The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse
by Christopher Childers (Editor)
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The poets in this book are philosophers and statesmen; priestesses and warriors; teenage girls, concerned for their birthday celebrations; drunkards and brawlers; grumpy old men and chic young things. They speak of hopes, fears, loves, losses, triumphs and humiliations. Every one of them lived and died between 1,900 and 2,800 years ago. The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse is a volume without precedent. It brings together the best of two traditions normally treated in isolation, show more and in doing so tells a captivating story about how literary book culture emerged out of a society structured by song. The classical vision of lyric poetry as practised by the greatest ancient poets - Sappho and Horace, Bacchylides and Catullus - mingles and interacts with our expansive modern understanding of the lyric as the brief, personal, emotional poetry of a human soul laid bare. Anyone looking for a picture of what ancient poets were up to when they weren't composing national epics, manuals in verse or pieces for the tragic or comic stage - when they were instead singing to the gods, or to their friends, or otherwise opening little verbal windows into their life and times - can find it here. It is a magisterial accomplishment, astonishing its ambition and thrilling in scope. show lessTags
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Let me start by saying that I’m in love with this book. It is a treasure trove of verse translations, most amazingly delivered by a single translator.
More than ten years in the making, the Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse spans around nine hundred years and more than eighty poets, all translated by Christopher Childers. A stunning one-man show, with almost all the old favourites show more included (Sappho and Alcaeus, Stesichorus and Simonides, Pindar and Callimachus, Catullus and Vergil, Horace and Ovid), alongside lesser-known figures such as Timocreon, Hermolochus, and Tymnes, among many others. Because of the inherent difficulty of explaining what “lyric poetry” is, Childers says he basically included examples of every poetical genre with the exception of epic, versified manuals, and drama (p. xiv). show less
More than ten years in the making, the Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse spans around nine hundred years and more than eighty poets, all translated by Christopher Childers. A stunning one-man show, with almost all the old favourites show more included (Sappho and Alcaeus, Stesichorus and Simonides, Pindar and Callimachus, Catullus and Vergil, Horace and Ovid), alongside lesser-known figures such as Timocreon, Hermolochus, and Tymnes, among many others. Because of the inherent difficulty of explaining what “lyric poetry” is, Childers says he basically included examples of every poetical genre with the exception of epic, versified manuals, and drama (p. xiv). show less
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Author Information
Christopher Childers is an assistant professor of history at Pittsburg State University. He is the author of The Failure of Popular Sovereignty: Slavery, Manifest Destiny, and the Radicalization of Southern Politics and the coauthor of The American South: A History.
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