"Lesbian" as a term used solely to describe female homosexuality is a late 19th-early 20th Century phenomenon derived from the identification of the homosexual tendencies in Sappho's verse. Sappho's life is obscure, but apart from the treatment of women in her poetry she probably surrounded herself with a circle of young women on Lesbos (probably in Mytilene) at least until her (probable) exile to Sicily with her (probable) daughter Cleis.