Aristophanes is, of course, essential, but of the eleven comedies of his which are extant, there is only one complete translation, that privately printed under the imprint of the "Athenian Society," in two volumes, London, 1912, and limited to six hundred and twenty-five copies. These comedies have, perhaps, no equal in all literature, except in Rabelais, and the translation mentioned not only does them full justice, although in prose, but also furnishes exhaustive and illuminating notes necessary for the full understanding of all the humor. Four of the comedies were translated into admirable verse by J. H. Frere, Malta, 1839, and are well worth having, although, of course, Aristophanes' frequent and characteristic "obscenities" are omitted:

Among the satirists we have the Latins, Martial and Juvenal, and the Greek Lucian. The best Martial in English is the "Ex Otio Negotium" of R. Fletcher, London, 1656, reprinted in an edition of one hundred and five copies in 1893. Only selected epigrams are given, those selected being rendered rather freely, but there is no semblance of emasculation and the essential genius of translation is present. A good Juvenal is the verse translation by Robert Stapylton, London, 1647. A fair prose rendering, with the Latin text, is found in an anonymous translation issued, with- Sheridan's translation of Persius, in 1777. Of Lucian's many works, there are almost innumerable translations, nearly all of which are- expurgated. A good rendering of Selected Dialogues is that by Howard Williams, London, Bell.

The "True History," which contains, as might be expected, the wildest flights of imagination, was translated by Francis Hickes, London, 1634; privately reprinted in a limited edition, with the Greek text, in 1896.

The immortal "Golden Ass" of Lucius Apuleius is attractive in the quaint Elizabethan version of William Adlington, of which five editions in small black letter were printed between 1566 and 1639. A modern reprint was issued by David Nutt, London, in 1893. The translation ii not always accurate, but it is sufficiently so and it is particularly treasured as a fine specimen of the prose of that period. Apuleius exists in complete translation in the rendering by F. D. Byrne, printed in Paris in 1904, in a limited and private edition. The edition has numerous indifferent plates, and was reprinted, in incomplete translation, with several plates omitted, under a London imprint, of the same date. The translation reads rather more easily than the rendering by Thomas Taylor, London, 1822, and includes the erotic passages which, like all similar passages in the classics, are incorporated with ingenuous shamelessness and are, as might be expected, quite harmless. For Taylor’s translation, these “passages suppressed” were supplied on separate sheets.

Among the “impudiques et charmants,” as Pierre Louys calls them, must be mentioned the famous Satyricon of Petronius, of which Charles Carrington has printed the only complete translation, with his own imprint, Paris 1902, in an edition of five hundred and fifteen copies, since reprinted. The first edition bears a slip attributing the translation of Oscar Wilde, but the work has not the slightest internal evidence to support this. Also the “Priapeia” a collection of Latin epigrams of the best period, all bearing on the god Priapus. Two hundred and fifty copies of a translation of this small anthology were issued by the Erotika Biblion Society, “Athens” 1888. Notes on various subjects occupy more than half the volume.

< Greek and Latin Classics Part 2