The Shield of Heracles

My translation of the pseudo-Hesiodic Shield of Heracles is now available online at The Chicago Homer.

Enjoy!

Robert Fagles' Aeneid

The new translation of Vergil's Aeneid by Robert Fagles isn't bad at all. It's at least as much Vergil as it is Fagles, which is a big improvement over his paraphrases of Homer, but, like his Iliad and Odyssey, it's considerably longer than the original. As always with Fagles, it's highly readable, in fact, much more readable than most translations of the Aeneid.

If you want to read what Vergil really wrote, the best translation I've ever seen is by Tony Kline. It's available for free download as a PDF at Poetry In Translation. So, save your money and enjoy Tony's very close and quite poetic work.

Aeneid 1.203

In his very interesting review of Robert Fagles' new translation of the Aeneid in the New York Times today, Charles McGrath twice states that the Aeneid has 12,000 lines. Fagles' translation may well be this long, since he probably felt Vergil needed the same kind of expansion he found necessary for Homer, but Vergil wrote only 9,510 lines.

McGrath quotes from Book 1, but doesn't mention the line. It's line 203:

... forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.

... perhaps you'll someday be delighted to remember even this.

Paraphrase of the Gospel of John

I've just read Tony Prost's excellent Nonnus of Panopolis, which includes his elegant translation of the Paraphrase of the Gospel of John. It is a beautiful, ingenious little book, an absolute pleasure to read.

You can find it on Amazon.

The Dionysiaca of Nonnus

I've just started translating the Dionysiaca of Nonnus. I expect it will take about six years to complete it. I hope anyone interested in Nonnus will share their thoughts with me about this extremely long, odd, and fascinating poem.

Lex Gabinia

I read this op-ed about the Lex Gabinia in the New York Times today. There's much we can still learn from the Romans, especially from their mistakes.

De Arte Poetica 343-344

If you're wondering about Dr. Mueller's allusion to Horace and a "winning combination" on The Chicago Homer's home page, it's from lines 343 and 344 of De Arte Poetica:

He carries every ballot, who mixes the useful with the sweet
by amusing and instructing the reader equally.