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…
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…
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…
Latin Epitaphs
By Dara Sanchez
Observe traveler, the epitaphs of a long-gone era. In the field of classical studies, scholars mostly spend time looking over the grand works of Roman elites. Of course, we learn a lot about Roman society in this way, but with these translations, I wanted to highlight funerary epitaphs and get a glimpse of the people who were once beloved as daughters and wives or even had the more complicated status of being freedmen or enslaved…
Iliad, Hector, and Andromache
By Doulin Appleberry
In this excerpt from Book 6 of the Iliad, Hector is speaking with his wife Andromache for the last time before his death. Andromache begs him to stay, but he insists he must go fight. I have translated the Greek text, originally in dactylic hexameter, into English iambic pentameter blank verse…
Are the Romans Better Than the Greeks in Philosophy?
By Hanzhao Kuang
In a 2012 survey, Philosophy Now asked seventy-five academics to vote on the five most important/interesting philosophers from history. Among respondents, many Greek thinkers were popular choices: Aristotle came in first with forty-four votes and Plato ranked third with thirty-one votes. But Roman philosophers came short: Cicero, a famous Roman philosopher, received merely two votes…
For Medea, Love is Fear, and Love is Fire
By Rebecca Onken
Medea is, for many (classicists and armchair consumers alike), the quintessential classical witch. Her powers dazzle. Her escapades are many and run the gamut of moral acceptability: she ensures Jason’s success in attaining the golden fleece by means of wondrous “medicines,” returns the blush of youth to an ailing old man, orchestrates the murder of a different old man, kills roughly three family members, and spirits away from her crimes on a chariot drawn by dragons…
Pericles’s Funeral Oration: A Partial Translation of The History of the Peloponnesian War 2.37-41
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. As 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…
Revisiting Lofty Arches: the Transmigration of Souls in Aeneid 6
By Erin Schott
In the beginning, the inner spirit
nourishes the sky, lands, and liquid fields,
the shining globe of the moon and Titan’s stars…
Catullus Carmen 5
By Dara Sanchez
Live, laugh, love. A unifying anthem for mothers across America. Yet, in Carmen 5, Catullus finds a way to enthrall us with his amorous descriptions of thousands of kisses. He reminds us of…
