The Oxford Book of Classical Verse in Translation [Hardcover]

Great Britain has a long and grand tradition of poets translating classical authors. Virtually every great poet from Chaucer on has tried his or her hand at translation, with the results often rivalling or even excelling the ancient original. This unique anthology presents the best of these translations, ranging from King Alfred, Alexander Pope, and Ben Jonson, to Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ezra Pound, and Ted Hughes. The book offers a vast array of responses to the song, verse, and drama of ancient Greece and Rome, and to poets themselves as varied as Homer, Sappho, Euripides, Virgil, Ovid, and Juvenal. Organized by classical author and text, the book gathers and juxtaposes English versions, sometimes of the same passage or poem, to dramatize the endless renewal of one great poetic tradition in and through another.

An amazing and interesting body of work. --School Library Journal

Provides both a wealth of classical verse and a delight through variations in translation....This once-in-a-generation scholarly work should be acquired by both public and academic libraries. --Choice

Lovers of the classics and English poetry will happily lose themselves in this book for hours on end. --Booklist

A new anthology of classical verse in translation is greatly to be welcomed. This Oxford book will deservedly attract many superlatives...this handsome volume will be much to read and enjoyed but not bettered for years to come. A veritable feast. --The Anglo-Hellenic Review

This anthology is proof that interest in the classical tradition has survived a period of radical scepticism...it is an anthology for the kind of people who normally despise anthologies. --Church Times

Adrian Poole is University Lecturer in English at Trinity College, Cambridge. Jeremy Maule is Newton Trust Assistant Lecturer in English, and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.