Included here are over a hundred poems and poetic fragments from thirty Greek lyric poets of antiquity as well as some anonymous verse spanning from the 7th to the 5th Century. It's a slim book--only 82 pages in paperback. Almost all of the above survive only in fragments found in pot shards, scraps of papyrus used to wrap mummies and quotations by grammarians and others. The most notable--or at least poets I’ve heard mentioned and seen anthologized elsewhere are: Archilochos of Paros, Solon (legendary statesman of Athens), Alcman of Sparta, Stesichorus of Hemera, Ibycus of Rhegium, Alcaeus of Mytilene, Anakreon of Teos (who is supposed to have influenced Aeschylus) Simonides of Ceos (to whom the famous epitaph for Sparta’s 400 who fell at Thermopylae is ascribed), Bacchylides of Ceos, Pindar of Thebes (famous for his Olympic Victory Odes) and Sappho of Lesbos, Praxilla of Sicyon and Corinna of Tanagra, notable woman poets.
Among the poets represented I regret most all we’ve lost by Archilochos and Sappho. Both of them despite the fragmentary nature of what survived come through as personalities and amazing poets--in what couldn't be a wider contrast. Archilochos was a mercenary with has been called a "nettle tongue;" there was a legend wasps hovered over his grave. In a translation of his poems by Davenport, I could definitely see the soldier--often biting, crude, lewd, blunt. That wasn’t as apparent in this edition by Lattimore. Sappho is the great lyric poet of antiquity. Plato called her the "tenth muse." She's Archilochos opposite pole, vernal, refined--but like him at times frank in speaking of desire. Her poems were preserved until nearly A.D 1000, at least according to A Book of Woman Poets, "when a wrathful church destroyed whatever it could find. In 1073 her writings were publicly burned in Rome and Constantinople by order of Pope Gregory VIII." Otherwise, I find it valuable to have collected in one place such a wide range of the notable Greek poets and I appreciate the introductions to each poet. Not knowing Greek, it’s hard for me to judge the translations--except that I’ve seen renderings of the famous epitaph to the Spartans and of Sappho and Archilochos I’ve liked better--but perhaps these are truer--I can’t know. I do know I didn't much like the Lattimore translation of Homer I encountered in high school and it took Robert Fitzgerald's translation for it to catch fire with me.
