Author: Pantheon Poets

A Sting in the Tail

Posted on

Beside their beached ships, Odysseus’s men celebrate his foiling of the Cyclops with a feast on the giant cannibal’s flocks. What they do not know is that Poseidon has heard the monster’s prayer for revenge, and that their days are numbered.

Hear Homer’s Greek and follow in Samuel Butler’s English here.

Illustration courtesy of the British Museum, licence at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ .

Advice to a sad poet

Posted on

Horace tells a writer of sad love elegy to put grief behind him and celebrate the latest victories of the emperor Augustus. Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here; see the illustrated blog post here.

Advice to Licinius

Posted on

If you want to live well, says Horace, then avoid extremes, accept the worst if it comes, but hope for the best. Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here; see the illustrated blog post here.

Aeneas and Dido meet

Posted on

In the throne room of Carthage, Queen Dido gives audience to an embassy from Aeneas’s Trojans, unaware that he himself is present and about to be revealed.

Hear Virgil’s Latin and follow in English here.

Image: Betty Blythe as the Queen of Sheba, Fox Film Corporation 1921.

Aeneas and his mother

Posted on

Aeneas’s divine mother, Venus, appears in splendour to remind him that the sight of Helen hiding in the burning city should not distract him from saving his family.

Hear Virgil’s Latin and follow in English here. See the illustrated blog post here.