Greek Translations In Print

Following numerous requests over the past fifteen years or so, printed copies of three of my Greek translations are now available. I have slightly revised the introductions to the translations.

The Agamemnon of Aeschylus

94 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1484128220
BISAC: Drama / Ancient, Classical & Medieval

Sophocles – Oedipus Tyrannus

112 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1484132104
BISAC: Drama / Ancient, Classical & Medieval

Sophocles – Antigone

88 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1484132067
BISAC: Drama / Ancient, Classical & Medieval

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Here are two extracts from the translations.

1) From the Agamemnon

Her warning of ‘Father!’, her supplications,
Her virgin state – were counted as nothing
By those commanders lusting for battle.
After invokations, her father ordered the servants
To lift up and place upon the altar – like a yearling goat –
She who with all her passion had bent down
To grasp his robe,
And to place a guard upon her beautiful lips –
To prevent a sound from bringing misfortune to the family –
By the power of a strong bridle making her without a voice.
Then, as she poured to earth that which stained her garment,
So at each sacrificer she cast from her eyes
Arrows of lamentation
As if she were pre-eminent within a painting
With a desire to speak,
As often at her father’s good feasts
In the male dining-room she had, in song:
When – undeflowered, with her pure voice,
Honouring her beloved father –
She had with the third libation pleasingly sang
A paeon for good fortune.
I did not see, and do not speak of, what followed these things.

2) From Antigone.

By Cyanaei of the two-fold sea
Are the Bosphorus shores
And Thracian Salmydessus
Where Ares, dwelling close by the citadel,
Beheld the two sons of Phineas
Blinded by ruinous wounds
Dealt by that savage second wife –
A blinding of orbs the seeing of which brought vengeance –
By sticking at them with the points
Of her weaver’s spindle, blood staining her hands.

A Note on the Translations

The translations were undertaken during the four happy years I spent with Sue, with the Agamemnon completed some months after her untimely death in 1993. Now, almost a quarter of a century later, there is much that I would probably change/alter in all three translations. But they shall be left alone; creative emanations of their time, of those now long ago and fondly remembered years.

°°°

Image credit: Attic red-figure vase c. 460 BCE (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

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