Anactoria is a woman mentioned by the Ancient Greek poet Sappho, who wrote in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BCE. Sappho names Anactoria as the object of her desire in a poem known as Fragment 16. Another poem by Sappho, Fragment 31, is traditionally called the "Ode to Anactoria", though no name appears in it. As portrayed in Sappho's work, she is likely to have been a young, aristocratic follower of Sappho's, of marriageable age. It is possible that Fragment 16 was written in connection with her wedding to an unknown man. The name "Anactoria" has also been argued to have been a pseudonym, perhaps of a woman named Anagora from Miletus, or an archetypal creation of Sappho's imagination.
Disciples of Sappho (1896) by Thomas Ralph Spence. Anactoria is generally considered among Sappho's followers, and is cast as the object of her desire in Sappho's poetry.
Sappho and Alcaeus (1881), painted by Lawrence Alma-Tadema: Anactoria's name is visible near the middle of the painting.
Sappho 16 is a fragment of a poem by the archaic Greek lyric poet Sappho. It is from Book I of the Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poetry, and is known from a second-century papyrus discovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt at the beginning of the twentieth century. Sappho 16 is a love poem – the genre for which Sappho was best known – which praises the beauty of the narrator's beloved, Anactoria, and expresses the speaker's desire for her now that she is absent. It makes the case that the most beautiful thing in the world is whatever one desires, using Helen of Troy's elopement with Paris as a mythological exemplum to support this argument. The poem is at least 20 lines long, though it is uncertain whether the poem ends at line 20 or continues for another stanza.
In fragment 16, Sappho uses Helen's love for Paris (depicted here in a painting by Jacques-Louis David) as an example of her claim that the most beautiful thing in the world is whatever one most loves.