Rome Poetry

The Iliad is one of the most enduring creations of Western Civilization and was originally written to be recited or chanted to the accompaniment of various instruments. Properly performed, this work today is just as meaningful, just as powerful and just as entertaining as it was in the ninth century B.C.,and it casts its spell upon modern listeners with the same raw intensity as it did upon the people of ancient times.

The Aeneid represents one of the greatest cultural and artistic achievements of Western Civilization. Within the brooding and melancholy atmosphere of Virgil's pious masterpiece lies the mythic story of Aeneas and his flight from burning Troy, taking with him across the Mediterranean the survivors of the Greek onslaught. Aeneas, after many travails and adventures, including a love affair with Dido Queen of Carthage and a visit to the underworld to see his father, ends up in Italy.

The Odyssey is the greatest adventure story ever written, and one of the great epic masterpieces of Western literature For almost 3,000 years, it has been a storehouse of ancient Greek folklore and myth. It is also our very first novel, if we think of it in terms of romantic plot development, realistic characterizations, frequent change of scene, and heroic dramatic devices.

Book One of the Tharion Cycle In the mist-drenched marshes of a dying empire, the land begins to forget—and so do the people. As Rome crumbles in Britain’s farthest province, a hidden girl with starlit blood begins to dream of a Bell that tolls not in sound, but in memory. Caelwyn has lived her whole life in Elderglen, veiled from the world, raised by a seer who speaks in silence. But when the mists thicken and the rune-stones begin to hum, she’s forced from hiding—into a world where names vanish, roads shift, and even time no longer flows as it should.

An undeniable masterpiece of Western Civilization, The Metamorphoses is a continuous narrative that covers all the Olympian legends, seamlessly moving from one story to another in a splendid panorama of savage beauty, charm, and wit. All of the gods and heroes familiar to us are represented. Such familiar legends as Hercules, Perseus and Medusa, Daedelus and Icarus, Diana and Actaeon, and many others, are breathtakingly recreated.

This translation with its admirable projection of the various moods throughout the poem can be recommended to both classicist and non-classicist. -( The Classical World)