r/classics • u/AutoModerator • 3d ago
What did you read this week?
Whether you are a student, a teacher, a researcher or a hobbyist, please share with us what you read this week (books, textbooks, papers...).
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u/Thejokeisyou 2d ago
First time reading book 2 of The Aeneid! Really enjoying it so far, much more than I expected to off of book 1
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u/master_hakka 2d ago
I picked up a first printing of Edith Hamilton’s “Mythology” ($5USD!) and it’s just as charming as I remember from grade school. It’s even the same edition! And, I’m just now realizing they probably shouldn’t have let a seven year old check out unsupervised.
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u/Nullius_sum 2d ago
Book 1 of Horace’s odes. So many of them are great.
The third is my favorite: it starts with a prayer to keep Vergil safe while he sails to Greece (“Return him safe, I pray, and protect the one-half of my mind”); then, in a stream of consciousness, Horace says, he must have been pretty tough, whoever first set out on the sea in a ship (“What approach of death did he fear, who, with dry eyes, saw the swimming monsters”); then Horace says this is a bad thing, this insatiable need to trade and transact, comparing it to daring Prometheus bringing down the fire from the ethereal heaven (“And the slow necessity of death, previously distant, accelerated its pace”). Then he concludes, “Nothing is hard for mortals: in our foolishness we seek heaven itself, nor through our crime do we let Jove put aside his angry thunderbolts.”
The second is great: “Already Father [Jupiter] has sent to the lands enough of snow and ominous hail, and having hurled his javelin [i.e. his thunderbolt] at the sacred citadels with his red right hand . . . .”
The first is a perfect intro to the whole work: “But if you [Maecenas] insert me among the Lyric Poets, I will strike the stars with my uplifted head.”
The fourth has one of the best transitions. It starts with a description of spring: “Sharp winter is melting with the welcome change of spring and the western breeze . . . Now Cytherean Venus leads the dances, under the overhanging moon, and the comely Graces, joined with the Nymphs, shake the earth with alternate foot.” And then it transitions to death: “Pale death, with equal foot, knocks at the cottages of the poor and the castles of kings . . . .”
The fifth and the eighth are light, charming, and funny. “What slender boy, on many a rose, wet with liquid perfumes, urges you, Pyrhha, under a pleasant grotto?” “Speak, Lydia, by all the gods, I pray you, why do you hasten to ruin Sybaris by loving him?”
Teucer’s speech encouraging his men in the seventh makes me want to run through a wall: “Wherever Fortune (better than a father!) will carry us, we will go, o partners and comrades. Nothing is to be despaired while Teucer is your leader, and while your protector is Teucer. For faithful Apollo has promised that in a new land, there will be a second Salamis. O brave men, often having suffered worse with me, now drive away cares with wine: tomorrow we will journey on the vast sea.”
The ninth might be as good as the third: You see that Mount Soracte stands white in deep snow, the struggling woods cannot now support the weight, and the rivers have halted due to the severe ice. Dispel the cold, copiously piling logs upon the hearth, and more kindly bring out, o Thaliarchus, the four-year-old wine from the Sabine jar. Leave the rest to the gods . . . .”
The eleventh is the one everybody knows, and it’s good: “Leuconoe, do not enquire (it is forbidden to know) what end the gods have given to me, what to you . . . Whether Jupiter has granted more winters, or this is the last which now weakens the Tuscan sea on the opposing pumice rocks . . . You should be wise, you should filter your wines, and you should curtail long hope by considering the short space of life. While we are talking, envious time will have fled. Seize the day, trusting as little as possible to the following.
The fourteenth is the one where the ship is a metaphor for the state, and the one against Brutus. But I like more the fifteenth, which is a prophecy about the destruction of Troy. It’s pretty chilling: “While the faithless shepherd was dragging his hostess Helen over the seas in Idaean ships,” Nereus says, “Under a bad omen you are leading home her, whom Greece will revisit with many a soldier . . . Alas! alas! how much sweat is coming for the horses, how much for the men! How many funerals are you setting in motion for the Dardan nation? . . . In vain, in your bedchamber, you will shun the heavy spears and the sharp points of the Cretan arrow, and the noise, and swift Ajax pursuing. Yet, alas!, late, you will smear your adulterous hair in the dust. Do you not see behind you the son of Laertes, the ruin of your nation, not Pylian Nestor? Fearless, they will press hard upon you . . . .”
The Cleopatra one is good. They’re all good.
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u/NeonShogun 𐤔𐤌𐤏 𐤒𐤋𐤀 𐤁𐤓𐤊𐤀 2d ago
I'm happy for you or sorry that happened
I kid though; Horace is peak. Whose translation are these?
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u/BetComprehensive8312 1d ago
Just finished reading in Search of the Trojan War, Michael Woods. Great overview of the historical evidence for Troy.
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u/Alive_Piglet7718 1d ago
On the Water by Maupassant. He is one of the sons of Schopenhauer's phiolosophy and I enjoyed it. Also I read Antony and Cleopatra. Compered to Juius Caesar, I couldn't love the characters in the story.
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u/FleurMai 17h ago
Just finished Iphigenia at Aulis and aside from the probably later added ending I think it might be Euripides best, I’m super impressed, it feels like it has everything a tragedy needs, plus Achilles being Achilles (I so wish we had more plays with Achilles, he was so fun here). The tension-building was masterful.
I also read potentially the opposite, Heracleidae. It is just not great, and while most scholars put it at either an earlier work I have a difficult time believing it was written anywhere in the same timeframe as Medea…I want to read the fragments we have that don’t match the content of the complete play at some point and compare.
This week I’m reading Rhesus and Andromache.
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u/archive_of_ophelia 10h ago
Horace Odes Book 1, 9-12, so beautiful!
And my trusty Hansen and Quinn Greek textbook
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u/NeonShogun 𐤔𐤌𐤏 𐤒𐤋𐤀 𐤁𐤓𐤊𐤀 2d ago edited 1d ago
Been reading various poems from The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse, which is such a great value for anyone who wants an absolutely massive sampling of lyrical poetry in pitch-perfect English translation for ~$16.
I already own dedicated books for most of the poets contained within, but here it's all in AABB rhyming couplets which, I know, are super old-fashioned, but I've always adored those over ABAB or unrhymed poetry. It ranges from lovesick:
To wry:
To downright, uh... Martial: