Translations

Vulpis et Ciconia

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Vulpis et Ciconia  
By Dara Sánchez

The poem “Vulpis et Ciconia” tells a tale in which the Fox’s cunning nature does not come to its advantage. In this fable, a Fox invites a Stork to dinner but gives her a plate with liquid broth, which restricts the Stork from eating while the Fox enjoys her meal.1 In response, the Stork invites the Fox to dinner and puts the food in a vase, disabling the Fox from enjoying her dinner as the Stork satisfies herself. The lesson readers are meant to get from this, as explained in the promythium and re-emphasized by the Stork as a dialogued epimythium, is that: harm must not be done, but when it is, the one who caused harm must endure the same punishment for there to be justice…

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A Close Translation of Demosthenes’ Letter 1.5-7

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A Close Translation of Demosthenes’ Letter 1.5-7
By Isaiah Weir

Around 324 BC, the city of Athens condemned Demosthenes, one of their greatest orators and statesmen, on charges of embezzlement and bribery. Forced into exile, he wrote several letters pleading his case but to no avail. However, after the death of Alexander the Great, Demosthenes, a lifelong enemy of Macedonian rule, wrote this letter, urging Athens toward political unity and a general uprising for the freedom of the Greeks…

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Fables of Phaedrus, “The Dogs Sent Envoys to Jupiter”

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Fables of Phaedrus, “The Dogs Sent Envoys to Jupiter”
By Dara Sánchez

Animal fables in ancient Rome were not viewed with high regard in comparison to other genres of literature. Yet Phaedrus, an alleged freeman of Augustus from the 1st century AD, does not allow these preconceived notions to deter his ambitions. In this feces-filled poem, Phaedrus describes to us an etiological myth that explains why dogs smell each other’s behinds. He mixes the sacred gods, Jupiter and Mercury, with the vulgarity of dogs and excrement, contrasting such different things, and playing on borderline absurdity…

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Penelope’s Wait: A Translation of Ovid’s Heroides Book I Lines 1–50

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Penelope’s Wait: A Translation of Ovid’s Heroides Book I Lines 1–50
By Erin Schott

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey have endured for thousands of years because they tell stories still true to the human experience. The Iliad recounts the horrors of war and the egotism of those in power, while the Odyssey narrates an arduous homecoming to a place that is not the same as before…

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Lucan’s Witch

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Lucan’s Witch
By Erin Schott

From Morgan le Fay to Hermione Granger, witches captivate the imagination. Their motives and magical prowess enthrall the little child in all of us who yearns to cast a spell. And since there is no time of year when the witch receives more attention than Halloween, I thought this would be an appropriate moment to reflect upon the genesis of the contemporary witch by translating a passage of Lucan’s Bellum Civile. This “genesis” of the contemporary witch lies in Lucan’s Erictho, a frightening Thessalian sorceress whom Sextus Pompey has asked to reveal his father’s fate. Erictho has just told Sextus Pompey that she will use her dark arts to reanimate a corpse, which will then tell the fate of Pompey Magnus…

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Perpetua in the Arena: A Translation and Literary Analysis

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Perpetua in the Arena: A Translation and Literary Analysis
By Dara Sánchez

From a prison diary in Carthage, Perpetua gives a captivating account of martyrdom in the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis (Passio Perpetuae). Amidst the foul conditions of the prison, her father’s pleas for her to reject Christianity, and her separation from her infant, Perpetua wondrously describes the visions that come to her in dreams…

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An Emotional, Brutal Translation of Iliad 5.1–29: The Beginning of Diomedes’ Aristeia

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An Emotional, Brutal Translation of Iliad 5.1–29: The Beginning of Diomedes’ Aristeia
By Noah Apter

Through my word choice and overall translation of the text, I want to preserve the vivid imagery and raw emotions we feel while reading Homer (examples include intense feelings of awe, glory, and dread). When reading any original narrative Greek text, I feel like I can produce a realistic and precise painting of what is happening in the passage inside my head…

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Daedalus and Icarus: A Tale of Many Metamorphoses

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Daedalus and Icarus: A Tale of Many Metamorphoses
By Erin Schott

In his fifteen-book magnum opus, Ovid recounts over 250 myths. These range from the disturbing and violent (Procne and Philomela) to the sweet and innocent (Baucis and Philemon) and all shades in between. Yet what unites this seemingly disparate set of myths is the poem’s title Metamorphoses, for each myth describes a change or evolution…

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Seneca Minor, Epistles, CIV.XVI–XX

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Seneca Minor, Epistles, CIV.XVI–XX
By Hadleigh Zinsner

Seneca the Younger’s Moral Letters, written and published in the final years of his life, have often been considered the philosopher’s finest contribution to the Western canon, if only for the clarity they have provided future historians in dissecting the core tenets of Stoicism. For example, Letter 104, which I have translated below, expresses the importance of ἀπάθεια, or indifference, towards one’s surroundings…

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History of the Peloponnesian War

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History of the Peloponnesian War 
By Noah Apter

Pericles’s Funeral Oration comes down the centuries as one of the most difficult pieces of ancient Greek literature to properly translate. To us classicists, it seems that Thucydides wishes to help us sharpen our teeth on his grammar. Why? It is in the nature of speeches to differ from narrative texts, the former tending to be “live,” while narratives deliver recollections of events past…

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