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The Portable Roman Reader

Part of Portable Library

Author Various

Edited by Basil Davenport

$26.00 US

Penguin Adult HC/TR | Penguin Classics

28 per carton

On sale Jan 27, 1977 | 9780140150568

Sales rights: World

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Table of Contents

The Romans conquered most of the known world and detailed their conquests in calm, unapologetic histories. They were a supremely urbane people who longed poetically for the farming life. Valuing toughness and practicality in all things, they turned the love poem into a cynical rebuke and wrote tragedies in which the unfathomable actions of gods gave way to the staggering cruelties of man. As the empire slid into decay, Tacitus pulled back the curtain on the perverse intrigues of the emperors, and a Roman-educated Christian named Augustine recounted his spiritual awakening in what may be the world’s first psychological novel.

This collection presents the essential writings of the Romans in their finest English translations: the comedies of Terence and Plautus; the histories of Julius Caesar, Livy and Tacitus; the oratory of Cicero; poems by Catullus, Virgil, Horace, and Martial; the philosophy of Lucretius and Boëthius, along with the stylishly narrated and often ribald myths of Ovid and Apuleius.

(Note: Translators' names appear after each piece)Introduction
Part I: The Beginnings and the Age of Cicero (240 BC-42 BC)
Editor's Note
Plautus: Amphitryon (Sir Robert Allison)

Terence: Phormio (Anonymous)

Lucretius: from On the Nature of Things: Book I; Book III (William Ellery Leonard)

Caesar: from The Gallic War: The First Expedition to Britain; The Germans (H.J. Edwards)

Cicero: from The Orations: First Oration Against Catiline (Louis E. Lord)
from Concerning Old Age (William Armistead Falconer)

Catullus: from The Poems:
VIII. Miser Catulle (R.C. Trevelyan)
IX. Verani, ominbus e meis amicis (Hugh Macnaghten)
X. Varus me meus (John Hookham Frere)
XXXI. Paene insularum Sirmio (Andrew Lang)
XLI. Iam er egelidos (William A. Aiken)
LI. Ille mi par esse deo videtur (Lord Byron)
LVIII. Caeli, Lesbia nostra (R.C. Trevelyan)
LXI. Collis o Heliconii (John Hookham Frere)
LXX. Nulli se dicit (Sir Philip Sidney)
LXXXV. Odi et amo (Hugh Macnaghten)
CI. Multas per gentes (Andrew Lang)
Part II: The Augustan Age (42 BC-17 AD)
Editor's Note
Virgil: from the Eclogues:
I: The Happy Tityrus (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
I: Pollio (Charles Stuart Calverley)
from The Aeneid:
Book II (John Conington)
Book III (William Morris)
Book I (Sir Richard Fanshawe)

Horace: from the Odes:
I:5: Quis multa Gracilis (John Milton)
I:7: Laudabunt alii (Lord Dunsany)
I:9: Vides ut alta (Charles Stewart Calverley)
I:11: Tu ne quaesieris (Charles Stewart Calverley)
I:22: Integer itae (Samuel Johnson)III:5: Caelo tonantem (Charles Stewart Calverley)
III:9: Donec gratus eram tibi (Robert Herrick)IV:7: Diffugere nives (A.E. Housman)IV:13: Audivere, Lyce (Charles Stewart Calverley)
from the Satires:
A Pertinacious Bore and Sycophant (Alexander Murison)
The Art of Poetry (Alexander Murison)

Livy: from The History of Rome:
The War with Lars Porsinna (B.O. Foster)
Cato on Extravagance (Cyrus Edmonds)

Ovid: from the Metamophoses:
Book III (Joseph Addison)
from the Epistles:
Sappho to Phaon (Alexander Pope)

Part III: The Silver Age (17 AD-130 AD)
Editor's Note
Seneca: Medea (Frank Justus Miller)
Lucan: from the Pharsalia
The Crossing of the Rubicon (Sir Edward Ridley)

Petronius: from the Satyricon
from Trimalchio's Dinner (Harry Thurston Peck)

Martial: from the Epigrams
I:32: To Sabidius (Thomas Brown)
II:4: To Ammianus (F.A. Wright)
II:35: Your legs so like the moon (W.T. Webb)
II:84: Thou art a cuckold (Sir Charles Sedley)
IV:12: At night no man do you refuse (F.A. Wright)
IV:69: Setine and Massic at your board abound (J.A. Pott)
V:34: Thou Mother dead (J.A. Pott)
V:43: Thaïs for black (W.T. Webb)
VI:66: In Fabius' will (J.A. Pott)
X:47: The Meanes to Attaine Happy Life (Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey)
X:47: The things that make a life to please (Sir Richard Fanshawe)
X:61: Epitaph on Erotion (Leigh Hunt)

Tacitus: from the Annals:
The Government of Rome (John Jackson)
from Germany:
The German Character (William Peterson)

Juvenal: from the Satires:
The Third Satyr (John Dryden)

Part IV: The End (130 AD-524 AD)
Editor's Note
Apuleius: from The Golden Ass
Cupid and Psyche (Walter Pater)

Anonymous: The Vigil of Venus (F.L. Lucas)

Saint Augustine: from the Confessions:
How He Robbed a Pear-Tree (William Watts)

Boëthius: from The Consolation of Philosophy (H.R. James)

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