Archaic Greek Poetry: An Anthology

by Barbara Hughes Fowler

With this anthology, Barbara Hughes Fowler presents the most comprehensive selection of Greek poetry of the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. ever published in English. Fowler's brilliant translations provide access to six Homeric Hymns, eight selections from Bakchylides, twelve odes of Pindar, selections from the iambicists and elegists, virtually all of Archilochos and of the surviving lyricists, including Sappho, and a number of anonymous poems about work, play, and politics. Archaic poets delighted in all that was radiant and delicate, and their poems should be read for their narrative charm, celebration of nature, and playful sensuality. There are tantalizing fragments of fables here, as well as poems of friendship and warfare, love and colonization. Along with her notes and bibliography, Fowler has provided a biographical list of poets and a glossary of proper names. In addition to its breadth, Archaic Greek Poetry stands alone as the only volume of its kind translated by a contemporary published poet. Perhaps the most elegant translator of ancient Greek poetry into modern English, Barbara Hughes Fowler offers translations true to the original Greek while providing modern readers with superb examples of the beauty of lyric poetry. Students and scholars of classical and comparative literature, ancient history, and art history, as well as lovers of lyric poetry, will enthusiastically welcome this volume.

Genres: Poetry, Classics

360 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 1992

Reviews

[CivilWar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic anthology of Archaic-era Greek poetry - most, which is to say, nearly all of it, is highly fragmentary, found in random, decontextualized quotations or, in the more interesting cases, fragmentary papyri.

Among the most complete poems there are, of course, those masterpieces of Archaic-era poetry, the "major" Homeric Hymns, a selection of Pindar's Odes, along with the Backhylides' ones, alongside selected fragments from a bunch of lyrical poets like Sappho, Alkaios, Stesichorus, Anakreon, etc etc.

The translation - I'm real split on it: on the one hand, it is very accurate, and I am specially impressed with how it manages to make the English translations of Pindar and Backhylides sound as archaic as it does in Greek without just doing dumb pseudo-Shakespearean English, dropping ye's and thou's all over the place, even if it makes them as hard to read as they are in Greek.

On the other hand, the wording is rather literal, I would call this a very direct translation of the Greek text, so if you are looking for a looser but more poetic translation here, you will most likely be disappointed. The meter too - it uses a variety of English meters, acknowledging in the short intro the impossibility of doing the Greek one due to differences in language, and I find that the English meter works... bizarrely well? It's hard to put in words.

The advantage of such an anthology is because most of these poets have works that are too fragmentary to get proper editions, or indeed to warrant them, for when they do get such editions one often can be disappointed with the amount of pages with a single short line on it - here, the pages are filled very pleasingly, from fragment to fragment, rather than a single line taking a whole page - besides artless critical editions where the translation is just there for clarification. This allows the reader to read, as reader of poetry rather than scholar, though also as the later due to the "literalism" of the translations, to peruse the variety of themes in Archaic Greek poetry.

The themes are rather varied, as it turns out: Sappho is, unsurprisingly, the best one by far. Specially fascinating and enchanting is her treatment of Homeric myth from a purely "personal", "intimate" perspective, with Hektor's military renown being neglected in favor of his idealized marriage with Andromache here, as in poem 44, as opposed to the grand and impersonal scope of Homeric Epic. These little alternative perspectives on myth are fascinating not just from the archeo-mythical point-of-view, for it is in some of these poems that we see the first time a certain religious cult, or myth is alluded too (such as the reference to mourning to Adonis in frag. 140), but also due to how rarely we get these intimate perspectives of mythological characters in ancient poetry.

An amusingly shocking amount of poems are dedicate to pure misogyny about how much the poet hates women, real capital H Hate here, in Simonides' frag. 7, "Types of Women" - though Miss Fowler tells us to not take it too seriously (apparently there is scholarly discussion on its character as a satirical poem). Others too relate to women; others to beautiful youths. The fragmentary poem of Korinna gives yet another, differently-gendered take on the narrative poetic tradition and it can only excite the imagination as to all that must've been lost with the passing of time.

Pindar - I had read very little of, embarassingly, and this archaic translation doesn't make it easier but I will say it is very funny to tell essentially an epillyon about Jason and the Argonauts, write Medea saying a prophecy and then go "that was about YOU, dear athlete". Above all valuable for the literary renderings of many famous myths which are mostly found in mythrographers or references.

Overall - fantastic anthology, and I would recommend this as both a starting place to those who wish to familiarize themselves with the topic, and to those who want a good anthology of the thing in question as well.

[Hugolane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This served my purposes of getting a basic overview of early Greek poetry. Can't say much of it spoke deeply to me. I can see why Sappho stands out. I liked Anacreon as well. I can see Pindar growing on me he definitely had moments when the focus got beyond the mythology. That said, I found the organization of this book somewhat annoying. Placing the brief biographies if the poets in the back along with the notes for poetry as well as a glossary of proper names meant one was constantly flipping back and forth, and made the glossary far less useful than footnotes that one can glance down at as needed.

[Salim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good anthology, not a critical edition. The translator presents the poems in chronological order, including almost all of the intact lyric poets. The introduction does not include much guidance to the reader regarding historical context, nor about composition or themes.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

contender for best English translations of Sappho. i prefer other translations of the homeric hymns

[Rafael · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,5