Odes and Epodes (Loeb Classical Library)

THIS PUBLICATION IN TRANSIT,"ODES AND EPODES", HAVING READ MANY YEARS PAST, WISHED A PERSONAL COPY. PURCHASE REMINDER STEMS FROM READING SOME THREE OF THE FINEST EDUCATIONAL, MIND CHALLENGING PUBLICATIONS TO DATE. FOR A READER OF ANY AGE UPWARD TO HOLDING A DOCTORATE IN ANY PROFESSION. WILL PROVIDE FROM A GENTLE BREEZE TO A NIAGARA RUSH OF THOUGHTS. "A TIME OF GIFTS", "BETWEEN THE WOODS AND THE WATERS" AND "THE BROKEN ROAD".....ALL AUTHORED BY PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR. IF ONE WOULD ACCEPT THIS HUMBLE WRITERS SUGGESTION, ABSOLUTELY DO NOT RUSH THROUGH, RESEARCH EACH UNKNOWN, ENJOY AS FERMOR ASSEMBLAGES WORDS IN SUCH A POWERFUL MIND SEARCHING MANNER, TRAVERSES SUBJECT AND TIME SPANS WITH SUCH EASE, CAUTION AND ALERTNESS REQUIRED. ESSENTIALLY, SO DIVERSE, FERMOR'S PAGES OF TEXT ARE A FOUNDATION FOR MANY HUNDREDS OF SHORT SIDE PATHS TO EACH NEW & REFRESHING VIEW. ONE MUST DIGEST THE COPY, ANY ATTEMPT TO CREATE DEFINITION IS BEYOND THIS WRITER, FEEL IT WOULD BE GREATLY INADEQUATE, ANY "FIRST" READER WILL EXPERIENCE GREATER ENLIGHTENMENT. PUBLICATIONS TO RE-READ THROUGH LIFE.THE THREE PUBLICATIONS LISTED WERE GIFTS FROM A DOCTORATE FRIEND. SUPERB GIFTS.

It's important to remember that historically speaking, Loeb library commissioned most of these translations during a time in which the whole idea was to bring the old texts into the modern language– so if you're buying for a faithful literal translation, Loeb Library isn't for you. However, they are one of the only texts that have the original Greek side by side with the English, and, for that and the nice looking sets these Red and Green covers come in, we classicists are all in Loeb's Debt.

You can't beat the Loeb Classical Library for annotated Greek and Latin texts with a serviceable English trot. Find the newest translations or revisions as possible. Some of the older classicists resorted to "thee" and "thou" King James English in their translations and were a bit prudish about more "suggestive" terms in the texts. You may even want to keep a good Latin-English dictionary or Greek-English lexicon at hand just to check up on them.

Classic odes from a classic library of classic texts. The best.

While Niall Rudd is a renowned classicist, please be aware that this is a translation in which Horace's sometime embrace of homosexual lyric is suppressed. For example, in Book I, Ode 26, Rudd omits the masculine pronoun, which is explicit in the Latin, so that the reader is allowed to assume that Lamia is a woman's name, when, in fact, Horace is writing about a young man.I decry this Bowdlerization.

What can you expect but the best from from Horace?Great translation easy to carry and sometimes there is comfort in holding a book instead a tablet.

This edition is missing about 30 pages. I had to return it.

Anyone considering whether to purchase a Loeb edition probably doesn’t need to be taught the importance of Horace. The wise blend of Epicureanism and Stoicism, the virtue of a life of moderation, the beauty of pastoral life...these are just some of the highlights of reading Horace.About all I can add is that the translation in this edition enabled someone who last seriously studied Latin some twenty years ago to suss out the meaning behind the Latin text when I wanted to. In other words, I read the prose rendition of the poem turning to the original Latin when a verse or thought particularly struck me. With the translation as a guide I could appreciate some smidgen of Horace’s poesy.While every Westerner should have some exposure to Virgil and Horace, there isn’t any reason that most readers would need to read Horace’s complete poetic oeuvre. But, on a cold winter’s day, this reader found pleasure in journeying back to the Augustan era with one of the masters of the Latin language as a companion.

Translation itself is a deeply thorny arena, with a huge preponderance of examples of how not to do it outweighing the relatively few cases where the translation process makes a success of the effort. Many attempts to bring Horace into the 21st century have proved abject failures - just try listening to a few wannabes reading Horace out loud on YouTube, for example, where so often it is evident that the first fundamental, being the assimilation of the core rhythms of the metre, has not even entered into the process.I was delighted with Niall Rudd's honest and direct approach with the Odes and Epodes. He supplies his own title to each poem, a modest liberty which actually works felicitously. Very rarely he engages in minor invention to catch the spirit - for example in II.3.13 "Huc vina et unguenta ..." the "Huc" becomes "This is just the place", which I found delightful in the context despite my usual wariness of any such freedoms.The introduction is not generous as regards the wider context of Horace's life and outlook - for that a really good recent publication is Harry Eyres' very fine "Horace and Me", which will have a much broader appeal than this. But here you get the full range of the Odes and Epodes, plus the Carmen Saeculare. Rudd is always intelligent, always faithful, always lucid and communicative - really this is exemplary. I recommend it unreservedly.

Nice translation of Horace but done as prose, not poetry. Rudd's style is good, clear, modern and accessible, but it's sometimes difficult to match the prose with the lines in Horace because of the formatting. Otherwise it's nice to have the Latin and English together.

Let's never lose our connection to this wonderful world. It has direct relevance to us two millenia removed.