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.
In a tremendous tour-de-force, Virgil describes an incredibly powerful storm at sea as Aeneas and his men fight for survival.
Hear Virgil’s powerful Latin recited and follow in a new English translation here.
Photograph of Roman Mosaic in the Musée de Sousse by Habib M’Henni.
It is three years now since Pantheon Poets was created to:
- provide easy access to great Latin poets and poems, even for those with limited or no Latin themselves;
- offer a reading of each poem in the original Latin to highlight how its rhythms and conventions work, and how much they differ from modern poetry;
- show a new, specially-made English translation alongside each piece; and
- highlight the influence that Latin poets have had on some English, French and German writers in the modern era.
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Thunder from a clear sky reveals to Horace the real presence of the Father of the Gods.
See and hear Horace’s Latin translated and recited here.
Erysichthon’s terrible hunger, the punishment inflicted on him by the Goddess Ceres, drives him to sell his own daughter: she finds a way to escape her new master, but there is no way for Erysichthon to escape a terrible death.
Hear Ovid’s Latin and follow in English translation here.
The Thessalian King Erysichthon holds the Gods in contempt. He has not only cut down Ceres’s sacred oak and killed the Dryad within, but boasted that he would do the same for Ceres herself, given the opportunity. We have already met the agent that Ceres has chosen to revenge herself on him: Fames, the personification of Hunger. Now, having received her orders, she slips down to the Earth to carry them out …
Hear Ovid’s Latin and follow in English here.
Erysichthon has offended the Goddess of plenty: now Ceres chooses as the instrument of her terrible revenge her antithesis, Fames, who personifies famine and hunger.
Hear Ovid’s chilling description of her in Latin and follow in English here.