The Song of Eros: Ancient Greek Love Poems

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Poetry T his collection of modern translations of eighty poems provides a pleasant, thought-provoking reminder of love’s vagaries as captured through the wit, charm, and insight of the master poets of antiquity. All the emotions and experiences associated with love—rejection , infatuation, ecstasy, desperation, loneliness—are rendered accessible to contemporary readers through this lively, modern, yet faithful English translation of works that date from the seventh century B.C. to the sixth century A.D. Featured are selections from the more than four thousand epigrams that make up the Greek Anthology, a collection compiled in the tenth century by the Byzantine scholar Kephalas. Also included are works by the early iambic and elegiac poet Archilochos and the lyric poems of Sappho and Anakreon. The illustrations that accompany the poetry capture both the flavor of the age and the theme of the texts. Bradley P. Nystrom is coeditor and translator of two anthologies of ancient Greek and Latin texts and is the coauthor of The History of Christianity: An Introduction. He teaches in the Department of Humanities and Religious Studies at California State University–Sacramento. Southern Illinois University Press 1915 University Press Drive Mail Code 6806 Carbondale, IL 62901 www.siu.edu/~siupress Printed in the United States of America Nystrom The Song of Eros: Ancient Greek Love Poems Southern Illinois University Press $14.95 USD ISBN 0-8093-2906-9 ISBN 978-0-8093-2906-9 The Song of Eros A N C I E N T G R E E K L O V E P O E M S Translated by Bradley P. Nystrom Illustrated by Claudette Sherbert Little Nystrom_NIP_cvr.indd 1 2/11/09 9:24:32 AM ...