A beautiful Pocket Poet selection of short poems, odes, and epigrams
from ancient Greece, translated into English by a wide array of
distinguished translators and poets
Poems from Greek Antiquity presents a gloriously compact treasury of
the enduring and influential poems of the ancient Greeks. Greek
literature abounds in masterpieces, the most famous of which are lengthy
epics, but it is also rich in poems of much smaller compass than The
Iliad or The Odyssey. The short poems, odes, and epigrams included in
this volume span a vast period of more than a thousand years. Included
here are selections from the early lyric and elegiac poets, the
Alexandrian poets, Alcaeus, Sappho, Pindar, and many more. Here, too,
are poems drawn from the celebrated Greek Anthology, and from the
Anacreontea, the collection of odes on the pleasures of drink, love,
and beauty that have 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." The English
translations in this volume are works of art in their own right and come
from a wide range of remarkable poets and translators, ranging from
George Chapman in the seventeenth century to Robert Fagles in the
twentieth.
