Today sees a new sound recording in our post of the opening lines of Homer’s Odyssey. Hear Homer’s Greek and follow in English translation here.
The illustration shows the Sorceress, Circe, who is only one of the many dangers that Odysseus encounters on his … well … Odyssey.
Horace makes a sweet, epigrammatic poem on a theme from the Greek models he so admires. Chloe wants to continue to stick close to her mother, but needs to realise that the time for love and adulthood is upon her.
Hear Horace’s Latin performed in the original and follow in English translation here.
Horace’s modesty, and the Muse who commands his unwarlike lyre, warn him not to risk damage to the reputations of the Emperor Augustus and Agrippa, his chief general, by trying to celebrate them by writing about themes that belong in epic verse – that is beyond his scope. Or so he says …
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
Catullus’s shortest poem, and one of his most famous, is his epigram about loving and hating simultaneously. Hear it in Latin and follow in English here.
Pyrrha the femme fatale has a new lover, who has yet to find out that the experience is not destined to be all calm weather and plain sailing. Horace speaks as someone who has survived shipwreck in Pyrrha’s stormy waters, and in gratitude for his escape has hung his wet clothes on the temple wall as a thank-offering to the God of the sea (Neptune, or Cupid?)
In the illustration a more famous siren, Cleopatra, awaits a visit from Mark Antony.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
A middle-aged Horace attempts, in the last Book of his Odes, to seduce Phyllis, who will, he says, be his last love. He just might be describing a real attraction, with the names changed, or be reworking a Greek model as a purely literary exercise: we will never know, but the poetry is beautiful, and vintage Horace. Hear his Latin and follow in a new English translation here.
The illustration is a Greek girl, by the classicising Victorian painter, Alma-Tadema.
A literary exercise or a cry of pain? Either way, Horace’s ode to jealousy packs a powerful punch into a short poem. In the illustration by John Singer Sargent, the furies are tormenting Orestes.
Hear Horace’s Latin 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.
This poem by Schiller, “Nänie” (meaning a Roman funeral song) is famous in the German-speaking world. It is a fine example of how influential classical education, which most significant European writers between the Renaissance and the mid-twentieth century would have had, was on their work. Schiller actually uses an ancient Greek and Roman metre – elegiac couplets – and takes it as read that his audience will immediately recognise the figures from myth that he refers to, although only one of them is referred to by name in the German text.
The illustration shows the courtship on a red-figure cup of Thetis, the grieving mother of Schiller’s poem, and the hero Peleus. Thetis, a shape-shifter, attempts to elude him by using her gift, but he holds her too tightly. Achilles, also a figure in Schiller’s poem, will be among the results.
Hear Schiller’s German read by Tatjana Pisarski and follow in Westbrook’s English here.
