The Portable Roman Reader

by Various (Author); Davenport, Basil (Editor)

• ISBN13: 9780140150568
• ISBN10: 0140150560
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1977-01-01
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)

Summary

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 worldrs"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 Boeuml;thius, along with the stylishly narrated and often ribald myths of Ovid and Apuleius.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(12)
PART I: THE BEGINNINGS AND THE AGE OF CICERO (240 B.C.--42 B.C.)
Editor's Note	13	(9)
Amphitryon	22	(53)
Plautus
Sir Robert Allison
Phormio	75	(138)
Terence
Anonymous
From on the Nature of Things
Lucretius
William Ellery Leonard
Book I	132	(40)
Book III	172	(41)
From The Gallic War: The First Expedition to Britain	213	(15)
Cæsar
H. J. Edwards
The Germans	223	(5)
From the Orations: First Oration Against Catiline	228	(36)
Cicero
Louis E. Lord
From Concerning Old Age	243	(17)
William Armistead Falconer
From the Poems:
Catullus
R. C. Trevelyan
Miser Catulle	260	(1)
Verani, omnibus e meis amicis	261	(1)
Hugh Macnaghten
Varus me meus	261	(2)
John Hookham Frere
Pæne insularum Sirmio	263	(1)
Andrew Lang
Iam ver egelidos	264	(130)
Catullus
William A. Aiken
Ille mi par esse deo videtur	264	(1)
Lord Byron
Cæli, Lesbia nostra	265	(1)
R. C. Trevelyan
Collis o Heliconii	265	(9)
John Hookham Frere
Nulli se dicit	274	(1)
Sir Philip Sidney
Odi et amo	275	(1)
Hugh Macnaghten
Lesbia me dicit	275	(1)
Jonathan Swift
Multas per gentes	275	(4)
Andrew Lang
PART II: THE AUGUSTAN AGE (42 B.C.--17 A.D.)
Editor's Note	279	(7)
From the Eclogues
Virgil
Henry Wadsworth Long-fellow
The Happy Tityrus	286	(5)
Pollio	291	(2)
Charles Stuart Calverley
From The Æneid: Book II	293	(35)
John Conington
Book III	328	(36)
William Morris
Book IV	364	(27)
Sir Richard Fanshawe
From the Odes
Horace
John Milton
Quis multa gracilis	391	(1)
Laudabunt alii	392	(1)
Lord Dunsany
Vides ut alta	393	(1)
Charles Stuart Calverley
Tu ne quæsieris	394	(7)
Horace
Charles Stuart Calverley
Integer vitæ	394	(1)
Samuel Johnson
Cælo tonantem	395	(3)
Charles Stuart Calverley
Donec gratus eram tibi	398	(1)
Robert Herrick
Diffugere nives	399	(1)
A. E. Housman
Audivere, Lyce	400	(1)
Charles Stuart Calverley
From the Satires: A Pertinacious Bore and Sycophant	401	(4)
Alexander Murison
The Art of Poetry	405	(24)
Alexander Murison
From The History of Rome: The War with Lars Porsinna	429	(11)
Livy
B. O. Foster
Cato on Extravagance	440	(7)
Cyrus Edmonds
From the Metamorphoses: Book III	447	(22)
Ovid
Joseph Addison
From the Epistles: Sappho to Phaon	469	(18)
Alexander Pope
PART III: THE SILVER AGE (17 A.D.--130 A.D.)
Editor's Note	479	(8)
Medea	487	(41)
Seneca
Frank Justus Miller
From the Pharsalia: The Crossing of the Rubicon	528	(5)
Lucan
Sir Edward Ridley
From the Satyricon: From Trimalchio's Dinner	533	(32)
Petronius
Harry Thurston Peck
From the Epigrams: To Sabidius	565	(6)
Martial
Thomas Brown
To Ammianus	565	(1)
F. A. Wright
Your legs so like the moon	566	(1)
W. T. Webb
Thou art a cuckold	566	(1)
Sir Charles Sedley
At night no man do you refuse	566	(1)
F. A. Wright
Setine and Massic at your board abound	567	(1)
J. A. Pott
Thou Mother dead	567	(1)
J. A. Pott
Thais for black	568	(1)
W. T. Webb
In Fabius' will	568	(1)
J. A. Pott
The Meanes to Attaine Happy Life	568	(1)
Henry Howard
Earl of Surrey
The things that make a life to please	569	(1)
Sir Richard Fanshawe
Epitaph on Erotion	570	(1)
Leigh Hunt
From the Annals: The Government of Rome	571	(27)
Tacitus
John Jackson
From Germany: The German Character	587	(11)
William Peterson
From the Satires: The Third Satyr	598	(21)
Juvenal
John Dryden
PART IV: THE END (130 A.D.--524 A.D.)
Editor's Note	615	(4)
From The Golden Ass: Cupid and Psyche	619	(23)
Apuleius
Walter Pater
The Vigil of Venus	642	(6)
Anonymous
F. L. Lucas
From the Confessions: How He Robbed a Pear-Tree	648	(2)
Saint Augustine
William Watts
From the Consolation of Philosophy	650
Boethius
H. R. James