Bar the Dawn from My Bed
By Alicia Lopez
One of my favorite parts of studying Classics is stumbling across little nuggets of relatable content. While of course, there are always big themes that span most works of literature (heroics, sacrifice, love, loss, etc.), I treasure the little similarities, like wanting to stay in bed, that are still wildly relatable thousands of years later…
Catullus 85 and Philodemus AP 5.131
By Mati Davis
The famous saying by Horace, “Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit (In being conquered, Greece herself conquered her ferocious conqueror)” (Book II, epistle 1, lines 156-157), describes the way in which Greek art and culture seeped into Roman society and inspired Roman authors, artists, and architects…
The King, the Soldier, the Slain
By Sara Chopra
When I read the final book of the Iliad in Greek this spring, this scene between Priam and Achilles stood out to me for its distinct portrayal of the two; the passage defines these characters by their humanity rather than by their societal positions or opposition in war. In my free-verse translation, I aim to emphasize the core of each character in this moment…
Iliad XII.278-289
By Cate Simons
In this translation piece, I created a lyric poem based on a simile from Homer’s Iliad. In his epic, Homer uses this simile to compare Zeus’ snowfall to stones careening on the battlefield; Zeus’ blizzard highlights the terrible expansion of the Trojan War. In my piece, I wanted to emphasize the contrast between the snowstorm’s silence and the clamor of battle.
Hymn to Apollo 331-342
By Tim Hampshire
In this passage, Lines 331-342 of the Hymn to Apollo, Hera makes an appeal to the Gaia and Ouranos, along with the Titans, to be granted the ability to bear a child on her own. The child ends up being Typhon.
In the Bryn Mawr commentary, there is a note for χειρὶ καταπρηνεῖ indicating that such a gesture often describes appeals to chthonic beings. When I read it that way, her prayer to the primordial gods of the earth feels dark and ghoulish in a way that I am not used to thinking of her…
Hymn to Aphrodite 184-190 and Hymn to Hermes 260-266
By Maggie Danaher
καί μιν λισσόμενος ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηύδα:
αὐτίκα σ᾽ ὡς τὰ πρῶτα, θεά, ἴδον ὀφθαλμοῖσιν,
ἔγνων ὡς θεὸς ἦσθα: σὺ δ᾽ οὐ νημερτὲς ἔειπες…
A Night of Tea and Translation with Sarah Ruden
By James Nycz
High up in the attic of College Hall, Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s Classics Department, Sarah Ruden, treated students to an engaging collaborative lecture in the historical halls of the Philomathean Society. Sarah Ruden is a translator and poet who has taught English, Latin, and writing at Harvard, Yale and the University of Cape Town…
