A Loeb Classical Library Reader

Paperback

ISBN 9780674996168

Publication date: 03/30/2006

This selection of lapidary nuggets drawn from 33 of antiquity’s major authors includes poetry, dialogue, philosophical writing, history, descriptive reporting, satire, and fiction—giving a glimpse at the wide range of arts and sciences, thought and styles, of Greco-Roman culture.
The selections span twelve centuries, from Homer to Saint Jerome. The texts and translations are reproduced as they appear in Loeb volumes.
The Loeb Classical Library® is the only existing series of books which, through original text and facing English translation, gives access to all that is important in Greek and Latin literature. A Loeb Classical Library Reader offers a unique sampling of this treasure trove. In these pages you will find:
Odysseus tricking the Cyclops in order to escape from the giant’s cave; Zeus creating the first woman, Pandora, cause of mortals’ hardships ever after; the Athenian general Nicias dissuading his countrymen from invading Sicily; Socrates, condemned to die, saying farewell; a description of Herod’s fortified palace at Masada; Cicero’s thoughts on what we owe our fellow men; Livy’s description of the rape of the Sabine women; Manilius on the signs of the zodiac; and Pliny’s observation of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE.
Here you can enjoy looking in on people, real and imaginary, who figure prominently in ancient history, and on notable events. Here, too, you can relish classical poetry and comedy, and get a taste of the ideas characteristic of the splendid culture to which we are heir.

Praise

Here you will find old friends; Odysseus planning to dangle underneath a ram as he escapes the Cyclops or Plato (this translation from 1914) reporting Socrates' last words in an Athenian jail hours before the 'corrupter of the youth' drinks hemlock at the state's behest… Although the Reader—like all anthologies (literally a gathering of flowers, but of course only a scoopful of petals)—is frustrating (the excerpts stop just as you are hooked, so we never hear Socrates delivering his mnemonic line 'it is time to depart, for me to die, for you to live; which of us takes the better course, god only knows') it does carry cogent gobbets.

—Bettany Hughes, The Times
A small book that has been my companion on every train and bus journey for the past two weeks… It is a pocket-sized selection of some of the greatest writers who ever lived… Most of the passages in the book are all the better for being highly familiar—Medea contemplating the murder of her own children, Socrates dismissing his wife so that he can die talking bravely with chaps about the afterlife, Laocoon fearing the Greeks, even when bringing gifts such as the Trojan horse.

—A. N. Wilson, Daily Telegraph
A winsome book, only 6 ½ inches high, the Reader differs from classical anthologies that one typically sees on bookstore shelves: It provides not only a translation of the selections but also the text in the original Greek or Latin. Its appearance carries on the tradition of the Loeb Classical Library® and celebrates the publication of the 500th title in a series that began in 1912.

—Michael Poliakoff, Wall Street Journal
Even for those with little Latin and less Greek, this compendium will bring enormous pleasure. Loeb is, indeed, a many-splendoured thing.

—Peter Jones, The Spectator
It is ideal reading for bar, bus, bed or beach. Everyone, teacher and taught alike, should have one. It is this year's must-have present.

—Peter Jones, Journal of Classics Teaching
If medals were given for heroic achievements in the publishing world, a big, bright, shiny gong would surely have been awarded long ago to the Loeb Classical Library®… A Loeb Classical Library Reader is a trim little paperback, consisting of short extracts from 33 of Loeb's authors. It is an easily accessible, genuinely pocket-sized anthology.

—Anthony Lejeune, The Tablet
This anthology provides a leisurely flat-rock skip across the wide, roistering seas of ancient experience. Nevertheless, while the current general editor, Jeffrey Henderson, claims that selecting passages for the Reader 'occasioned no little debate' among those charged with the choosing, the result satisfies… These byway pieces most of us never read in school, and they remind us that more always waits to be discovered. And raising the curtain on the slightest portions of these treasures may be this anthology's greatest virtue.

—Tracy Lee Simmons, Weekly Standard
These texts give us our first glimpse into early post–New Testament Christianity. They show continuity in form (letters), development and change in form (Shepherd of Hermas) and theological expression. This edition is a must for every academic library and for all scholars interested in the New Testament and early Christianity.

—Edgar Krentz, Religious Studies Review
This little book is a delight to hold and to read… You would, if you're remotely interested in books, be hard-pressed to find anything better anywhere on which to spend your money.

—Bradley Winterton, Taipei Times