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Century Readings in Ancient Classical Literature

Grant Showerman

Century Readings in Greek and Latin Literature in Translation propose to call to the reader's attention practically every significant figure in the literary experience of Greece and Rome from Homeric times to the fall of the Empire in the West and to the fading of the Eastern Empire into Byzantinism. They include as much as possible of the travel background that so effectively contributes to reality in literature; Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, many parts of the Roman Empire, are vividly glimpsed, and the city of Rome is illuminated from many sides. They present much that is of universal interest in regard to religion, philosophy of life, statecraft, and criticism, and occasional significant paragraphs of historical or antiquarian interest. They are prefaced by brief literary appreciations; it is too often forgotten that the classics are not only documents, but the inspired product called art. They are purposed above all to present the classics in their human appeal. Men in movement in the tragedy and comedy of life, men in reflection on the vicissitudes, the follies, the nobilities, the contradictions, the absurdities, the futilities, of life, men in the earnest endeavor to solve the problems of belief and conduct: this is the stuff of the ancient classical literatures, and interest in this has been the guide in the selection of these readings.

In the choice of translators, the general principle as to form has been that verse is best reproduced by verse and prose by prose; of the exceptions, some are due to the lack of adequate verse, some to the special excellence of the prose, some to convenience. As to the transfer of content, those translations have been chosen which seemed best to unite substance and spirit in an attractive unity. Not always is the most recent translation, nor even the most scholarly, the best reproduction.

Century Readings in Greek and Latin Literature may perhaps claim to be something more than a compilation. Their character is the result of much traveling in the Realms of Gold; at first with the guidance and companionship of honored masters in the classics, George Lincoln Hendrickson, Alexander Kerr, Moses Stephen Slaughter, and Charles Forster Smith, and afterward in the paths to which they pointed the way. It is the result of many actual travelings in ancient classical lands and in lands familiar to the ancient classical peoples, and of years of sojourn in Eternal Rome. It is the result of twenty-five years of instruction in the classical tongues, and of lecturing to classical and non-classical students on life, letters, and the fine arts, always with the painful lack of a single easily accessible volume for illustration or for study in course. It has been determined by personal and actual need, and thus in a measure partakes of the nature of organic growth. - Summary by Introduction