Smash hit

Hesiod’s Works and Days, recounting the creation of the first woman, is a salutary reminder of a core Greek misogyny: “He (Zeus) told Athena to teach her crafts, to weave richly worked cloth; and golden Aphrodite to shed around her head grace and painful desire and limb-devouring cares; and he ordered Hermes, the intermediary, the killer of Argus, to put into her a dog’s mind and a thievish character . . . and the messenger of the gods . . . named this woman Pandora (all-gift), since all those who have their mansions on Olympus had given her a gift — a woe for men who live on bread . . .”

The Reader ends with a letter written by the Christian Jerome to Marcella in AD385 extolling “the haven of a rural retreat” in contrast to an urban life where “going ourselves every day to other people’s houses, or waiting for others to come to us . . . we tear to pieces those who are not there . . . When our friends have left us, we reckon up our accounts, now frowning over them like angry lions, now with useless care planning schemes for the distant future . . . We buy clothes, not solely for use, but for display . . . A penny makes us merry, a halfpenny makes us sad.”

This selection is aimed, dare one suggest, at an audience of high-minded, retired country dwellers (for potential buyers, one caveat, no rich cloth binding or trademark jacket here, rather a glossy cover featuring Mark Copeland’s 1997 painting Rome Was Built in a Day) — who can peruse the Reader alfresco in a comfy chair.

The library has plangent critics. The early editions leave those reading in English at the mercy of second-rate or out-dated translations. Early censorship and archaic language persist — forsooths and thous yet tarry.

Despite the promise to revise the translations every ten years, the slow process of updating can be frustrating. Still, near-perfect Loeb translations exist — such as Martin West’s Homeric Hymns and Jeffrey Henderson’s Aristophanes — and are works of scholarship that may be appreciated by the likes of Steven Spielberg and Martha Stewart; both proud owners of Loeb’s complete works.

Cambridge University demonstrated some vision when it honoured James Loeb with a LlD in 1925: “Omnibus paradisum redonavit hospes noster, qui et doctis et indoctis Garecos et Latinos bene editos belle redditos ministrat — our guest has given back paradise to us all, for he provides to both the learned and the unlearned the Greek and Latin authors well edited and beautifully translated.”

Last week I visited Blackwell’s in Oxford with a promise of a book for each child. After a half hour patiently scanning shelves — and ignoring the Harry Potters, Narnias and Angelina Ballerinas, our five-year-old picked out a pillar-box red (red jacket = Latin, green = Greek) Loeb Apuleius’s Metamorphoses.

“This is a proper book,” she announced. The youngster can’t read much English, let alone Latin, but as soon as she does there’ll be a bit of explaining to do: in the Metamorphoses (and the new translation is particularly fruity) a man turns into a donkey, enjoying all sorts of adventures, many wonderfully indecent. Thanks, Mr Loeb — your mission to nourish the hungry mind looks set to continue.

Extracts

A Loeb Classical Reader

Herodotus blames Helen of Troy for the enmity of East and West:

(The Persians say that) the Greeks were greatly to blame; for they invaded Asia before the Persians attacked Europe. “We think,” say they, “that it is wrong to carry women off: but to be zealous to avenge the rape is foolish: wise men take no account of such things: for plainly the women would never have been carried away, had not they themselves wished it. We of Asia regarded the rape of our women not at all; but the Greeks, all for the sake of a Spartan woman (Helen), mustered a great host, came to Asia and destroyed the power of Priam. Ever since then we have regarded Greeks as our enemies.
Herodotus Persians 1.1-4

Pliny the Younger relates his uncle's eyewitness account of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD:

They debated whether to stay indoors or take their chance in the open, for the buildings were now shaking with violent shocks, and seemed to be swaying to and fro as if they were torn from their foundations. Outside on the other hand, there was the danger of falling pumice stones, even though these were light and porous; however, after comparing the risks they chose the latter . . . As a protection against falling objects they put pillows on their heads, tied down with cloths.

Elsewhere there was daylight by this time, but they were still in darkness, blacker and denser than any night that ever was, which they relieved by lighting torches and various kinds of lamp.

My uncle decided to go down to the shore and investigate on the spot the possibility of any escape by sea, but he found the waves still wild and dangerous. A sheet was spread on the ground for him to lie down, and he repeatedly asked for cold water to drink. Then the flames and smell of sulphur which gave warning of the approaching fire drove the others to take flight and roused him to stand up. He stood leaning on two slaves and then suddenly collapsed, I imagine because the dense fumes choked his breathing by blocking his windpipe which was constitutionally weak and narrow and often inflamed. When daylight returned — two days after the last day he had seen — his body was found intact and uninjured, still fully clothed and looking more like sleep than death.
Pliny Letters 6.16 10-20

© 2006 The President and Fellows of Harvard College

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