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alexaraqueld's review
funny
medium-paced
2.75
The greeks can be funny but also — please get to the point
jules1994's review
3.0
3.0 Stars.
This is a super interesting compilation of Greek poets and authors, ordered by time periods to give a sense of cohesion. I loved the random tidbits of wisdom, but also the hilarity and irony imbibed in so many of the short poems and sayings and proverbs. I was also really surprised how contemporary some of the thinking was! I struggled, however, with parts of the historical context, especially when it came to political or war-related poetry. You'd honestly need to know more than the basics of Greek history to comprehend every sly hint and remark and connection, especially if you want to understand the author's stance in particular. Even the notes in the back, which I read rigorously, only helped minimally with certain snippets of writing. However, this collection certainly made me want to increase my knowledge of Greek history. (Also, this is so gay, it's a blast!)
This is a super interesting compilation of Greek poets and authors, ordered by time periods to give a sense of cohesion. I loved the random tidbits of wisdom, but also the hilarity and irony imbibed in so many of the short poems and sayings and proverbs. I was also really surprised how contemporary some of the thinking was! I struggled, however, with parts of the historical context, especially when it came to political or war-related poetry. You'd honestly need to know more than the basics of Greek history to comprehend every sly hint and remark and connection, especially if you want to understand the author's stance in particular. Even the notes in the back, which I read rigorously, only helped minimally with certain snippets of writing. However, this collection certainly made me want to increase my knowledge of Greek history. (Also, this is so gay, it's a blast!)
fuhhlarzablur's review
5.0
Love
shakes my heart like the wind rushing down on the mountain oaks.
You came, and I needed you,
and you cooled the fever of longing that racked my heart.
shakes my heart like the wind rushing down on the mountain oaks.
You came, and I needed you,
and you cooled the fever of longing that racked my heart.
intonewrealms's review against another edition
3.0
I find it crazy to hear from Ancients and realise how much more similar they were to us than some more recent civilisations, but then you’re hit with something quite horrible and you remember that we aren’t the same. This book is a collection of Ancient Greek poetry post Homer. It’s a bit odd because sometimes you get a really long one and then sometimes it’s just a fragment of three words. It’s kind of difficult to connect with them because there are so many and you just go from topic to topic with what feels like just parts of a sentence. But I think it’s going to be interesting to study further in depth this semester and there were definitely parts I identified with, or laughed in shock at.
cath_c's review
Hello, I'm a classicist, and I like to read ancient Greek lyric poetry on Sunday mornings for fun. And, well, because I have a project coming up and I just love research.
This time around I focused mostly on references to weaving in Sappho as part of my senior thesis/capstone project. I'm not sure how many other references to weaving the male (lyric) poets will have since the whole gender differentiation thing was very real, but working with Gregory Nagy's theory that there must have been professional male weavers, there very well could be. (Although the male poets seem to focus more on formal address of gods and on sexual conquests, but perhaps this is not surprising.)
It is very interesting to see how the presence of daily activities (ie, weaving) is reflected in the poetry. Sappho focuses a lot on dress, adornment, and on the fabric itself, including the color, quality, source, production, and cost. These are all very interesting factors that we can read through to find out elements about the ancient Greek culture, such as the social and and economic status one would have to have to have crimson cloth (as differentiated from red, since the expensive one is the product of crushed beetles and the other is from madder). I now wonder if in the Greek different words are used in Sappho's poetry to refer to "crimson" and to "red" (and what about "scarlet"....?) Hmmmmm....
... And this is how we know I found my calling in life, because I get I'm one of very few people in this world who probably care about the socioeconomic demographics of fiber arts in Sappho, but hey, this is the most interesting thing I've thought about all week.
This time around I focused mostly on references to weaving in Sappho as part of my senior thesis/capstone project. I'm not sure how many other references to weaving the male (lyric) poets will have since the whole gender differentiation thing was very real, but working with Gregory Nagy's theory that there must have been professional male weavers, there very well could be. (Although the male poets seem to focus more on formal address of gods and on sexual conquests, but perhaps this is not surprising.)
It is very interesting to see how the presence of daily activities (ie, weaving) is reflected in the poetry. Sappho focuses a lot on dress, adornment, and on the fabric itself, including the color, quality, source, production, and cost. These are all very interesting factors that we can read through to find out elements about the ancient Greek culture, such as the social and and economic status one would have to have to have crimson cloth (as differentiated from red, since the expensive one is the product of crushed beetles and the other is from madder). I now wonder if in the Greek different words are used in Sappho's poetry to refer to "crimson" and to "red" (and what about "scarlet"....?) Hmmmmm....
... And this is how we know I found my calling in life, because I get I'm one of very few people in this world who probably care about the socioeconomic demographics of fiber arts in Sappho, but hey, this is the most interesting thing I've thought about all week.
dr_matthew_lloyd's review
3.0
This translation of Greek lyric poetry down to ca. 450 BCE by the esteemed Martin West is a strange concoction. Published in the "World's Classics" line by Oxford University Press it is a (relatively) cheap paperback edition which allows early lyric poetry to be widely available, translated by a prestigious and talented scholar, if not by a poet. The volume includes Sappho, Alcaeus, and Solon, as well as a number of poets who are perhaps less well-known to the general public,* but who are certainly of interest - Archilochus and Tyrtaeus as some of the earliest poets with a reasonably large corpus; Xenophanes with his philosophy (and mild ribbing of the much more famous Pythagoras); Semonides with his early hints at the misogyny which underlies much of Greek civilization. But there are several decisions with which I am not certain that I agree: West includes a number of incomplete fragments which are barely legible, and hundreds of one-line fragments, which I don't see being of great interest to the general reader. On the other hand, so little context is provided for many of these fragments that for the scholar of antiquity (particularly archaeologists, such as myself, without the skill in ancient Greek to read everything regardless of its relevance to my research) the usefulness of the book is limited. I found myself questioning the audience for this book, finding it useful for an overview and for checking the references of others, but less useful than the Loeb editions of Greek lyric would be as these provide the context from which the poems are known (whether they are quoted by ancient sources or survive through papyrus fragments or even their own manuscript tradition), as well as facing Greek and translations. It is, however, much cheaper than the Loeb volumes. Therefore I would suggest, if one is interested in ancient lyric poetry (besides Sappho, who can be found in translation by a number of able poets), then this collection is a good place to start. However, it may not be a sufficient place to end.
*It's been a long time since I've not known who several of these poets are, so I have genuinely no idea who are the widely-known early Greek poets (Homer and Sappho aside) and those of whom people might never have heard. Is Archilochus well known? Is Solon? How about Semonides? No idea.
*It's been a long time since I've not known who several of these poets are, so I have genuinely no idea who are the widely-known early Greek poets (Homer and Sappho aside) and those of whom people might never have heard. Is Archilochus well known? Is Solon? How about Semonides? No idea.
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