Author(s): Barbara Hughes Fowler (ed.)

Poetry

With this anthology, Barbara Hughes Fowler presents a comprehensive selection of Greek poetry of the 7th and 6th centuries BC. Fowler's translations provide access to six Homeric hymns, eight selections from Bakchylides, 11 odes of Pindar, selections from the iambicists and elegists, virtually all of Archilochos and of the 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 are read for their narrative charm, celebration of nature, and playful sensuality. There are love poems here, as well as poems of friendship and warfare, of colonisation and homesickness; and there are tantalizing fragments of fables. 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 of subject matter, "Archaic Greek Poetry" can claim to be the only volume of its kind translated by a contemporary published poet. Barbara Hughes Fowler offers translations true to the original Greek, while providing modern readers with 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, should find this volume useful.