collecting FTIR spectra of proteins in solution. HO creates a strong band that overlaps with the amide I region of proteins. The band from DO is shifted away from the amide I region.


title: Heavy water

text: Heavy water is used in certain types of nuclear reactors, where it acts as a neutron moderator to slow down neutrons so that they are more likely to react with the fissile uranium-235 than with uranium-238, which captures neutrons without fissioning.


title: Heavy water

text: The CANDU reactor uses this design. Light water also acts as a moderator, but because light water absorbs more neutrons than heavy water, reactors using light water for a reactor moderator must use enriched uranium rather than natural uranium, otherwise criticality is impossible. A significant fraction of outdated power reactors, such as the RBMK reactors in the USSR, were constructed using normal water for cooling but graphite as a moderator. However, the danger of graphite in power reactors (graphite fires in part led to the Chernobyl disaster) has led to the discontinuation of graphite in standard reactor designs.


title: Heavy water

text: Because they do not require uranium enrichment, heavy water reactors are more of a concern in regards to nuclear proliferation. The breeding and extraction of plutonium can be a relatively rapid and cheap route to building a nuclear weapon, as chemical separation of plutonium from fuel is easier than isotopic separation of U-235 from natural uranium.


title: Heavy water

text: Among current and past nuclear weapons states, Israel, India, and North Korea first used plutonium from heavy water moderated reactors burning natural uranium, while China, South Africa and Pakistan first built weapons using highly enriched uranium.


title: Heavy water

text: The Nazi nuclear program, operating with more modest means than the contemporary Manhattan Project and hampered by many leading scientists having been driven into exile (many of them ending up working for the Manhattan Project), as well as continuous infighting, wrongly dismissed graphite as a moderator due to not recognizing the effect of impurities. Given that isotope separation of uranium was deemed too big a hurdle, this left heavy water as a potential moderator. Other problems were the ideological aversion regarding what propaganda dismissed as "Jewish physics" and the mistrust between those who had been enthusiastic Nazis even before 1933 and those who were "Mitläufer" or trying to keep a low profile. In part due to allied sabotage and commando raids on Norsk Hydro (then the world's largest producer of heavy water) as well as the aforementioned infighting, the German nuclear program never managed to assemble enough uranium and heavy water in one place to achieve criticality despite possessing enough of both by the end of the war.


title: Heavy water

text: In the U.S., however, the first experimental atomic reactor (1942), as well as the Manhattan Project Hanford production reactors that produced the plutonium for the Trinity test and Fat Man bombs, all used pure carbon (graphite) neutron moderators combined with normal water cooling pipes. They functioned with neither enriched uranium nor heavy water. Russian and British plutonium production also used graphite-moderated reactors.


title: Heavy water

text: There is no evidence that civilian heavy water power reactors—such as the CANDU or Atucha designs—have been used to produce military fissile materials. In nations that do not already possess nuclear weapons, nuclear material at these facilities is under IAEA safeguards to discourage any diversion.


title: Heavy water

text: Due to its potential for use in nuclear weapons programs, the possession or import/export of large industrial quantities of heavy water are subject to government control in several countries. Suppliers of heavy water and heavy water production technology typically apply IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) administered safeguards and material accounting to heavy water. (In Australia, the "Nuclear Non-Proliferation (Safeguards) Act 1987".) In the U.S. and Canada, non-industrial quantities of heavy water (i.e., in the gram to kg range) are routinely available without special license through chemical supply dealers and commercial companies such as the world's former major producer Ontario Hydro.


title: Heavy water

text: The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) in Sudbury, Ontario uses 1,000 tonnes of heavy water on loan from Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. The neutrino detector is underground in a mine, to shield it from muons produced by cosmic rays. SNO was built to answer the question of whether or not electron-type neutrinos produced by fusion in the Sun (the only type the Sun should be producing directly, according to theory) might be able to turn into other types of neutrinos on the way to Earth. SNO detects the Cherenkov radiation in the water from high-energy electrons produced from electron-type neutrinos as they undergo charged current (CC) interactions with neutrons in deuterium, turning them into protons and electrons (however, only the electrons are fast enough to produce Cherenkov radiation for detection).


title: Heavy water

text: SNO also detects neutrino electron scattering (ES) events, where the neutrino transfers energy to the electron, which then proceeds to generate Cherenkov radiation distinguishable from that produced by CC events. The first of these two reactions is produced only by electron-type neutrinos, while the second can be caused by all of the neutrino flavors. The use of deuterium is critical to the SNO function, because all three "flavours" (types) of neutrinos may be detected in a third type of reaction as well, neutrino-disintegration, in which a neutrino of any type (electron, muon, or tau) scatters from a deuterium nucleus (deuteron), transferring enough energy to break up the loosely bound deuteron into a free neutron and proton via a neutral current (NC) interaction.


title: Heavy water

text: This event is detected when the free neutron is absorbed by Cl present from NaCl deliberately dissolved in the heavy water, causing emission of characteristic capture gamma rays. Thus, in this experiment, heavy water not only provides the transparent medium necessary to produce and visualize Cherenkov radiation, but it also provides deuterium to detect exotic mu type (μ) and tau (τ) neutrinos, as well as a non-absorbent moderator medium to preserve free neutrons from this reaction, until they can be absorbed by an easily detected neutron-activated isotope.


title: Heavy water

text: Heavy water is employed as part of a mixture with HO for a common and safe test of mean metabolic rate in humans and animals undergoing their normal activities.The elimination rate of deuterium alone is a measure of body water turnover. This is highly variable between individuals and depends on environmental conditions as well as subject size, sex, age and physical activity.


title: Heavy water

text: Tritium is the active substance in self-powered lighting and controlled nuclear fusion, its other uses including autoradiography and radioactive labeling. It is also used in nuclear weapon design for boosted fission weapons and initiators. Tritium undergoes beta decay into Helium-3, which is a stable, but rare, isotope of Helium that is itself highly sought after. Some tritium is created in heavy water moderated reactors when deuterium captures a neutron. This reaction has a small cross-section (probability of a single neutron-capture event) and produces only small amounts of tritium, although enough to justify cleaning tritium from the moderator every few years to reduce the environmental risk of tritium escape. Given that Helium-3 is a neutron poison with orders of magnitude higher capture cross section than any component of heavy or tritiated water, its accumulation in a heavy water neutron moderator or target for tritium production must be kept to a minimum.


title: Heavy water

text: Producing a lot of tritium in this way would require reactors with very high neutron fluxes, or with a very high proportion of heavy water to nuclear fuel and very low neutron absorption by other reactor material. The tritium would then have to be recovered by isotope separation from a much larger quantity of deuterium, unlike production from lithium-6 (the present method), where only chemical separation is needed.


title: Heavy water

text: Deuterium's absorption cross section for thermal neutrons is 0.52 millibarns (5.2 × 10 m; 1 barn = 10 m), while those of oxygen-16 and oxygen-17 are 0.19 and 0.24 millibarns, respectively. O makes up 0.038% of natural oxygen, making the overall cross section 0.28 millibarns. Therefore, in DO with natural oxygen, 21% of neutron captures are on oxygen, rising higher as O builds up from neutron capture on O. Also, O may emit an alpha particle on neutron capture, producing radioactive carbon-14.


title: Initial D

text: "Initial D" has been adapted into several anime television and original video animations series by OB Studio Comet, Studio Gallop, Pastel, A.C.G.T and SynergySP. A live action film by Avex and Media Asia was released in 2005. Both the manga and anime series were initially licensed for English-language distribution in North America by Tokyopop (2002–2009). However, the anime license has since been picked up by Funimation (now Crunchyroll), while the manga was relicensed by Kodansha USA in 2019.


title: Initial D

text: As of April 2021, "Initial D" had over 55 million copies in circulation, making it one of the best-selling manga series in history.


title: Initial D

text: Takumi Fujiwara is a student working as a gas station attendant with his best friend Itsuki. Itsuki is enthusiastically interested in being a street racer. The team he feels closest to and hopes to join is the Akina Speed Stars, whose team leader Koichiro Iketani is also working at the same pump station. Unbeknownst to his colleagues, Takumi helps out his father Bunta as a tofu delivery driver for his father's store before sunrise each morning, passively building an impressive amount of skill of over 5 years behind the wheel of the family car, an aging Toyota Sprinter Trueno (AE86).


title: Initial D

text: Shortly after the story begins, the Red Suns, a highly experienced racing team from Mount Akagi led by Ryosuke Takahashi, challenge the local Speed Stars team to a set of races on Mount Akina. Dispirited after watching the Red Suns' superior performance during a practice run, the Speed Stars expect to lose. Later that night, the Red Suns' #2 driver, Keisuke Takahashi, heading home after the last practice run, is defeated soundly by a mysterious Sprinter Trueno, despite driving a much more powerful Mazda RX-7 (FD3S). An investigation into the identity of the driver leads to Bunta Fujiwara, Takumi's father. While trying to do his best for the team on Mount Akina, Iketani suffers a crash and damages his car and injures himself. He is unable to take part in the race to represent his team. Iketani begs Bunta to help the Speed Stars defeat the Red Suns, and he initially refuses, later relenting to "maybe" show up at the race. At the same time, Takumi asks Bunta if he can borrow the car for a day to take a trip to the beach with a potential girlfriend (Natsuki Mogi), and Bunta seizes the moment by granting permission (plus a full tank of fuel) on the condition that Takumi defeats Keisuke. On the night of the race, the Trueno does not show up, and the Speed Stars enlist a backup driver (Kenji) for the first run. At the last moment before the race starts, the AE86 arrives. Takumi steps out of the car to the bewilderment of the Speed Stars, who were expecting Bunta. He easily defeats Keisuke by utilizing a dangerous "gutter run" technique (putting both the left/right tires into the gutters to prevent centrifugal force pushing the car outward) on the mountain road's hairpin corners.


title: Initial D

text: The Red Suns' embarrassing defeat sets up the plot for the rest of the series: drivers from neighboring prefectures come to challenge Takumi and the "Legendary Eight-Six of Akina" and thus prove themselves as racers. Meanwhile, Takumi, who was considered spacey and disinterested in the world around him, becomes more passionate about racing with every opponent he faces. However, soon Takumi faces a threat in the form of Emperors, a team that uses Mitsubishi Lancer Evolutions. Takumi's old AE86 is no match and he loses to the team's leader, Sudo Kyoichi (Evo III), blowing his engine. The Akagi RedSuns come to the rescue and defeat both Seiji and Kyoichi, thus securing the pride of Gunma's racers. Meanwhile, Bunta replaces the AE86's blown engine with a new one. Wataru Akiyama and Koichiro Iketani help Takumi to figure out why he is unable to control his car. Takumi soon faces graduation, but continues racing. He defeats Kyoichi in a rematch at his home course, the Nikko Irohazaka. He also defeats the son of Bunta's old rival.


title: Initial D

text: Eventually, the plot moves away from Mount Akina as Takumi becomes bored with racing and winning solely on that road. He joins an expedition racing team, Project.D, formed by Ryosuke Takahashi, (also including Keisuke Takahashi) former leader of the disbanded Red Suns and challenges more difficult opponents on their home courses in the pursuit of his dream to be "the fastest driver out there". At one point, impostors in the form of Takumi and Keisuke try to defame Project D, Wataru comes to help and they dispatch the impostors, revealing them in front of the public. Project D races many teams like Team Seven Star Leaf, Team 246, Team Spiral, and Team Sidewinder. It ends spectacularly with a race of two evenly matched drivers, where Takumi blows his engine again, but steps on the clutch and wins the race by rolling backwards over the finish line. He decides to get rid of his car, but in the anime version, he decides to keep it. Ryosuke disbands Project D and Takumi continues delivering tofu with his father's Impreza.


title: Initial D

text: Written and illustrated by Shuichi Shigeno, "Initial D" was serialized by Kodansha in the "seinen" manga magazine "Weekly Young Magazine" from July 17, 1995, to July 29, 2013. Kodansha collected its 719 individual chapters in forty-eight "tankōbon" volumes, released from November 6, 1995, to November 6, 2013.


title: Initial D

text: In North America, the manga was licensed for English release by Tokyopop (along with the anime series) in 2001. The company changed the names of the characters in the anime edition, and subsequently changed them in the manga to match. These name changes were to reflect the name changes that Sega implemented into the Western releases of the "Initial D Arcade Stage" video games due to name length limits. Tokyopop also censored the brief scenes of nudity from the original manga. In addition, "street slang" was interlaced in translations. The company released thirty-three volumes from May 21, 2002, to January 13, 2009, before they announced in August 2009 that their manga licensing contracts with Kodansha had expired. In April 2019, ComiXology and Kodansha Comics announced that they had released volumes 1 to 38 digitally, while volumes 39 to 48 were released in July of the same year.


title: Initial D

text: Avex has released the anime in several parts called Stages. One noticeable feature is that it uses Eurobeat music as background music in race scenes, especially by Italian singers.


title: Initial D

text: The Battle Stages are Musical Films serving as a compilation of the racing action scenes in the preceding series, stripped of all but minimal character dialog and featuring new music.


title: Initial D

text: In 1998, "Initial D" was adapted into an animated television series produced by OB Planning and Prime Direction. The first episode premièred on Fuji TV on April 8, 1998. The initial series ran for 26 weekly episodes with the finale airing on December 5, 1998.


title: Initial D

text: The second series, named "Second Stage", aired from October 14, 1999, to January 20, 2000, with a one-week break over the New Year period. This was followed by animated feature film in 2001 and an OVA documenting all battles from the previous three stages, with the battles from First Stage being re-animated.


title: Initial D

text: "Initial D Third Stage" was a feature film covering the story arcs between the second and fourth stage, released in Japan on January 13, 2001. It earned a distribution income of () at the Japanese box office.


title: Initial D

text: In 2004, "Initial D Fourth Stage" aired on SkyPerfecTV's pay-per-view service, airing two episodes back-to-back every two months. 24 episodes were made until the final episodes were aired in February 2006.


title: Initial D

text: Following "Second Stage" in 2000, "Initial D Extra Stage" was aired as a spinoff to the original series. This story focused on the all-female Impact Blue team of Usui Pass and their point of view of the recent events of "Second Stage" and the upcoming "Third Stage" movie. This was followed by "Extra Stage 2" in 2008, which look at the relationship between Impact Blue's Mako Sato and Iketani of the SpeedStars (following on from the original side-story in the manga).


title: Initial D

text: Eight years after the release of "Fourth Stage" in 2004, Animax aired "Initial D Fifth Stage". Animax has aired the series on a pay-per-view basis on SKY PerfecTV!'s Perfect Choice Premier 1 channel. The first two episodes aired on November 9, 2012. The rest of the episodes were broadcast two per month till May 10, 2013.


title: Initial D

text: In 2014, "Initial D Final Stage" became the latest installment in the anime series. Animax has aired its first two episodes on a pay-per-view basis on its own brand new ANIMAX PLUS channel, on May 16, 2014, on its new subscription VOD (Video On Demand) service, which allows subscribers to watch all the latest anime series. Initial D Final Stage will start right after where Fifth Stage left off. There are a total of four episodes that makes up this mini stage. The final two episodes were broadcast on June 22, 2014.


title: Initial D

text: Since the anime's original run, Japanese musical group m.o.v.e has performed all of the opening and some ending themes of the series. This followed on from the success of one of their first hits, "Around the World", which was used as the first opening of "First Stage". Their latest single to be used in the series is called "Outsoar The Rainbow" and it is used as "Final Stage"'s opening. They had another recent unreleased song, "Days". It was played in the finale of "Final Stage".


title: Initial D

text: Like in the manga, Tokyopop change elements of the anime to suit Western audiences. As well as changing the names and used western slang, the company also changed the anime's music from the series' staple eurobeat tracks to originally developed tracks of rap and hip-hop via Stu Levy (DJ Milky), the Tokyopop CEO and an in-house musician.


title: Initial D

text: In 2006, Funimation announced that it would be distributing the DVDs of the anime (since Tokyopop's original distributor went bankrupt). This new distribution was marked by slightly revised packaging and two box sets corresponding to the licensed seasons Tokyopop had dubbed, although the DVDs themselves were exactly the same as the original Tokyopop release.


title: Initial D

text: Tokyopop had completed an English subtitled version of Third Stage, and screened it at the Big Apple Anime Fest on August 29, 2003. This version of Third Stage reportedly retained the original Japanese soundtrack, in contrast to their treatment of the rest of the anime series. This version of the film was never released on DVD, nor was it ever mentioned by Tokyopop past the original announcement.


title: Initial D

text: At the New York Anime Festival 2009, Funimation announced that it would be re-releasing and re-dubbing "Initial D: First Stage", Second Stage, Extra Stage, Third Stage, and Fourth Stage. Their release included a brand new English dub and retained the original music from the Japanese in an uncut format. Funimation released the series out of order, with the Third and Fourth Stages releasing before the First and Second Stages. The first Extra Stage was included in the Second Stage box set.


title: Initial D

text: In July 2013 it was announced that another feature film titled "New Initial D the Movie" and a last anime series, "Initial D Final Stage", will be produced. The movie is a retelling of the early Stages with a wholly new voice cast and is split into three parts, with the first part released on August 23, 2014, titled "", the second part was released May 23, 2015, titled "", the third part released on February 6, 2016, titled "".


title: Initial D

text: The "Initial D Arcade Stage" arcade video game series has sold approximately 7,111 hardware units in Japan up until 2007, grossing approximately in hardware sales.


title: Initial D

text: A live-action film based on "Initial D" was released on June 23, 2005, in Asia. The movie was jointly produced by Japan's Avex Inc. and Hong Kong's Media Asia Group. It was directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, whose credits include the 2002 Hong Kong blockbuster "Infernal Affairs". The adaptation featured Taiwanese singer Jay Chou as Takumi Fujiwara and Hong Kong stars Edison Chen as Ryosuke Takahashi and Shawn Yue as Takeshi Nakazato. Despite many changes to the original story, the movie was met with critical acclaim and was nominated for multiple awards, including Best Picture, at the Hong Kong Film Awards and Golden Horse Awards, winning many of them.


title: Initial D

text: A sequel has been in discussion since the following year after the movie has debuted. However, a concrete conclusion could not be reached due to several obstacles which includes the storyline, filming locations, casts, and safety reasons. As of March 2015, director and producer, Andrew Lau, has once again reconfirmed in an exclusive interview that a sequel will surely follow but is tight-lipped on the release date. Jay Chou and Edison Chen will reprise their roles in the sequel.


title: Initial D

text: The anime series sold 700,000 soundtrack album units up until 2000. At a price of , soundtrack album sales grossed approximately . The live-action film's theme songs sold 0.058052+0.002786+1.1 round 1million units, grossing approximately . In total, the franchise sold approximately 1.9million soundtrack units, grossing approximately () in soundtrack sales. Some of their most famous soundtracks include "Deja Vu", "Gas Gas Gas", and "Running in the 90's", all of which are Eurobeat songs by Italian musicians.


title: Initial D

text: As of July 2013, collected "tankōbon" volumes of the "Initial D" manga series sold 48million copies. As of April 2021, "Initial D" had over 55 million copies in circulation.


title: Initial D

text: At an average price of , the manga has grossed approximately () in tankōbon volume sales. In addition, the total circulation of its manga chapters in "Weekly Young Magazine" issues between 6 November 1995 and 29 July 2013 amounted to approximately copies, with those issues grossing approximately () in sales revenue.


title: Initial D

text: The "Initial D" anime series sold over 1million DVD units in Japan up until 2008. At an average price of , video sales grossed approximately up until 2008. "Initial D Fifth Stage" (2012) sold home video units, grossing . In Japan, the live-action Hong Kong film sold 250,000 DVD units, grossing approximately (). In total, the franchise has sold approximately 1+0.157598+0.25 round 2million video units in Japan, grossing approximately () in video sales revenue. The "Initial D Third Stage" anime film grossed () at the Japanese box office. The anime "New Initial D the Movie" trilogy grossed $2,660,288 at the East Asian box office. The live-action "Initial D" Hong Kong film grossed at the worldwide box office. Combined, the "Initial D" films have grossed approximately at the worldwide box office.


title: Initial D

text: "Initial D" received praise. The Anime Review rated it A−, with the reviewer calling it "simply the best show I've seen in a long time." Bamboo Dong of "Anime News Network" rated it B−, stating it "is the first time in a long while since I've been so fired up about a series, so I recommend to everyone to at least check this out." Some fans of "Initial D" reacted negatively to the Tokyopop's extensive editing and changes made in the English-language version of the manga. Similar reactions were made towards their English dub's script and voice acting, and the removal of the original music from the anime series. Tokyopop said that it was trying to Americanize the series so it could be aired on television, while at the same time keeping the Japanese spirit of the series.


title: Initial D

text: According to Funimation officials, the re-release of the anime has "done well". Reviews of the series note a marked improvement from the Tokyopop iteration, with most complaints leveled against the lack of anamorphic widescreen on the DVDs. "Initial D" has drawn comparisons to the later "Fast & Furious" film franchise (debuted 2001), particularly "" (2006), for which "Initial D"s consultant Keiichi Tsuchiya served as a stunt coordinator and stuntman and also made a cameo appearance in the film as a fisherman.


title: Sappho

text: Sappho (; "Sapphō" ; Aeolic Greek "Psápphō"; c. 630 – c. 570 BC) was an Archaic Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied by music. In ancient times, Sappho was widely regarded as one of the greatest lyric poets and was given names such as the "Tenth Muse" and "The Poetess". Most of Sappho's poetry is now lost, and what is extant has mostly survived in fragmentary form; only the "Ode to Aphrodite" is certainly complete. As well as lyric poetry, ancient commentators claimed that Sappho wrote elegiac and iambic poetry. Three epigrams attributed to Sappho are extant, but these are actually Hellenistic imitations of Sappho's style.


title: Sappho

text: Little is known of Sappho's life. She was from a wealthy family from Lesbos, though her parents' names are uncertain. Ancient sources say that she had three brothers; Charaxos (Χάραξος), Larichos (Λάριχος) and Eurygios (Εὐρύγιος). Two of them, Charaxos and Larichos, are also mentioned in the Brothers Poem discovered in 2014. She was exiled to Sicily around 600 BC, and may have continued to work until around 570 BC. According to legend, she killed herself by leaping from the Leucadian cliffs due to her love for the ferryman Phaon.


title: Sappho

text: Sappho was a prolific poet, probably composing around 10,000 lines. Her poetry was well-known and greatly admired through much of antiquity, and she was among the canon of Nine Lyric Poets most highly esteemed by scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria. Sappho's poetry is still considered extraordinary and her works continue to influence other writers. Beyond her poetry, she is well known as a symbol of love and desire between women, with the English words "sapphic" and "lesbian" deriving from her name and that of her home island respectively.


title: Sappho

text: Modern knowledge of Sappho comes both from what can be inferred from her own poetry, and from mentions of her in other ancient texts. Sappho's own poetry is the only contemporary source for her life. The earliest surviving biography of Sappho dates to the late second or early third century AD, approximately eight centuries after Sappho's own life; the next is the "Suda", a Byzantine-era encyclopedia. Other sources which mention details of Sappho's life were written much closer to her own era, beginning in the fifth century BC. The information about Sappho's life recorded in ancient sources was derived from statements in her own poetry which ancient authors assumed were biographical, along with local traditions. Some of the ancient traditions about Sappho, such as those about her sexuality and appearance, may derive from comedy.


title: Sappho

text: Until the nineteenth century, ancient sources about archaic poets' lives were largely accepted uncritically. In the nineteenth century classicists began to be more sceptical of these traditions, and instead tried to derive biographical information from their surviving poetry. In the latter half of the twentieth century, scholars became increasingly sceptical of Greek lyric poetry as a source of autobiographical information. Some scholars, such as Mary Lefkowitz, argued that almost nothing can be known about the lives of early Greek poets such as Sappho; most scholars believe that ancient testimonies about poets' lives contain some truth but must be treated with caution.


title: Sappho

text: Little is known about Sappho's life for certain. She was from the island of Lesbos and lived at the end of the seventh and beginning of the sixth centuries BC. This is the date given by most ancient sources, who considered her a contemporary of Alcaeus and Pittacus. She therefore may have been born in the third quarter of the seventh century – Franco Ferrari infers a date of around 650 or 640 BC; David Campbell suggests around or before 630 BC. Gregory Hutchinson suggests she was active until around 570 BC.


title: Sappho

text: Tradition names her mother as Cleïs. This may derive from a now-lost poem or record, though ancient scholars may simply have guessed this name, assuming that Sappho's daughter Cleïs was named after her. Sappho's father's name is less certain. Ten names are known for Sappho's father from ancient sources; this proliferation of possible names suggests that he was not explicitly named in any of Sappho's poetry. The earliest and most commonly attested name for Sappho's father is Scamandronymus. In Ovid's "Heroides", Sappho's father died when she was seven. He is not mentioned in any of her surviving works, but Campbell suggests that this detail may have been based on a now-lost poem. Sappho's own name is found in numerous variant spellings; the form that appears in her own extant poetry is Psappho (Ψάπφω).


title: Sappho

text: Sappho was said to have three brothers: Erigyius, Larichus, and Charaxus. According to Athenaeus, she often praised Larichus for pouring wine in the town hall of Mytilene, an office held by boys of the best families. This indication that Sappho was born into an aristocratic family is consistent with the sometimes rarefied environments that her verses record. One ancient tradition tells of a relation between Charaxus and the Egyptian courtesan Rhodopis. Herodotus, the oldest source of the story, reports that Charaxus ransomed Rhodopis for a large sum and that Sappho wrote a poem rebuking him for this. The names of two of the brothers, Charaxus and Larichus, are mentioned in the Brothers Poem, discovered in 2014; the final brother, Erigyius, is mentioned in three ancient sources but nowhere in the extant works of Sappho.


title: Sappho

text: She may have had a daughter named Cleïs, who is referred to in two fragments. Not all scholars accept that Cleïs was Sappho's daughter. Fragment 132 describes Cleïs as "παῖς" ("pais"), which, as well as meaning "child", can also refer to the "youthful beloved in a male homosexual liaison". It has been suggested that Cleïs was one of Sappho's younger lovers, rather than her daughter, though Judith Hallett argues that the language used in fragment 132 suggests that Sappho was referring to Cleïs as her daughter.


title: Sappho

text: According to the Suda, Sappho was married to Kerkylas of Andros. This name appears to have been invented by a comic poet: the name "Kerkylas" () appears to be a diminutive of the word (), a possible meaning of which is "penis", and is not otherwise attested as a name, while "Andros", as well as being the name of a Greek island, is a form of the Greek word (), which means "man". Thus, the name may be a joke. An English equivalent would be that Sappho was married to "Dick-Allcock from the Isle of Man".


title: Sappho

text: One tradition said that Sappho was exiled from Lesbos around 600 BC. The Parian Chronicle records Sappho going into exile in Sicily some time between 604 and 595, perhaps coinciding with Pittacus taking power in 597. This may have been as a result of her family's involvement with the conflicts between political elites on Lesbos in this period, the same reason for the exile of Sappho's contemporary Alcaeus from Mytilene around the same time.


title: Sappho

text: A tradition going back at least to Menander (Fr. 258 K) suggested that Sappho killed herself by jumping off the Leucadian cliffs for love of Phaon, a ferryman. This is regarded as ahistorical by modern scholars, perhaps invented by the comic poets or originating from a misreading of a first-person reference in a non-biographical poem. The legend may have resulted in part from a desire to assert Sappho as heterosexual.


title: Sappho

text: Sappho probably wrote around 10,000 lines of poetry; today, only about 650 survive. She is best known for her lyric poetry, written to be accompanied by music. The Suda also attributes to Sappho epigrams, elegiacs, and iambics; three of these epigrams are extant, but are in fact later Hellenistic poems inspired by Sappho. The iambic and elegiac poems attributed to her in the Suda may also be later imitations. Ancient authors claim that Sappho primarily wrote love poetry, and the indirect transmission of Sappho's work supports this notion. However, the papyrus tradition suggests that this may not have been the case: a series of papyri published in 2014 contains fragments of ten consecutive poems from Book I of the Alexandrian edition of Sappho, of which only two are certainly love poems, while at least three and possibly four are primarily concerned with family.


title: Sappho

text: Sappho's poetry was probably first written down on Lesbos, either in her lifetime or shortly afterwards, initially probably in the form of a score for performers of her work. In the fifth century BC, Athenian book publishers probably began to produce copies of Lesbian lyric poetry, some including explanatory material and glosses as well as the poems themselves. Some time in the second or third century, Alexandrian scholars produced a critical edition of Sappho's poetry. There may have been more than one Alexandrian edition – John J. Winkler argues for two, one edited by Aristophanes of Byzantium and another by his pupil Aristarchus of Samothrace. This is not certain – ancient sources tell us that Aristarchus' edition of Alcaeus replaced the edition by Aristophanes, but are silent on whether Sappho's work also went through multiple editions.


title: Sappho

text: The Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poetry was based on the existing Athenian collections, and was divided into at least eight books, though the exact number is uncertain. Many modern scholars have followed Denys Page, who conjectured a ninth book in the standard edition; Yatromanolakis doubts this, noting that though ancient sources refer to an eighth book of Sappho's poetry, none mention a ninth. The Alexandrian edition of Sappho probably grouped her poems by their metre: ancient sources tell us that each of the first three books contained poems in a single specific metre. Ancient editions of Sappho, possibly starting with the Alexandrian edition, seem to have ordered the poems in at least the first book of Sappho's poetry – which contained works composed in Sapphic stanzas – alphabetically.


title: Sappho

text: Even after the publication of the standard Alexandrian edition, Sappho's poetry continued to circulate in other poetry collections. For instance, the Cologne Papyrus on which the Tithonus poem is preserved was part of a Hellenistic anthology of poetry, which contained poetry arranged by theme, rather than by metre and incipit, as it was in the Alexandrian edition.


title: Sappho

text: The earliest surviving manuscripts of Sappho, including the potsherd on which fragment 2 is preserved, date to the third century BC, and thus might predate the Alexandrian edition. The latest surviving copies of Sappho's poems transmitted directly from ancient times are written on parchment codex pages from the sixth and seventh centuries AD, and were surely reproduced from ancient papyri now lost. Manuscript copies of Sappho's works may have survived a few centuries longer, but around the 9th century her poetry appears to have disappeared, and by the twelfth century, John Tzetzes could write that "the passage of time has destroyed Sappho and her works".


title: Sappho

text: According to legend, Sappho's poetry was lost because the church disapproved of her morals. These legends appear to have originated in the Renaissance – around 1550, Jerome Cardan wrote that Gregory Nazianzen had Sappho's work publicly destroyed, and at the end of the sixteenth century Joseph Justus Scaliger claimed that Sappho's works were burned in Rome and Constantinople in 1073 on the orders of Pope Gregory VII.


title: Sappho

text: In reality, Sappho's work was probably lost as the demand for it was insufficiently great for it to be copied onto parchment when codices superseded papyrus scrolls as the predominant form of book. A contributing factor to the loss of Sappho's poems may have been her Aeolic dialect, considered provincial in a period where the Attic dialect was seen as the true classical Greek, and had become the standard for literary compositions. Consequently, many readers found Sappho's dialect difficult to understand: in the second century AD, the Roman author Apuleius specifically remarks on its "strangeness", and several commentaries on the subject demonstrate the difficulties that readers had with it. This was part of a more general decline in interest in the archaic poets; indeed, the surviving papyri suggest that Sappho's poetry survived longer than that of her contemporaries such as Alcaeus.


title: Sappho

text: Only approximately 650 lines of Sappho's poetry still survive, of which just one poem – the "Ode to Aphrodite" – is complete, and more than half of the original lines survive in around ten more fragments. Many of the surviving fragments of Sappho contain only a single word – for example, fragment 169A is simply a word meaning "wedding gifts", and survives as part of a dictionary of rare words. The two major sources of surviving fragments of Sappho are quotations in other ancient works, from a whole poem to as little as a single word, and fragments of papyrus, many of which were discovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. Other fragments survive on other materials, including parchment and potsherds. The oldest surviving fragment of Sappho currently known is the Cologne papyrus which contains the Tithonus poem, dating to the third century BC.


title: Sappho

text: Until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, only the ancient quotations of Sappho survived. In 1879, the first new discovery of a fragment of Sappho was made at Fayum. By the end of the nineteenth century, Grenfell and Hunt had begun to excavate an ancient rubbish dump at Oxyrhynchus, leading to the discoveries of many previously unknown fragments of Sappho. Fragments of Sappho continue to be rediscovered. Most recently, major discoveries in 2004 (the "Tithonus poem" and a new, previously unknown fragment) and 2014 (fragments of nine poems: five already known but with new readings, four, including the "Brothers Poem", not previously known) have been reported in the media around the world.


title: Sappho

text: Sappho worked within a well-developed tradition of Lesbian poetry, which had evolved its own poetic diction, metres, and conventions. Prior to Sappho and her contemporary Alcaeus, Lesbos was associated with poetry and music through the mythical Orpheus and Arion, and the seventh-century BC poet Terpander. The Lesbian metrical tradition in which Sappho composed her poetry was distinct from that of the rest of Greece as its lines always contained a fixed number of syllables – in contrast to other traditions which allowed for the substitution of two short syllables for one long or vice versa.


title: Sappho

text: Sappho was one of the first Greek poets to adopt the "lyric 'I'" – to write poetry adopting the viewpoint of a specific person, in contrast to the earlier epic poets Homer and Hesiod, who present themselves more as "conduits of divine inspiration". Her poetry explores individual identity and personal emotions – desire, jealousy, and love; it also adopts and reinterprets the existing imagery of epic poetry in exploring these themes. It seems to have been composed for a variety of occasions both public and private, and probably encompassed both solo and choral works. Along with the love poetry for which she is best known, her surviving works include poetry focused on the family, epic-influenced narrative, wedding songs, cult hymns, and invective.


title: Sappho

text: Sappho's poetry is known for its clear language and simple thoughts, sharply-drawn images, and use of direct quotation which brings a sense of immediacy. Unexpected word-play is a characteristic feature of her style. An example is from fragment 96: "now she stands out among Lydian women as after sunset the rose-fingered moon exceeds all stars", a variation of the Homeric epithet "rosy-fingered Dawn". Sappho's poetry often uses hyperbole, according to ancient critics "because of its charm". An example is found in fragment 111, where Sappho writes that "The groom approaches like Ares [...] Much bigger than a big man".


title: Sappho

text: Leslie Kurke groups Sappho with those archaic Greek poets from what has been called the "élite" ideological tradition, which valued luxury ("habrosyne") and high birth. These elite poets tended to identify themselves with the worlds of Greek myths, gods, and heroes, as well as the wealthy East, especially Lydia. Thus in fragment 2 Sappho has Aphrodite "pour into golden cups nectar lavishly mingled with joys", while in the Tithonus poem she explicitly states that "I love the finer things ["habrosyne"]". According to Page DuBois, the language, as well as the content, of Sappho's poetry evokes an aristocratic sphere. She contrasts Sappho's "flowery,[...] adorned" style with the "austere, decorous, restrained" style embodied in the works of later classical authors such as Sophocles, Demosthenes, and Pindar.


title: Sappho

text: As it is unlikely that any system of musical notation existed in Ancient Greece before the fifth century, the original music that would have accompanied Sappho's songs probably did not survive until the classical period, and no ancient musical scores to accompany Sappho's poetry survive. Sappho was said to have written in the mixolydian mode, which was considered sorrowful; it was commonly used in Greek tragedy, and Aristoxenus believed that the tragedians learned it from Sappho. Aristoxenus attributed Sappho the invention of this mode, but this remains a dubious claim. The classicist Stefan Hagel speculated that perhaps instead Sappho first popularized the association between mixolydian and mournfulness. While there are no attestations that she used other modes, she presumably varied them depending on the poem's character. When originally sung, each syllable of the her text likely corresponded to one note as the use of lengthy melismas developed in the later classical period.


title: Sappho

text: Sappho chiefly wrote for two formats: solo singers and choirs. With Alcaeus, she pioneered a new style of sung monody (single-line melody) that departed from the multi-part choral style which largely defined earlier Greek music. This style afforded her more opportunities to individualize the content of her poems; the historian Plutarch noted that she "speaks words mingled truly with fire, and through her songs, she draws up the heat of her heart". Some scholars theorize that the Tithonus Poem was among her works meant for a solo singer. Only fragments of Sappho's choral works are extant, and of these, slightly more of her epithalamia wedding songs survive. The later compositions were probably meant for antiphonal performance between either a male and female choir or a soloist and choir.


title: Sappho

text: In Sappho's time, sung poetry was accompanied by musical instruments, which usually doubled the voice in unison or played homophonically an octave higher or lower. Her poems mention numerous instruments, including the pēktis, a harp of Lydian origin, and lyre. Sappho is most closely associated with the barbitos, a lyre-like string instrument which was deep in pitch. Euphorion of Chalcis reports that she referred to it in her poetry, and a well-known 5th century vase by either the Dokimasia Painter or Brygos Painter includes Sappho and Alcaeus with barbitoi. Sappho mentions the aulos, a wind instrument with two pipes, in fragment 44 as accompanying the song of the Trojan women at Hector and Andromache's wedding, but not as accompanying her own poetry. Later Greek commentators wrongly believed that she had invented the plectrum.


title: Sappho

text: The common term "lesbian" is an allusion to Sappho, originating from the name of the island of Lesbos, where she was born. However, she has not always been considered so. In classical Athenian comedy (from the Old Comedy of the fifth century to Menander in the late fourth and early third centuries BC), Sappho was caricatured as a promiscuous heterosexual woman, and it is not until the Hellenistic period that the first sources which explicitly discuss Sappho's homoeroticism are preserved. The earliest of these is a fragmentary biography written on papyrus in the late third or early second century BC, which states that Sappho was "accused by some of being irregular in her ways and a woman-lover". Denys Page comments that the phrase "by some" implies that even the full corpus of Sappho's poetry did not provide conclusive evidence of whether she described herself as having sex with women. These ancient authors do not appear to have believed that Sappho did, in fact, have sexual relationships with other women, and as late as the tenth century the Suda records that Sappho was "slanderously accused" of having sexual relationships with her "female pupils".


title: Sappho

text: Among modern scholars, Sappho's sexuality is still debated – André Lardinois has described it as the "Great Sappho Question". Early translators of Sappho sometimes heterosexualised her poetry. Ambrose Philips' 1711 translation of the Ode to Aphrodite portrayed the object of Sappho's desire as male, a reading that was followed by virtually every other translator of the poem until the twentieth century, while in 1781 Alessandro Verri interpreted fragment 31 as being about Sappho's love for Phaon. Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker argued that Sappho's feelings for other women were "entirely idealistic and non-sensual", while Karl Otfried Müller wrote that fragment 31 described "nothing but a friendly affection": Glenn Most comments that "one wonders what language Sappho would have used to describe her feelings if they had been ones of sexual excitement", if this theory were correct. By 1970, it would be argued that the same poem contained "proof positive of [Sappho's] lesbianism".


title: Sappho

text: Today, it is generally accepted that Sappho's poetry portrays homoerotic feelings: as Sandra Boehringer puts it, her works "clearly celebrate eros between women". Toward the end of the twentieth century, though, some scholars began to reject the question of whether or not Sappho was a lesbian – Glenn Most wrote that Sappho herself "would have had no idea what people mean when they call her nowadays a homosexual", André Lardinois stated that it is "nonsensical" to ask whether Sappho was a lesbian, and Page duBois calls the question a "particularly obfuscating debate".


title: Sappho

text: One of the major focuses of scholars studying Sappho has been to attempt to determine the cultural context in which Sappho's poems were composed and performed. Various cultural contexts and social roles played by Sappho have been suggested, including teacher, cult-leader, and poet performing for a circle of female friends. However, the performance contexts of many of Sappho's fragments are not easy to determine, and for many more than one possible context is conceivable.


title: Sappho

text: One longstanding suggestion of a social role for Sappho is that of "Sappho as schoolmistress". At the beginning of the twentieth century, the German classicist Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff posited that Sappho was a sort of schoolteacher, to "explain away Sappho's passion for her 'girls and defend her from accusations of homosexuality. The view continues to be influential, both among scholars and the general public, though more recently the idea has been criticised by historians as anachronistic and has been rejected by several prominent classicists as unjustified by the evidence. In 1959, Denys Page, for example, stated that Sappho's extant fragments portray "the loves and jealousies, the pleasures and pains, of Sappho and her companions"; and he adds, "We have found, and shall find, no trace of any formal or official or professional relationship between them... no trace of Sappho the principal of an academy." David A. Campbell in 1967 judged that Sappho may have "presided over a literary coterie", but that "evidence for a formal appointment as priestess or teacher is hard to find". None of Sappho's own poetry mentions her teaching, and the earliest source to support the idea of Sappho as a teacher comes from Ovid, six centuries after Sappho's lifetime. Despite these problems, many newer interpretations of Sappho's social role are still based on this idea. In these interpretations, Sappho was involved in the ritual education of girls, for instance as a trainer of choruses of girls.


title: Sappho

text: Even if Sappho did compose songs for training choruses of young girls, not all of her poems can be interpreted in this light, and despite scholars' best attempts to find one, Yatromanolakis argues that there is no single performance context to which all of Sappho's poems can be attributed. Parker argues that Sappho should be considered as part of a group of female friends for whom she would have performed, just as her contemporary Alcaeus is. Some of her poetry appears to have been composed for identifiable formal occasions, but many of her songs are about – and possibly were to be performed at – banquets.


title: Sappho

text: In antiquity, Sappho's poetry was highly admired, and several ancient sources refer to her as the "tenth Muse". The earliest surviving poem to do so is a third-century BC epigram by Dioscorides, but poems are preserved in the "Greek Anthology" by Antipater of Sidon and attributed to Plato on the same theme. She was sometimes referred to as "The Poetess", just as Homer was "The Poet". The scholars of Alexandria included her in the canon of nine lyric poets. According to Aelian, the Athenian lawmaker and poet Solon asked to be taught a song by Sappho "so that I may learn it and then die". This story may well be apocryphal, especially as Ammianus Marcellinus tells a similar story about Socrates and a song of Stesichorus, but it is indicative of how highly Sappho's poetry was considered in the ancient world.


title: Sappho

text: Sappho's poetry also influenced other ancient authors. In Greek, the Hellenistic poet Nossis was described by Marilyn B. Skinner as an imitator of Sappho, and Kathryn Gutzwiller argues that Nossis explicitly positioned herself as an inheritor of Sappho's position as a woman poet. Beyond poetry, Plato cites Sappho in his "Phaedrus", and Socrates' second speech on love in that dialogue appears to echo Sappho's descriptions of the physical effects of desire in fragment 31. In the first century BC, Catullus established the themes and metres of Sappho's poetry as a part of Latin literature, adopting the Sapphic stanza, believed in antiquity to have been invented by Sappho, giving his lover in his poetry the name "Lesbia" in reference to Sappho, and adapting and translating Sappho's 31st fragment in his poem 51.


title: Sappho

text: Other ancient poets wrote about Sappho's life. She was a popular character in ancient Athenian comedy, and at least six separate comedies called "Sappho" are known. The earliest known ancient comedy to take Sappho as its main subject was the early-fifth or late-fourth century BC "Sappho" by Ameipsias, though nothing is known of it apart from its name. As these comedies survive only in fragments, it is uncertain exactly how they portrayed Sappho, but she was likely characterised as a promiscuous woman. In Diphilos' play, she was the lover of the poets Anacreon and Hipponax. Sappho was also a favourite subject in the visual arts. She was the most commonly depicted poet on sixth and fifth-century Attic red-figure vase paintings – though unlike male poets such as Anacreon and Alcaeus, in the four surviving vases in which she is identified by an inscription she is never shown singing. She was also shown on coins from Mytilene and Lesbos from the first to third centuries AD, and reportedly depicted in a sculpture by Silanion at Syracuse, statues in Pergamon and Constantinople, and a painting by the Hellenistic artist Leon.


title: Sappho

text: From the fourth century BC, ancient works portray Sappho as a tragic heroine, driven to suicide by her unrequited love for Phaon. A fragment of a play by Menander says that Sappho threw herself off of the cliff at Leucas out of her love for him. Ovid's "Heroides" 15 is written as a letter from Sappho to Phaon, and when it was first rediscovered in the 15th century was thought to be a translation of an authentic letter of Sappho's. Sappho's suicide was also depicted in classical art, for instance on a first-century BC basilica in Rome near the Porta Maggiore.


title: Sappho

text: While Sappho's poetry was admired in the ancient world, her character was not always so well considered. In the Roman period, critics found her lustful and perhaps even homosexual. Horace called her "mascula Sappho" in his "Epistles", which the later Porphyrio commented was "either because she is famous for her poetry, in which men more often excel, or because she is maligned for having been a tribad". By the third century AD, the difference between Sappho's literary reputation as a poet and her moral reputation as a woman had become so significant that the suggestion that there were in fact two Sapphos began to develop. In his "Historical Miscellanies", Aelian wrote that there was "another Sappho, a courtesan, not a poetess".


title: Sappho

text: By the medieval period, Sappho's works had been lost, though she was still quoted in later authors. Her work became more accessible in the sixteenth century through printed editions of those authors who had quoted her. In 1508 Aldus Manutius printed an edition of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, which contained Sappho 1, the "Ode to Aphrodite", and the first printed edition of Longinus' "On the Sublime", complete with his quotation of Sappho 31, appeared in 1554. In 1566, the French printer Robert Estienne produced an edition of the Greek lyric poets which contained around 40 fragments attributed to Sappho.


title: Sappho

text: In 1652, the first English translation of a poem by Sappho was published, in John Hall's translation of "On the Sublime". In 1681 Anne Le Fèvre's French edition of Sappho made her work even more widely known. Theodor Bergk's 1854 edition became the standard edition of Sappho in the second half of the 19th century; in the first part of the 20th, the papyrus discoveries of new poems by Sappho led to editions and translations by Edwin Marion Cox and John Maxwell Edmonds, and culminated in the 1955 publication of Edgar Lobel's and Denys Page's "Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta".


title: Sappho

text: Like the ancients, modern critics have tended to consider Sappho's poetry "extraordinary". As early as the 9th century, Sappho was referred to as a talented woman poet, and in works such as Boccaccio's "De Claris Mulieribus" and Christine de Pisan's "Book of the City of Ladies" she gained a reputation as a learned lady. Even after Sappho's works had been lost, the Sapphic stanza continued to be used in medieval lyric poetry, and with the rediscovery of her work in the Renaissance, she began to increasingly influence European poetry. In the 16th century, members of La Pléiade, a circle of French poets, were influenced by her to experiment with Sapphic stanzas and with writing love-poetry with a first-person female voice. Early modern and modern composers have also been inspired by Sappho; notable compositions based on her life or works include operas such as "Sappho" (1794) by Jean-Paul-Égide Martini, "Sappho" (1897) by Jules Massenet, "Sappho" (1963) by Peggy Glanville-Hicks; the percussion piece "Psappha" (1975) and orchestral work "Aïs" (1980) by Iannis Xenakis; and the composition "Charaxos, Eos and Tithonos" (2014) by Theodore Antoniou.


title: Sappho

text: From the Romantic era, Sappho's work – especially her "Ode to Aphrodite" – has been a key influence of conceptions of what lyric poetry should be. Such influential poets as Alfred Lord Tennyson in the nineteenth century, and A. E. Housman in the twentieth, have been influenced by her poetry. Tennyson based poems including "Eleanore" and "Fatima" on Sappho's fragment 31, while three of Housman's works are adaptations of the Midnight poem, long thought to be by Sappho though the authorship is now disputed. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Imagists – especially Ezra Pound, H. D., and Richard Aldington – were influenced by Sappho's fragments; a number of Pound's poems in his early collection "Lustra" were adaptations of Sapphic poems, while H. D.'s poetry was frequently Sapphic in "style, theme or content", and in some cases, such as "Fragment 40" more specifically invoke Sappho's writing.


title: Sappho

text: It was not long after the rediscovery of Sappho that her sexuality once again became the focus of critical attention. In the early seventeenth century, John Donne wrote "Sapho to Philaenis", returning to the idea of Sappho as a hypersexual lover of women. The modern debate on Sappho's sexuality began in the 19th century, with Welcker publishing, in 1816, an article defending Sappho from charges of prostitution and lesbianism, arguing that she was chaste – a position which would later be taken up by Wilamowitz at the end of the 19th and Henry Thornton Wharton at the beginning of the 20th centuries. In the nineteenth century Sappho was co-opted by the Decadent Movement as a lesbian "daughter of de Sade", by Charles Baudelaire in France and later Algernon Charles Swinburne in England. By the late 19th century, lesbian writers such as Michael Field and Amy Levy became interested in Sappho for her sexuality, and by the turn of the twentieth century she was a sort of "patron saint of lesbians".


title: Sappho

text: From the beginning of the 19th century, women poets such as Felicia Hemans ("The Last Song of Sappho") and Letitia Elizabeth Landon ("Sketch the First. Sappho", and in "Ideal Likenesses") took Sappho as one of their progenitors. Sappho also began to be regarded as a role model for campaigners for women's rights, beginning with works such as Caroline Norton's "The Picture of Sappho". Later in that century, she would become a model for the so-called New Woman – independent and educated women who desired social and sexual autonomy – and by the 1960s, the feminist Sappho was – along with the hypersexual, often but not exclusively lesbian Sappho – one of the two most important cultural perceptions of Sappho.


title: Sappho

text: The discoveries of new poems by Sappho in 2004 and 2014 excited both scholarly and media attention. The announcement of the Tithonus poem was the subject of international news coverage, and was described by Marilyn Skinner as "the "trouvaille" of a lifetime".


title: 300: Rise of an Empire

text: 300: Rise of an Empire is a 2014 American epic action film directed by Noam Murro from a screenplay by Zack Snyder and Kurt Johnstad, based on Frank Miller's graphic novel "Xerxes". It is a sequel to the 2006 film "300", taking place before, during, and after the main events of that film, and is loosely based on the Battle of Artemisium and the Battle of Salamis.


title: 300: Rise of an Empire

text: The cast includes Lena Headey, Peter Mensah, David Wenham, Andrew Tiernan, Andrew Pleavin, and Rodrigo Santoro reprising their roles from the first film, alongside Sullivan Stapleton, Eva Green, Hans Matheson, and Callan Mulvey. It was released in 3D and IMAX 3D on March 7, 2014. The film's score was composed by Junkie XL, being the first film in an ongoing partnership with Snyder.


title: 300: Rise of an Empire

text: The film was released to mixed reviews, with critics praising the action sequences, music, cinematography, visual effects and Green's performance but criticizing the story and overstylized gore. It grossed over $337 million worldwide from a $110 million budget.


title: 300: Rise of an Empire

text: Queen Gorgo of Sparta tells her men about the Battle of Marathon, in which King Darius of Persia was killed by General Themistocles of Athens ten years earlier. Darius's son, Xerxes, witnesses his father's death and is told "only the gods can defeat the Greeks". Darius's naval commander, Artemisia, claims that Darius' last words were a challenge, and sends Xerxes on a journey through the desert. Xerxes reaches a cave and bathes in an otherworldly liquid, emerging as an 8-foot tall "God-King". He returns to Persia and declares war on Greece to avenge his father.


title: 300: Rise of an Empire

text: As Xerxes's forces advance towards Thermopylae, Themistocles meets with the council and convinces them to provide him with a fleet to engage the Persians at sea. Themistocles travels to Sparta to ask King Leonidas for help, but is informed by Dilios that Leonidas is consulting the Oracle, and Gorgo is reluctant to side with Athens. Themistocles reunites with his old friend Scyllias, who infiltrated the Persian troops and reveals Artemisia was born Greek, but defected to Persia after her family was raped and murdered by Greek hoplites. Rescued and adopted by a Persian emissary, she was trained by the best Persian warriors, and eventually gained the attention of King Darius. Themistocles also learns that Leonidas has marched to fight the Persians with only 300 men.


title: 300: Rise of an Empire

text: Themistocles leads his fleet of fifty warships and several thousand men, which include Scyllias, Scyllias's son Calisto, and Themistocles' right-hand man Aeskylos to the Aegean Sea, starting the Battle of Artemisium. They ram their ships into the Persian ships and charge them, slaughtering several soldiers before retreating. The following day, the Greeks feign a retreat and lead a group of Persian ships into a crevice, where they become stuck. The Greeks charge the Persian ships from the cliffs above and kill more Persians. Impressed with Themistocles' skills, Artemisia brings him onto her ship and attempts to lure him to the Persian side as her second-in-command. They fight and make love simultaneously, and he refuses her offer.


title: 300: Rise of an Empire

text: The Persians attack the Greek ships with tar and flame bombs, but an Athenian kills one of the Persians, who falls into the tar carrying a torch, damaging ships from both sides. Themistocles is thrown into the sea by an explosion and nearly drowns before being rescued by Aeskylos, and stands by Scyllias's side as he succumbs to his injuries. Believing Themistocles to be dead, Artemisia and her forces withdraw. After recovering from his injuries, Themistocles learns that only a few hundred of his warriors and six of his ships survived the disastrous attack.


title: 300: Rise of an Empire

text: Daxos, an Arcadian general, tells Themistocles that Leonidas and his 300 men were killed after Ephialtes betrayed the Greeks to Xerxes. Themistocles returns to Athens and confronts Ephialtes, who reveals that Xerxes plans to attack and burn Athens to the ground. Ephialtes regrets his betrayal and welcomes death, but is spared so he can warn Xerxes that the Greek forces are gathering at Salamis. Themistocles visits Gorgo in Sparta to ask for help, but Gorgo is mourning Leonidas's death and angry for what the goal of a united Greece has cost. Before departing, Themistocles returns Leonidas's sword, which had been delivered to him by Ephialtes under Xerxes's orders, and urges Gorgo to avenge Leonidas.


title: 300: Rise of an Empire

text: In Athens, Xerxes's army is laying waste when Ephialtes arrives to deliver Themistocles' message. Upon learning he is alive, Artemisia leaves to ready her navy for battle. Xerxes suggests it is likely a trap, but she reminds him of her role. The remaining Greek ships charge into the Persians ships, beginning the decisive Battle of Salamis. Themistocles and Artemisia engage in a duel, which ends in a stalemate with both receiving severe injuries.


title: 300: Rise of an Empire

text: Gorgo arrives at the battle along with ships from numerous Greek city states including Delphi, Thebes, Olympia, Arcadia, and Sparta, all uniting against the surrounded Persians. Daxos leads the Arcadian army while Themistocles urges Artemisia to surrender. Xerxes, watching the battle from a cliff, turns his back on her, acknowledging his naval defeat and continuing the march of his army. Artemisia tries to kill Themistocles but is killed as he stabs her through the stomach. While Dilios leads the Greek assault, Themistocles and Gorgo take a moment to silently acknowledge one another's alliance as the remaining Persians attempt a counter-attack. The three then charge at the Persians with the entire Greek army.


title: 300: Rise of an Empire

text: In June 2008, producers Gianni Nunnari, Mark Canton, and Bernie Goldmann revealed that work had begun on a sequel to "300". Legendary Pictures announced that Frank Miller, who wrote the 1998 comic book limited series on which the film "300" was based, was writing a follow-up graphic novel, and Zack Snyder, co-screenwriter and director of "300", was interested in directing the adaptation, but instead chose to develop and direct the Superman reboot "Man of Steel". Noam Murro directed instead, while Snyder produced and co-wrote. The film was centered on the Greek leader Themistocles, portrayed by Australian actor Sullivan Stapleton. During pre-production, the film was titled "300: Battle of Artemisium" (although this was widely misreported as "Battle of Artemisia"); the film was retitled "300: Rise of an Empire" in September 2012.


title: 300: Rise of an Empire

text: Principal photography commenced in early July 2012 at the Nu Boyana Film Studios in Sofia, Bulgaria. Underwater greenscreen scenes were also filmed at Leavesden Studios. On May 10, 2013, it was announced the film's release date would be pushed back from August 2, 2013, to March 7, 2014.


title: 300: Rise of an Empire

text: "300: Rise of an Empire" grossed $106.6 million in North America and $231 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $337.6 million, against a production budget of $110 million.


title: 300: Rise of an Empire

text: In North America, the film opened to number one in its first weekend with $45 million. In its second weekend, the film dropped to number two, grossing an additional $19.2 million. In its third weekend, the film dropped to number five, grossing $8.5 million. In its fourth weekend, the film dropped to number nine, grossing $4.2 million.


title: 300: Rise of an Empire

text: "300: Rise of an Empire" received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 45% based on 198 reviews, with an average rating of 5.00/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "It's bound to hit some viewers as an empty exercise in stylish gore, and despite a gonzo starring performance from Eva Green, "300: Rise of an Empire" is a step down from its predecessor." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 48 out of 100 score, based on 34 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, down the A− received by its predecessor.