Actually literacy was common among upper-class Greek women, and a few women earned reputations for literary talent.  Most famous of them was the poet Sappho, who composed nine volumes of poetry around 600 B.C.E. Sappho probably a widow from an aristocratic family, invited young women into her home for instruction in music and literature.  Critics charged her with homosexual activity, and her surviving verses speaks of her strong physical attraction to young women.  Greek society accepted sexual relationships between men but frowned on female homosexuality, Sappho fell under a dirty cloud of moral suspicion, and only fragments of her work to survive.

The question today is wasn't this an even earlier type of a witch hunt? How many times have we observed similar patterns?