A translation of Nonnus, Dionysiaca 16.244–364 Content notification: God Dionysus, enamored with the nymph Nikaia, drugs her with river water transformed into wine and rapes her in her inebriated sleep. The Dryad, having mocked the god, slipped back into her tree. But Dionysus ardently pursued the maiden; he Was passionate from… Read more
Down the path between the apples through the maple grove of suicides then left at the old wall along the wire fence to the brook- bank where narcissus noses into skunk cabbage and hepatica: Call me Apollo, crashing in the underbrush with my arrows, my bow saw and clippers out… Read more
Translated by Natasha Bershadsky Hippolytus and Phaedra To Gregory Nagy narration Hippolytus, young, beautiful and modest, son of Theseus and some Amazon, was devoted to Artemis, scorning Aphrodite. The offended goddess of love inspired in Phaedra, his stepmother, a vehement passion for him: she used to go… Read more
Hark at the shepherdess! Then note her unbelievable distress On finding how her much loved faun is dead. She listened as the shepherds said Her faun was mostly goat. In her lap, she cradled the cut throat And the horned head. She would have cut the shepherds’ throats instead. … Read more
Translated to Greek by George Chaldezos Students all too commonly misconstrue the poem in which Sappho calls that man equal to a god who, opposite you, leans in and whispers, etcetera, tending to assume it’s about two people: speaker/loved one? Beloved and man near her, bending… Read more
Translated by Philip Nikolayev Insomnia, Homer, taut sails: my lips have lisped Down to the middle the detailed list of ships, That long brood and angular train of cranes That rose above Hellas once on wings of waves. A wedge of cranes into far foreign lands… Read more
