How to Read a Latin Poem: If You Can't Read Latin Yet

289 Pages·2013·0.91 MB·English

by  William Fitzgerald

HOW TO READ A LATIN POEM
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HOW TO READ
A LATIN POEM
If You Can’t Read Latin
Yet
• •

WILLIAM FITZGERALD
1
1

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp,
United Kingdom
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© William Fitzgerald 2013
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First Edition published in 2013
Impression: 1
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
ISBN 978–0–19–965786–5
Printed in Great Britain
Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
To the next generation:
Patrick, Tom, and Beatrice
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My greatest debt in the writing of this book is to my colleagues. Latin
studies have fl ourished in recent decades, and I have drawn freely on
the work of other scholars, though the need to keep footnotes to a
minimum has meant that they have not all been acknowledged by
name. I began writing this book while teaching at Cambridge, inspired
by the example of others in the Faculty of Classics who had writt en
books reaching out to a broader audience than that of professional
classicists. Th ey, and others like them, have done much to keep Clas-
sics on the agenda beyond the university, and I am grateful for their
inspiration and example. My thanks go to the three readers for OUP,
who made some helpful suggestions and saved me from a number of
embarrassing errors; also to my copy editors, Sylvia Jaff rey and, espe-
cially, Richard Abrams, who, with cheering good humour, went far
beyond the call of duty in the fi nal stages. Hilary O’ Shea and Desiree
Kellerman have been encouraging and effi cient in seeing this book
through from conception to publication.
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CONTENTS
Introduction 1
A Guide to the Pronunciation of Latin 29
Prelude 31
1 Love, and a Genre 41
2 Hate, Mockery, and the Physical World 71
3 Horace: Th e Sensation of Mediocrity 101
4 Vergil: Th e Unclassical Classic 141
5 Lucan and Seneca: Poets of Apocalypse 181
6 Science Fiction: Lucretius’ D e Rerum Natura and Ovid’s 229
Metamorphoses
Epilogue 263
Guide to Further Reading 268
Glossary 270
Index 275
Index of Poems Discussed 278
ix