Ancient & Classical

One of the founding texts of Western literature, the Metamorphoses is nevertheless anything but earnest or off-putting. Ovid's sequence of fifteen witty and playful poems sketches the history of the world from its creation to the poet's own time through...

Ovid's deliciously clever and exuberant epic, now in a gorgeous new clothbound edition designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. These delectable and collectable editions are bound in high-quality, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the...

A stunning set of Homer's epics, brilliantly translated by a leading ancient world scholar. Hailed by reviewers and readers alike, Peter Green's landmark translations of Homer's timeless epics are now available for the first time in this striking and...

Ovid's love-poetry was typically original and innovative. His witty analysis in the Amores (Loves) of the elegiac relationship develops with relentless irony its essential paradox - love as simultaneously fulfilling and destructive - to its logical...

Chaucer's longest complete poem is the supreme evocation of doomed courtly love in medieval English literature. Set during the tenth year of the siege of Troy, the poem relates how Troilus - with the help of Criseyde's wily uncle Pandarus - persuades...

The Argonautica is the dramatic story of Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece and his relations with the dangerous Colchian princess, Medea. The only extant Greek epic poem to bridge the gap between Homer and late antiquity, it is a major product of the...

Take a fresh look at India's great epic and rediscover the lost kingdoms, dynasties, and characters of the Mahabharata, accompanied by beautiful images and discussion points. Often described as the longest poem ever written, the Mahabharata is one of two...

This new translation in free verse conveys the full force of Lucan's writing and his grimly realistic view of the subject. The Introduction sets the scene for the reader unfamiliar with Lucan and explores his relationship with earlier writers of Latin...

Accurate and literally faithful, the Donaldson translation conveys the full meaning and spirit of the original. "Backgrounds and Contexts" provides readers with the historical, linguistic, and literary settings of Beowulf, including Robert C. Hughes on...

Dick Davis, "our pre-eminent translator from the Persian" (Washington Post) has revised and expanded his highly-praised translation of Ferdowsi's masterpiece, including more than 100 pages of newly translated text. Davis's elegant combination of prose...

Dazzling modern lyrical poems from Catullus - by turns smutty, abusive, romantic and deeply moving.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics,...

Through their sheer range, daring innovation, flawed but eloquent characters and intriguing plots, the plays of Euripides have shocked and stimulated audiences since the fifth century BC. Phoenician Women portrays the rival sons of King Oedipus and their...

"Vivam" is the very last word of Ovid's masterpiece, the Metamorphoses: "I shall live." If we're still reading it two millennia after Ovid's death, this is by definition a remarkably accurate prophecy. Ovid was not the only ancient author with...

The final volume in this brilliant translation destined to take its place among the great English versions of The Divine Comedy. In his translation of Paradise, Mark Musa exhibits the same sensitivity to language and knowledge of translation that enabled...

Read this stunning translation of Homer's great war epic, the legendary tale of honour, love, loss and revenge during the fall of the city of Troy.High on Olympus, Zeus and the assembled deities look down on the world of men, to the city of Troy where a...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781400096220Author Howell D. ChickeringFormat PaperbackPage Count 464Imprint Random House IncPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams) 397gDimensions(mm)...

A work of tremendous influence that has inspired writers from his ancient Greek contemporaries to modernist writers such as T.S. Eliot, Homer's epic poem The Iliad is translated by Robert Fagles with an introduction and notes by Bernard Knox in Penguin...

The father of pastoral poetry and his Hellenistic heirs.Theocritus (early third century BC), born in Syracuse and also active on Cos and at Alexandria, was the inventor of the bucolic genre. Like his contemporary Callimachus, Theocritus was a learned...

In Purgatorio Dante, having described his journey into Hell, narrates his ascent of Mount Purgatory with Virgil, as he encounters penitents who toil through physical agonies, starvation and flames to assuage their earthly vices. Only by learning from...

Beginning with Dante's liberation from Hell, Purgatory relates his ascent, accompanied by Virgil, of the Mount of Purgatory - a mountain of nine levels, formed from rock forced upwards when God threw Satan into depths of the earth. As he travels through...

'a Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe' E. M. Forster E. M. Forster's description of C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933) perfectly encapsulates the unique perspective Cavafy brought to bear on history...

Lucretius' poem On the Nature of Things combines a scientific and philosophical treatise with some of the greatest poetry ever written. With intense moral fervour he demonstrates to humanity that in death there is nothing to fear since the soul is...

Long a master of the crafts of Homeric translation and of rhapsodic performance, Stanley Lombardo now turns to the quintessential epic of Roman antiquity, a work with deep roots in the Homeric tradition. With characteristic virtuosity, he delivers a...

The first great adventure story in the Western canon, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty and power; about marriage, family and identity; and about travellers, hospitality and the changing meanings of home...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781590309827Author Kazuaki TanahashiFormat PaperbackPage Count 224Imprint Shambhala Publications IncPublisher Shambhala Publications IncWeight(grams)...

Composed in the twelfth century in north-eastern Iran, Attar's great mystical poem is among the most significant of all works of Persian literature. A marvellous, allegorical rendering of the Islamic doctrine of Sufism - an esoteric system concerned with...

"Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus / and its devastation." For sixty years, that's how Homer has begun the Iliad in English, in Richmond Lattimore's faithful translation-the gold standard for generations of students and general readers...

An acclaimed translation of Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy Volume 1: Inferno that retains all the style, power and meaning of the original, this Penguin Classics edition is translated from the Italian with an introduction by Mark Musa.This vigorous...

STEP INTO ANOTHER WORLD - OF MAGIC, MAYHEM, MONSTERS AND MANIACAL GODS - IN STEPHEN FRY'S MOMENTOUS SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER, MYTHOS'A romp through the lives of ancient Greek gods. Fry is at his story-telling best . . . the gods will be pleased'...

The Faerie Queene was the first epic in English and one of the most influential poems in the language for later poets from Milton to Tennyson. Dedicating his work to Elizabeth I, Spenser brilliantly united medieval romance and renaissance epic to expound...

Inferno is the first part of Dante's epic poem The Divine Comedy, revealing the eternal punishment reserved for such sins as greed, self-deception, political double-dealing and treachery. This Penguin Classics edition is translated and edited with an...

AN EPIC BATTLE THAT LASTED TEN YEARS. A LEGENDARY STORY THAT HAS SURVIVED THOUSANDS.'An inimitable retelling of the siege of Troy . . . Fry's narrative, artfully humorous and rich in detail, breathes life and contemporary relevance into these ancient...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9789387779020Author Kahlil GibranFormat HardbackPage Count 632Imprint Fingerprint! PublishingPublisher Prakash Books

Cyclic verse.Greek epics of the archaic period include poems that narrate a particular heroic episode or series of episodes and poems that recount the long-term history of families or peoples. They are an important source of mythological record. Here is...

Invocations, curiosities, and biographies connected with the famous Greek bard.Performances of Greek epics customarily began with a hymn to a god or goddess-as Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days do. A collection of thirty-three such poems has come down...

IMAGINE SANDALS ON YOUR FEET, A SWORD IN YOUR HAND, HOT SUN BEATING DOWN ON YOUR BRONZE HELMET. ENTER THE WORLD OF STEPHEN FRY'S SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER, HEROES'An odyssey through Greek mythology. Brilliant . . . all hail Stephen Fry' Daily...

THIS HANDSOME ILLUSTRATED HARDBACK OF STEPHEN FRY'S BRILLIANT BESTSELLING RETELLING OF THE ANCIENT GREEK MYTHS MAKES THE PERFECT GIFT FOR CURIOUS MINDS . . .No one loves and quarrels, desires and deceives as boldly or brilliantly as Greek gods and...

**WINNER OF THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST COLLECTION 2019****WINNER OF THE ROEHAMPTON PRIZE FOR BEST POETRY COLLECTION 2019**Violence hangs over this book like an electric storm. Beginning with a poem about the teenage dawning of sexuality, Vertigo & Ghost...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780143116271Author MartialFormat PaperbackPage Count 224Imprint J.P.Tarcher,U.S./Perigee Bks.,U.S.Publisher J.P.Tarcher,U.S./Perigee Bks.,U.S.Dimensions(mm)...

Tantalizing quotations from lost tragedies.Aeschylus (ca. 525-456 BC), the dramatist who made Athenian tragedy one of the world's great art forms, witnessed the establishment of democracy at Athens, fought against the Persians at Marathon and probably...