Poems From Greek Antiquity

by QUARRIE PAUL

There is a great deal more to Greek poetry than the Iliad or the Odyssey . Shorter masterpieces abound, and the lyrical and elegiac poems, odes, and epigrams in this volume give an unparalleled sampling of them. Included here are selections from the early Greek poets - from Hesiod, Pindar and Bacchylides, Alcaeus and Sappho; from the later Alexandrian poets Theocritus, Bion, Apollonius of Rhodes, and many more. A whole section is devoted to poems from the celebrated Greek Anthology , which spans a thousand years from the Classical to the Byzantine age, and another to the Anacreontea , the delightful collection of odes on the pleasures of drink, love, and beauty which has been popular for centuries both in the original Greek and in English. Excerpts from somewhat longer poems include Percy Bysshe Shelley's 'Homeric Hymn to Mercury' and the hugely entertaining Homeric pastiche 'The Battle of the Frogs and Mice'.
Paul Quarrie's selection of English translations draws fruitfully on the work of lesser-known as well as more famous names. In these pages poets jostle with Regius Professors of Greek at Oxbridge, professional writers and translators with enthusiastic amateurs including teachers, librarians, aristocrats, diplomats, civil servants, bankers, soldiers and clergymen. Historically their translations range from anonymous versions produced in Tudor England through the golden age of translation presided over by George Chapman in the seventeenth century, to modern translations by James Michie, Fleur Adcock and Robert Fagles. The editor provides an informative preface, introductions to the Greek Anthology and the Anacreontea, and biographies of translators where bibliographical detail is set off by colourful anecdote.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Greece, Anthologies

288 pages, Hardcover

Published November 10, 2020

Reviews

[Vinny (Local_Bibliophile)]

3.75 ⭐

[Tri]

Personally, I think if you have to add in multiple versions of a poem because the first translation isn’t accurate, maybe just leave out the first translation. Or leave out the Latin ones. Or maybe don’t have translations from the 1700s. I have many suggestions.

This was a very promising book with a huge selection of Ancient Greek lyric poems. It’s a real shame that both the translations and the introductions were terrible. Instead of having one translation here, we seem to have a collection of as many translators from as many historical periods as possible. Some of them are very good. Some of them are not. And some of them are so old that the English might as well still be Greek.

The introductions focus mainly on when each work was first translated into English, and not at all on the poet or place.

A real disappointment. 2.5 stars.

[Gray Turner-Uttley]

Read post Nikita Gill book event after hearing a lot of greek myth talk. Can say I liked the descriptions for the poems and prose and the context behind them but there were a lot of fragments found that personally didn't do anything for me because I didn't know what they were at all.

Interesting to see some were translated by Percy Shelly too.

[narsil]

Fabulous selection, atrocious translation. What a pity really, this was a couple of editorial decisions away from being a remarkable book.

[Caroline Duggan]

A great introduction to Ancient Greek poems. The English translations range across history, including Hobbes, Byron, Coleridge and Rossetti, as well as some names more famous to classicists. The poems of The Greek Anthology were my favourites, full of a sense of the fleeting nature of human life, grief, loss and love.