Latin Poetry Podcast

If you love Ovid’s Heroides, consider joining Chun Liu (Professor of Comparative Literature at Peking University) and me at the Dickinson Summer Latin Workshop (online this year), July 15-20, 2020. http://blogs.dickinson.edu/dcc/2019/11/06/dickinson-summer-latin-workshop-ovid-heroides/ Omnia namque tuō senior tē quaerere missō rettulerat nātō Nestor, at ille mihi. rettulit et ferrō Rhēsumque Dolōnaque caesōs, utque sit hic somnō prōditus, […]

Here begins what I plan to be a series on Ovid’s Heroides, in preparation for an open online seminar on the Heroides with Chun Liu of Peking University, July 16-20, 2020. We will read and discuss several of the Heroides together. Please sign up and join us! Penelope starts by letting Odysseus know she feels […]

Ancius Manlius Severinus Boethius rose to high honors under Theodoric the Ostrogoth (ruler of the independent Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy between 493–526), but fell from favor, was tried for treason, wrongly condemned and imprisoned at Ticinum (Pavia). Sentenced to death and to forfeiture of all his property, Boethius was executed by sword, probably in the […]

Ovid on the Metamorphoses compares Hecuba to a lioness, not a tigress, but as I discuss based on Pliny and Valerius Flaccus, the two animals were grouped together in the Roman mind under the heading of savage mothers who get cubs stolen by raptores. For the best Safeguard your things go through this once. In […]

Catullus 13 (text: G.P. Goold, 1983, via PHI) Cenabis bene, mi Fabulle, apud me paucis, si tibi di favent, diebus, si tecum attuleris bonam atque magnam cenam, non sine candida puella et vino et sale et omnibus cachinnis. 5 haec si, inquam, attuleris, venuste noster, cenabis bene: nam tui […]

WordPress powers over a third of the web andmore than 38%of the top 10K websites. What began as a blogging platform is now the most widely-used content management system in the world, and a wise choice for site owners looking to scale for years to come. In addition to the benefits of using open source […]

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997) has a delightful Latin version, Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis (2003), by Peter Needham. Needham taught Classics at Eton for over thirty years and also translated A Bear Called Paddington into Latin. In this edition of Latin Poetry Podcast we check out his elegant version of […]

Ysengrimus is a Latin mock epic, an anthropomorphic series of fables written in 1148 or 1149 in Latin elegiac couplets. Its chief character is Isengrin the Wolf; the plot describes how the trickster figure Reynard the Fox overcomes Isengrin’s various schemes. This week’s Latin Poetry Podcast is a excerpt in which Isengin and Reynard collaborate […]

Claudian (ca. 370-ca.404 AD) is best known for his political poetry (he was associated with the court of the Roman emperor Honorius at Milan). But his miscellaneous carmina minorainclude a fascinating variety of shorter poems, such as a description of a marble chariot (CM 7), a sepulchral epigram on a beautiful woman (11), an invective […]

Horace Odes 1.4 Solvitur acris hiems grata vice veris et Favoni trahuntque siccas machinae carinas, ac neque iam stabulis gaudet pecus aut arator igni nec prata canis albicant pruinis. iam Cytherea choros ducit Venus imminente luna, 5 iunctaeque Nymphis Gratiae decentes alterno terram quatiunt pede, dum gravis Cyclopum Volcanus ardens visit officinas. nunc decet aut […]