The poetry of Catullus, Virgil, Horace and Ovid has endured over 2,000 years. For most of that time it was read only in Latin, the language of its origin - but over the centuries celebrated writers, from John Dryden to Aubrey Beardsley to Ezra Pound, have been inspired to create their own translations. Each verse extract appears both in Latin and English, illustrated with a detail from an ancient Roman painting or mosaic - many of them treasures from Pompeii and Herculaneum, preserved by the volcanic eruption which destroyed the two cities in 79 AD. The images capture the spirit of the age in which this enchanting poetry was written and, accompanied by a biographical note on each poet, make a perfect introduction to the towering civilization that was Rome.

A fascinating insight into the most talented Latin poets to occupy the Papal throne after Pius II Piccolomini in the 15th century, this book offers translations of and commentaries on the major poems of the three popes (all Italians): Urban VIII Barberini, Alexander VII Chigi and Leo XIII Pecci. Their highly accomplished Neo-Latin poems owe much to the major Latin poets and are significant instances of classical reception, but also cast an interesting light on their lives, times and papacies. Urban (elected pope in 1623) published a mixture of secular and religious verse, drawing on the hexameter epistles of Horace and the lyrics of Catullus and writing Horatian material in praise of Alessandro Farnese, governor of the Netherlands for Philip II of Spain, and the Spanish martyr St Laurence. Alexander (elected pope in 1655) like Urban combines secular and religious themes and often uses Horatian frameworks, writing hexameter accounts of some of the journeys he made as a papal diplomat in Germany and an Horatian ode on the fall of the Protestant stronghold of La Rochelle (1628). Leo's poetry was mostly religious and published during his papacy (1878-1903); his Horatian ode on the new millennium of 1900 was widely read, and other works include an elegy which links a shrine of the Virgin with the Battle of Lepanto; an Horatian satire on moderate diet; and hymns to saints which combine early Christian and Horatian forms.

Presents a diverse sample of twentieth century Latin American poems from eighty-four authors in Spanish, Portuguese, Ladino, Spanglish, and several indigenous languages with English translations on facing pages.

A wide variety of texts by the Latin satirists are presented here in a fully loaded resource to provide an innovative reading of satire's relation to Roman ideology. Brimming with notes, commentaries, essays and texts in translation, this book succeeds in its mission to help the student understand the history of Latin's modern scholarly reception. Focusing on the linguistic difficulties and problems of usage, and examining aspects of meter and style necessary for poetry appreciation, the commentary places each selection in its own historical context then using essays and critical excerpt, the genre's most salient features are elucidated to provide a further understanding of its place in history. Extremely student friendly, this stands well both as a companion to Latin Erotic Elegy and in its own right as an invaluable fund of knowledge for any Latin literature scholar.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1867.