Customer Reviews

Juvenal and Persius (Loeb Classical Library No. 91)

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This is a new update to a LCL volume that was from 1913. It contains the text of Persius' (A.D. 34-62) and Juvenal's (circa A.D. 127) satires. The update is really well done. The introduction provides an excellent introduction to the genre and a background on the transmission of the text.

The translation is well done. It is a prose translation of the Latin poems. Generally the translation is accurate with "idiom-for-idiom" translation, using equivalent contemporary American expressions for ancient slang. The translation has extensive footnotes to explain historical, mythological, literary, and geographic references. This is very handy for a reader without a mastery of classical literature.

This Loeb Classical Library edition of Juvenal and Persius was first published in 1918 and was last revised in 1940. The translations are servicable, but this particular volume badly needs the revision that other Loeb volumes have been receiving under the skilled hand of G.P. Goold, currently general editor of the series. The translations of the Juvenal satires in the current volume have been censored where Juvenal was evidently felt by the standards of 1918 to have been too indecent (cf. II.49-50 for an example; the Latin, however, is untouched). While one can understand the reticience of the editor given his era, this censorship should really be remedied in a future revision (as it has been in the Loeb "Catullus" edited by Goold). Until then Peter Green's fine translation for Penguin contains a complete rendering which will allow the reader to judge for himself or herself whether or not to be shocked by what Juvenal says.

This translation of Juvenal is masterfully done, with both the original latin and English translation in a small and easy to carry book. Juvenal is to satire what Shakespeare was to the play.