Odes and Epodes [antikvár]

PREFACEThis volume replaces C. E. Bennetts Loeb edition, which served teachers and students well for most of the twentieth century. Bennett was an accomplished Latinist, and it is no criticism to observe that after nearly ninety years his text and interpretations have at some points become outdated, and that especially in the "hymnic" odes his style now seems old-fashioned. Like Bennetts, the present translation is intended to serve as a guide to the Latin printed en face; yet too literal a version would produce a jarringly false effect; so the result is something of a compromise. Any prose rendering, of course, involves loss, and in the case of the Odes, where form counts for as much as content, the loss is especially regrettable. Yet a version in quatrains or couplets, like that of James Michie, however agreeable in itself, cannot remain close to the original. David Wests translation, sometimes in prose, sometimes in verse, is always lively, and Guy Lee s policy of reproducing Horaces metres is an impressive extension of J. B. Leish-man s experiment. But, as anyone who has ever tried will admit, there can be no wholly satisfactory solution. I offer this attempt to readers, whatever their needs, in the hope that it will convey, to a worthwhile degree, the meaning and spirit of a writer whose rise to fame was highly unusual, and who conveyed the outlook of the "normal civil-vii