Scraps of verse from the sands of Egypt.The papyri found in Egypt have yielded fragments large and small of ancient literary authors. We include in this volume from the 5th–4th …
The preeminent lyric poet of ancient Greece.Of the Greek lyric poets, Pindar (ca. 518–438 BC) was “by far the greatest for the magnificence of his inspiration” in Quintilian’s …
“The classic of all Europe.” —T. S. EliotVirgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) was born in 70 BC near Mantua and was educated at Cremona, Milan, and Rome. Slow in speech, shy in manner, …
Scurrilous verse.The poetry of the archaic period that the Greeks called iambic is characterized by scornful criticism of friend and foe and by sexual license. The purpose of these …
Precious snippets of ancient song.Towards the end of the fifth century BC, Aristophanes and the other writers of comedy used contemporary poets and musicians as targets for their …
Cyclic verse.Greek epics of the archaic period include poems that narrate a particular heroic episode or series of episodes and poems that recount the long-term history of families …
Three plays by ancient Greece’s third great tragedian.One of antiquity's greatest poets, Euripides has been prized in every age for the pathos, terror, and intellectual probing of …
Belles lettres.Sidonius Apollinaris, a Gallo-Roman, was born at Lugdunum (Lyon) about AD 430. He married Papianilla, daughter of the Emperor Avitus in whose honor he recited at …
Noble verse.The Greek poetry of the archaic period that we call elegy was composed primarily for banquets and convivial gatherings. Its subject matter consists of almost any topic, …
A miscellany of mostly imperial verse.This two-volume anthology covers a period of four and a half centuries, beginning with the work of the mime-writer Publilius Syrus who …
