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Freshman Seminar, First Semester
All the writings of Plato generally considered to be authentic are here presented in the only complete one-volume Plato available in English. The editors set out to choose the contents of this collected edition from the work of the best British and American translators of the last 100 years, ranging from Jowett (1871) to scholars of the present day. The volume contains prefatory notes to each dialogue, by Edith Hamilton; an introductory essay on Plato's philosophy and writings, by Huntington Cairns; and a comprehensive index which seeks, by means of cross references, to assist the reader with the philosophical vocabulary of the different translators.
Outstanding translations by leading contemporary scholars--many commissioned especially for this volume--are presented here in the first single edition to include the entire surviving corpus of works attributed to Plato in antiquity. In his introductory essay, John Cooper explains the presentation of these works, discusses questions concerning the chronology of their composition, comments on the dialogue form in which Plato wrote, and offers guidance on approaching the reading and study of Plato's works.
Also included are concise introductions by Cooper and Hutchinson to each translation, meticulous annotation designed to serve both scholar and general reader, and a comprehensive index. This handsome volume offers fine paper and a high-quality Smyth-sewn cloth binding in a sturdy, elegant edition.
The Oxford Translation of Aristotle was originally published in 12 volumes between 1912 and 1954. It is universally recognized as the standard English version of Aristotle. This revised edition contains the substance of the original Translation, slightly emended in light of recent scholarship; three of the original versions have been replaced by new translations; and a new and enlarged selection of Fragments has been added. The aim of the translation remains the same: to make the surviving works of Aristotle readily accessible to English speaking readers.
The Oxford Translation of Aristotle was originally published in 12 volumes between 1912 and 1954. It is universally recognized as the standard English version of Aristotle. This revised edition contains the substance of the original Translation, slightly emended in light of recent scholarship; three of the original versions have been replaced by new translations; and a new and enlarged selection of Fragments has been added. The aim of the translation remains the same: to make the surviving works of Aristotle readily accessible to English speaking readers.
The second edition of Five Dialogues presents G. M. A. Grube's distinguished translations, as revised by John Cooper for Plato, Complete Works. A number of new or expanded footnotes are also included along with an updated bibliography.
This is an excellent translation. It achieves a very high standard of accuracy and readability, two goals very difficult to attain in combination when it comes to such a master of prose and philosophical argument as Plato. Because of this the book is suitable for courses at all levels in philosophy, from introductory courses on Plato, or problems in Philosophy, to graduate seminars. --Gerasimos Santas, Teaching Philosophy
"Backgrounds" includes a rich collection of historical works by Aeschylus, Bacchylides, Thucydides, Aristotle, and Plutarch. New to the Second Edition are contrasting accounts, by Diodorus of Sicily and Strabo, of the Amazons who were believed to be living in the mountainous regions.
"Commentaries" is divided into two sections. Early modern interpretations are represented by Isaac Taylor, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Babington Macaulay. Seventeen modern assessments--three of them new to the Second Edition--focus on historical origins and backgrounds, Herodotus's place in history, and central issues concerning both the Persian Wars and Herodotus's reckoning of them. The new contributors are François Hartog, James Redfield, and Siep Stuurman.
A Glossary, Selected Bibliography, and Index are also included.
George Chapman's translations of Homer are the most famous in the English language. Keats immortalized the work of the Renaissance dramatist and poet in the sonnet On First Looking into Chapman's Homer. Swinburne praised the translations for their romantic and sometimes barbaric grandeur, their freshness, strength, and inextinguishable fire. The great critic George Saintsbury (1845-1933) wrote: For more than two centuries they were the resort of all who, unable to read Greek, wished to know what Greek was. Chapman is far nearer Homer than any modern translator in any modern language.
This volume presents the original (1611) text of Chapman's translation of the Iliad, making only a small number of modifications to punctuation and wording where they might confuse the modern reader. The editor, Allardyce Nicoll, provides an introduction and a glossary. Garry Wills contributes a preface, in which he explains how Chapman tapped into the poetic consonance between the semi-divine heroism of the Iliad's warriors and the cosmological symbols of Renaissance humanism.
In every century since the renaissance, English speakers have felt compelled to possess a translation written especially for their own time of this great epic poem, the earliest and most central literary text of Western culture. That need has been thoroughly met in our century by the distinguished poet and classicist Robert Fitzgerald, whose version of The Iliad does justice in every way to the fluent vigor and gravity of the Homeric original.
Anger be now your song, immortal one,
Akhilleus' anger, doomed and ruinous,
that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss
and crowded brave souls into the undergloom,
leaving so many dead men-carrion
for dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done.
-Lines 1-6
"Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus / and its devastation." For sixty years, that's how Homer has begun the Iliad in English, in Richmond Lattimore's faithful translation--the gold standard for generations of students and general readers.
This long-awaited new edition of Lattimore's Iliad is designed to bring the book into the twenty-first century--while leaving the poem as firmly rooted in ancient Greece as ever. Lattimore's elegant, fluent verses--with their memorably phrased heroic epithets and remarkable fidelity to the Greek--remain unchanged, but classicist Richard Martin has added a wealth of supplementary materials designed to aid new generations of readers. A new introduction sets the poem in the wider context of Greek life, warfare, society, and poetry, while line-by-line notes at the back of the volume offer explanations of unfamiliar terms, information about the Greek gods and heroes, and literary appreciation. A glossary and maps round out the book. The result is a volume that actively invites readers into Homer's poem, helping them to understand fully the worlds in which he and his heroes lived--and thus enabling them to marvel, as so many have for centuries, at Hektor and Ajax, Paris and Helen, and the devastating rage of Achilleus.
"Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus / and its devastation." For sixty years, that's how Homer has begun the Iliad in English, in Richmond Lattimore's faithful translation--the gold standard for generations of students and general readers.
This long-awaited new edition of Lattimore's Iliad is designed to bring the book into the twenty-first century--while leaving the poem as firmly rooted in ancient Greece as ever. Lattimore's elegant, fluent verses--with their memorably phrased heroic epithets and remarkable fidelity to the Greek--remain unchanged, but classicist Richard Martin has added a wealth of supplementary materials designed to aid new generations of readers. A new introduction sets the poem in the wider context of Greek life, warfare, society, and poetry, while line-by-line notes at the back of the volume offer explanations of unfamiliar terms, information about the Greek gods and heroes, and literary appreciation. A glossary and maps round out the book. The result is a volume that actively invites readers into Homer's poem, helping them to understand fully the worlds in which he and his heroes lived--and thus enabling them to marvel, as so many have for centuries, at Hektor and Ajax, Paris and Helen, and the devastating rage of Achilleus.
--Daniel Mendelsohn, The New York Times Book Review
nuances of English.
---Stephen G. Daitz, Professor Emeritus of Classics, City University of New York
Rodney Merrill's translation of Homer's Iliad offers a form of English poetry particularly relevant to the epic, producing a strong musical setting that brings many elements of the narrative truly to life. Most notable are the many battle scenes, in which Homer's strong dactylic hexameters make credible the war-lust in the deeds of the combatants. Until his retirement, Rodney Merrill taught English composition and comparative literature at Stanford and Berkeley. In addition to his translation of Homer's Odyssey, he is the author of Chaucer's Broche of Thebes.
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 thunder for a new generation of readers.
Featuring an enticingly personal introduction, a detailed synopsis of each book, a wide-ranging glossary, and explanatory notes for the few puzzling in-text items, the book also includes a select bibliography for those who want to learn more about Homer and the Greek epic. This landmark translation--specifically designed, like the oral original, to be read aloud--will soon be required reading for every student of Greek antiquity, and the great traditions of history and literature to which it gave birth.
Homer's epic about the horrors and heroism of the final year of the Trojan War is one of Western literature's most enduring and moving tales. Joe Sachs, whose translations are known for being faithful to the original Greek, brings new layers of depth, understanding, and interest to the poem.
Why translate the Iliad? Joe Sachs explains his motivation:
My own reading of the poem has been influenced less by the books and essays that discuss it than by its translators. I have read quite a few, and the variety among them is striking...Once, long ago, I expected that eventually I would find one translation the most satisfying. What I found instead was that it was the very multiplicity of them that was getting me closer to Homer. Felicitous phrases from them all have remained with me, and the way their words move and sound has helped me come to hear, in my inward ear, Homer's voice.
Renowned philosophy professor Joe Sachs taught for thirty years in the Great Books program at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. He has translated Homer's Odyssey (Paul Dry Books, 2014); Aristotle's Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul and On Memory and Recollection, Nicomachean Ethics, and Poetics; and Plato's Theaetetus, Republic, and Socrates and The Sophists.
With her virtuoso translation, classicist and bestselling author Caroline Alexander brings to life Homer's timeless epic of the Trojan War
Composed around 730 B.C., Homer's Iliad recounts the events of a few momentous weeks in the protracted ten-year war between the invading Achaeans, or Greeks, and the Trojans in their besieged city of Ilion. From the explosive confrontation between Achilles, the greatest warrior at Troy, and Agamemnon, the inept leader of the Greeks, through to its tragic conclusion, The Iliad explores the abiding, blighting facts of war.
Soldier and civilian, victor and vanquished, hero and coward, men, women, young, old--The Iliad evokes in poignant, searing detail the fate of every life ravaged by the Trojan War. And, as told by Homer, this ancient tale of a particular Bronze Age conflict becomes a sublime and sweeping evocation of the destruction of war throughout the ages.
Carved close to the original Greek, acclaimed classicist Caroline Alexander's new translation is swift and lean, with the driving cadence of its source--a translation epic in scale and yet devastating in its precision and power.
--M.L. West, Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford
From the editor of the widely praised The Landmark Thucydides, a new Landmark Edition of The Histories by Herodotus.
Cicero called Herodotus the father of history, and his only work, The Histories, is considered the first true piece of historical writing in Western literature. With lucid prose, Herodotus's account of the rise of the Persian Empire and its dramatic war with the Greek city sates set a standard for narrative nonfiction that continues to this day. Illustrated, annotated, and filled with maps--with an introduction by Rosalind Thomas, twenty-one appendices written by scholars at the top of their fields, and a new translation by Andrea L. Purvis--The Landmark Herodotus is a stunning edition of the greatest classical work of history ever written.
Focus Philosophical Library translations are close to and are non-interpretative of the original text, with the notes and a glossary intending to provide the reader with some sense of the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Plato's immediate audience.
far after he had sacked the sacred city of Troy. He saw
the cities of many men and he learned their minds.
He suffered many pains on the sea in his spirit, seeking
to save his life and the homecoming of his companions. Odysseus--soldier, sailor, trickster, and everyman--is one of the most recognizable characters in world literature. His arduous, ten-year journey home after the Trojan War, the subject of Homer's Odyssey, is the most accessible tale to survive from ancient Greece, and its impact is still felt today across many different cultures. This lively free verse translation, from one of today's leading Homeric scholars, preserves the clarity and simplicity of the original while conveying Odysseus' adventures in a modern style. By avoiding the technical formality of earlier translations, and the colloquial and sometimes exaggerated effects of recent attempts, Barry B. Powell's translation deftly captures the most essential truths of this vital text. Due to his thorough familiarity with the world of Homer and Homeric language, Powell's introduction provides rich historical and literary perspectives on the poem. This volume also includes illustrations from classical artwork, detailed maps, explanatory notes, a timeline, and a glossary. Modern and pleasing to the ear while accurately reflecting the meaning of the original, this Odyssey is a superlative translation for twenty-first-century readers.
Composed at the rosy-fingered dawn of world literature almost three millennia ago, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty and power; about marriage and family; about travelers, hospitality, and the yearning for home.
This fresh, authoritative translation captures the beauty of this ancient poem as well as the drama of its narrative. Its characters are unforgettable, none more so than the "complicated" hero himself, a man of many disguises, many tricks, and many moods, who emerges in this version as a more fully rounded human being than ever before.
Written in iambic pentameter verse and a vivid, contemporary idiom, Emily Wilson's Odyssey sings with a voice that echoes Homer's music; matching the number of lines in the Greek original, the poem sails along at Homer's swift, smooth pace.
A fascinating, informative introduction explores the Bronze Age milieu that produced the epic, the poem's major themes, the controversies about its origins, and the unparalleled scope of its impact and influence. Maps drawn especially for this volume, a pronunciation glossary, and extensive notes and summaries of each book make this is an Odyssey that will be treasured by a new generation of readers.
One of the supreme masterpieces of world literature, the Homeric saga of the shipwrecks, wanderings, and homecoming of the master tactician Odysseus encompasses a virtual inventory of the themes and attitudes that have shaped Western culture. The tale of Odysseus's encounters with such obstacles as Calypso, Circe, Scylla and Charybdis, the Sirens, and the lotus-eaters, and his dramatic return to Ithaca and his patient wife, Penelope, forms a prototype for all subsequent Western epics.
Robert Fitzgerald's much-acclaimed translation, fully possessing as it does the body and spirit of the original, has helped to assure the continuing vitality of Europe's most influential work of poetry. This edition includes twenty-five new line drawings by Barnaby Fitzgerald.
The classic translation of The Odyssey, now in paperback.
Robert Fitzgerald's translation of Homer's Odyssey is the best and best-loved modern translation of the greatest of all epic poems. Since 1961, this Odyssey has sold more than two million copies, and it is the standard translation for three generations of students and poets. Farrar, Straus and Giroux is delighted to publish a new edition of this classic work. Fitzgerald's supple verse is ideally suited to the story of Odysseus' long journey back to his wife and home after the Trojan War. Homer's tale of love, adventure, food and drink, sensual pleasure, and mortal danger reaches the English-language reader in all its glory.
Of the many translations published since World War II, only Fitzgerald's has won admiration as a great poem in English. The noted classicist D. S. Carne-Ross explains the many aspects of its artistry in his Introduction, written especially for this new edition.
This edition also features a map, a Glossary of Names and Places, and Fitzgerald's Postscript. Line drawings precede each book of the poem.
Winner of the Bollingen Prize
"Joe Sachs's translation brings the reader quickly and deeply into The Odyssey."--Nickolas Pappas
This new translation powerfully presents The Odyssey with a modern clarity that suits the vigorous narrative of Odysseus's perilous ten-year voyage home to Ithaca. Joe Sachs, whose translations are known for being faithful to the original Greek, brings new layers of depth, understanding, and interest to the epic.
"I have never met a translation of The Odyssey I didn't like." Thus Joe Sachs invites us to partake in his new rendering of Homer's epic.
"The poem appears in as many guises as Odysseus himself...There is so much power and grace in Homer's poetry that a reader responsive to a few partial strands of it can find in them a wholly satisfying experience and every translator whose work I have read has detected and magnified something in the original that I had not found by other means...Any newly encountered translation of a poem is an opportunity to participate in a fresh reading through a new pair of eyes, and while those readings cannot all be taken in at one view, each one adds something to the sight that occupies the foreground at any moment. It is not because a new translation is needed that I now offer this one, but because every new translation is a contribution that enhances the self-revelation of a poem of boundless variety...The friction of one translation against another can be the quickest way for a path to light up for a reader's own entry into the work. And this invitation to use the available translations not as rivals but in partnership gives license to any single translator to sacrifice part of the meaning and weight of any word or phrase to capture more effectively whatever seems to matter most in it...There comes a point when your best recourse is to rely on no one's judgment but your own, to confront the intelligence, imagination, and heart we know as Homer on your own, and to join the fun."--from the Introduction by Joe Sachs
"The transparent, natural language of Joe Sachs's translation brings the reader quickly and deeply into The Odyssey. Behind that language, both intimate and clear, we sense his sure feel for The Odyssey's people and places. And as much as the scenes of the poem vary, and the language with them, we detect the idea of The Odyssey that Sachs articulates in his valuable afterword: that Homer can begin his story in the middle of things because we are always in the midst of The Odyssey's action no matter where we start reading--because the poem's sub-ject is the discovery of what is essentially human, a discovery that humans are always, wonderingly, in the middle of."--Nickolas Pappas, Professor of Philosophy at City College and the Graduate Center, CUNY
"Joe Sachs's translation of Aristotle's Poetics is to me the most vibrant version of a well-thumbed text that is still the screenwriter's bible. So I am not surprised that he brings the same freshness to the world's greatest long-voyage-home-to-a-lost-love story. This Odyssey is exciting reading for the general reader and essential reading for teachers and students who can now 'hear' how Homer's epic might have been heard by listeners in times past. Let's hope Joe Sachs is now working on the Iliad."--Eoghan Harris, Irish National Film School (Dun Laoghaire Institute)
Joe Sachs taught for thirty years in the Great Books program at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. He has translated numerous works by Aristotle and Plato.
The standard translation into modern English of Homer's Odyssey. Lattimore's translation of Homer's epic Greek poem captures its fast-moving narrative and vigorous language. The volume features an extensive introduction summarizing the story and analyzing the text and the controversies surrounding it as well as a comprehensive glossary.
"In this Odyssey, Professor Lattimore has achieved his chef d'oeuvre as a translator. . . . A dazzling and well-nigh flawless performance. . . . Here is a master in perfect control of his medium. . . . A landmark in the history of modern translation. . . . It would be a crime to underestimate the miraculous and self-effacing artistry with which Professor Lattimore has reanimated Homer for this generation, and perhaps for other generations to come."-Times Literary Supplement
One of the founding documents of Western culture and the only surviving ancient Greek trilogy, the Oresteia of Aeschylus is one of the great tragedies of all time.
The three plays of the Oresteia portray the bloody events that follow the victorious return of King Agamemnon from the Trojan War, at the start of which he had sacrificed his daughter Iphigeneia to secure divine favor. After Iphi-geneia's mother, Clytemnestra, kills her husband in revenge, she in turn is murdered by their son Orestes with his sister Electra's encouragement. Orestes is pursued by the Furies and put on trial, his fate decided by the goddess Athena. Far more than the story of murder and ven-geance in the royal house of Atreus, the Oresteia serves as a dramatic parable of the evolution of justice and civilization that is still powerful after 2,500 years. The trilogy is presented here in George Thomson's classic translation, renowned for its fidelity to the rhythms and richness of the original Greek.
In "Agamemnon, the warrior who defeated Troy returns to Argos and is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra for sacrificing their daughter Iphigenia before the Trojan War.
In "The Libation Bearers" (Choephoroi), Orestes, Agamemnon's som, avenges his father by murdering his mother.
In "The Furies" (Eumenides), Orestes flees to Delphi, pursued by the divine avengers (Erinyes) of his mother. After being purified by Apollo, he makes his way to Athens and is there tried (and acquitted) at the court of Areopagus.
"This critical edition provides a lavish and fulsome picture of ancient Greek tragedy's most significant surviving document." --JOHANNA HANINK, Brown University
