Ancient Classical category: 1324 books

Alfred Carmichael wrote this popular book that continues to be widely read today despite its age.

One of the oldest extant works of Western literature, the Iliad is a timeless epic poem of great warriors trapped between their own heroic pride and the arbitrary, often vicious decisions of fate and the gods. Renowned scholar and acclaimed translator Peter Green captures the Iliad in all its surging...

Presumably, it was created in the eighth century BC or a little later. The poem describes the journey of a mythic character Odyssey to his homeland after the end of the Trojan war, and the adventures of his wife Penelope who had been waiting for Odyssey in Ithaca. Both Odyssey and another famous poem...

In this new edition Musa views Dante's intention as one of cruel and comic commentary on the shallowness and self-pity of his protagonist, who only occasionally glimpses the true nature of love. ... the explication de texte which accompanies [Musa's] translation is instructively novel, always...

Based on the conviction that only translators who write poetry themselves can best re-create the celebrated and timeless tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the Greek Tragedy in New Translations series offers new translations that go beyond the literal meaning of the Greek in order to evoke...

It should not be hard for the general reader to understand that the influence which is the theme of this dissertation is real and explicable. If he will but call the roll of his favorite heroes, he will find Sigurd there. In his gallery of wondrous women, he certainly cherishes Brynhild. These poetic...

Epps has attempted to provide a translation of the Poetics to which all students could have access and thus gain a common terminology for this work. He has endeavored to make it clear enough that the average student with reasonable effort can understand the work without consulting aids.

In Book I of the Aeneid, Aeneas is shipwrecked on the coast of North Africa, near where the Phoenician queen Dido is building a city that will become Carthage. Aeneas and Dido meet. Their doomed love is set against Aeneas' destiny as founding father of Rome. Edited by Keith Maclennan, this...

These delightful poems—by turns whimsical, beautiful, and vulgar—seem to have primarily survived because they were attributed to Virgil. But in David R. Slavitt’s imaginative and appealing translations, they stand firmly on their own merits. Slavitt brings to this little-known body of verse...

In Book II of the "Aeneid", Aeneas relates to Dido his own account of Troy's destruction and his escape, including the episode of the Wooden Horse. It is some of the best Latin poetry ever written, and thus makes an ideal introduction to the "Aeneid". This completely new edition...

In Book IV of Virgil's "Aeneid", one of the most studied books of that epic poem, Dido, queen of Carthage, is inflamed by love for Aeneas. The goddesses Juno and Venus plot to unite them, and their 'marriage' is consummated in a cave during a hunt. However, Jupiter sends Mercury to remind...

The definitive English version of the stories of King Arthur, Le Morte Darthur was completed in 1469-70 by Sir Thomas Malory, `knight-prisoner'. In a resonant prose style, Malory charts the tragic disintegration of the fellowship of the Round Table, destroyed from within by warring factions. Recounting...

Renowned worldwide, as novelist and dramatist, Ngugi wa Thiongo's contributions to the body of critical writing on African literature, politics and society have been highly significant. His best known critical work is Decolonising the Mind, which since publication in 1986 has profoundly influenced...

In the year A.D. 8, Emperor Augustus sentenced the elegant, brilliant, and sophisticated Roman poet Ovid to exile—permanently, as it turned out—at Tomis, modern Constantza, on the Romanian coast of the Black Sea. The real reason for the emperor's action has never come to light, and all of Ovid's...