But wishes she hadn’t Hear the Latin, which contains probably the most succinct summary of the Gods’ sexual misbehaviour, here and follow in English.
Archilochus was the earliest Greek lyric poet, writing about the soldier’s life in the middle of the seventh century BCE, two hundred years before this black-figure hoplite was painted onto an Attic pot. Hear a sample in the original Greek and follow in English here.
Around 650 BCE, mourning a brother-in-law lost at sea, the warrior-poet Archilochus tells his friend that sorrow is something that the Gods expect us to endure. The illustration shows mourners from a Greek vase of the sixth century BCE. Archilochus is the earliest poet of personal experience that we have from Greece: learn more about him on his poet page here.
Hear the poem in Greek and follow in English here.
In Book 1 of the Aeneid, Jupiter promises Venus that her son, Aeneas, will not be prevented by the enmity of Juno, Queen of the Gods, from founding a dynasty that will produce the city of Rome and the great Augustus.
In the illustration, Augustus cuts a figure that is no less imposing than Virgil’s descriptions of his mighty ancestor.
Hear Virgil’s original Latin and follow in a new English translation here.
As Aeneas’s journey through the underworld continues, the shade of his father, Anchises, shows him the future Emperor Augustus and foretells his glorious conquests as they talk in the Elysian Fields. Hear the Latin and follow in English here.
An important part of Horace’s project in the odes was to use his poetic skills to celebrate Augustus, and to contribute to consolidating his standing in Roman society as an object of supreme veneration and deference. Hear an early example of a poem of fulsome praise for the first Emperor from the first book of Odes in Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
The magnificent “Blacas” cameo, named after a previous possessor, was probably made soon after Augustus’s death and is in the collection of the British Museum.