The Roman Poets

by Peter Washington (Editor)

The urban and pastoral poetry of the Roman republic, and of the empire that succeeded it, was both the culmination of the magnificent classical tradition of the Mediterranean and the seedbed for almost all the subsequent poetic traditions of Western and Central Europe. The stateliness of Virgil's Eclogues and the grandeur of his epic line, the unsurpassable lyricism - by turns tender, incisive, and scabrous - of Catullus's elegies and satires, the philosophical splendor of Lucretius's meditations, the relentless imaginative energy of Ovid's narratives, and the sonorous beauty of the odes of Horace have been for two millennia a source of endless delight and instruction, and the work of these writers has given to Europe its frames of literary reference and its enduring canons of taste.

Genres: Poetry

256 pages, Hardcover

First published November 11, 1997

Reviews

[heptagrammaton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wordsworth once remarked of Alexander Pope's ornate and widespread in its heyday translation of the Illiad that as far as Pope goes, he succeeds; but his Homer is not Homer, but Pope.
   Analogously: as far as this goes, it succeeds. But its Roman poets are not Roman poets. And I am a bit doubtful as to where it's going.
   This little book features a variety of translations, the majority of them written before 1800, bracketed by charming antique lithographs in the headings, the majority of them irrelevant to the poems they stand in proximity to. [T]ranslation has always been vital to the development of English literature, writes editor Peter Washington in the foreword. No single body of work has been more important in this process than Roman poetry. Fascinating insights, doubtless, and there is something of definite literary interest in a poetry collection which seeks to illuminate that — unfortunately, no additional scholarly context or comparative framework is provided. Sink or swim in the Thames of your forebears.

A cynic may see a different utility at play in printing an anthology in which 90% of the material has had its copyright expired or outright predates any such commercial hindrances.

[Paul H. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Amazed that Everyman's Library allowed this -- The Roman Poets picks essentially the worst public-domain eighteenth-century translations of Latin poetry and bundles them into a single volume. I think the average reader might be forgiven for thinking that an Everyman's edition of Latin poetry would include translations published after 1800.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I generally adore Everyman's poetry collections, this is another one in the series that could have used a slightly more robust introduction. As it is, Washington kicks things off by declaring himself more interested in the vagaries of translation than anything else, and then leaves the reader to their own devices.

I could perhaps understand that approach were this a side-by-side with the original Latin facing whichever version Washington plucked from Britain's long tradition of translation (and they are, as far as I can tell, all British translators), but instead we're left to wonder if Roman poets were particularly overwrought, or if that's just a fault of the editor's taste in translations. Of the almost seventy translators, all but sixteen died before 1900, so be prepared for a bit of labored meter and some archaic spelling conventions.

At least Washington has the sense to start off with Catullus, who it's difficult to dry out, though Virgil fares less well until the Georgic bits with the bees, and Samuel Johnson's rendering of Juvenal was deadly enough that my eyes glazed over and I wound up skipping most of it. The selections of Horace are uniformly charming, and Kit Marlowe's version of Ovid's elegy on a woman who ruined her hair with an iron will leave you giggling.

Generally, this series serves as an excellent entry-point to whichever specific area of poetry the volume covers. Unfortunately, I think the editor's extremely narrow taste in translation rather works against that goal. Good enough, I suppose, but this isn't going to win anyone to the cause.

[Jenny Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was pretty good, but some of the translators spelled things with the old spellings, which distracted me somewhat. Such as old was olde, suddain for sudden, ect. Some of these may also have been British spellings, but being unfamiliar with them, the were again distracting.
A good introduction, it can help you decide which if any of the Roman Poets you would maybe like to read, and it can also possibly help you pick a translator, as there are a few poems with several translations included. There are at least two poems by every translator, so that is a plus as well.

[Nullaesomines · Rating 3 out of 5]

Over all this is a good overview of many of the Roman poets. Many of the translations are quite old and can be a bit "wordy".