Games of Venus

Peter Bing is Associate Professor of Classics at Emory University. He is the author of The Well-Read Muse (1988), and translator of Homo Necans (1983). Rip Cohen has taught Classics and Romance Languages at the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania.

"This first comprehensive anthology of ancient Greek and Roman erotic verse includes Sappho, pederastic verse from Anacreon and Theognis, Virgil's homoerotic 2nd Eclogue, and other gay and lesbian poems." -- Lambda Book Report". . . an extremely useful reference work for tomorro's students. It is handsomely produced and fills a most important gap." -- Daily Telegraph"The introduction is scholarly; the translations are new; one can easily imagine the practicality of a text that provides an alternative to worn and stodgy collections of classical love poetry." -- The Yale Review"Their translations display the freshness of an Ezra Pound rather than the late-Victorian murk of a Gilbert Murray. . . . Their renderings of Catullus, a challenge to generations of fledgling poets, are first rate . . . [T]his is a splendid book. Perhaps it is the best book that could have been devoted to an ethos that underlies all subsequent Occidental erotica." -- Libido: TheJournal of Sex and Sensibility

• GREECE: Archilochus Alkman Mimnermos Sappho Ibycus Anacreon Theognis Hipponax Pindar Bacchylides Miscellaneous Lyric and Inscriptions Hermesianax Asclepiades Callimachus Theocritus Herodas Machon The Grenfell Papyrus from Marisa Anonymous Song Anonymous Epigrams Meleager ROME: Catullus Virgil Horace Tibullus Sulpicia Propertius Ovid