The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse

[A]n inspired and enlightening lunacy ... here is a work of staggering ambition, exceptional accomplishment, and surprisingly pleasant reading ... The risk of a single translator rendering many poets might be a homogenising flatness, but Childers retunes his instrument for different effects, adding a string, slapping on a capo, going electric or harmonic. Perhaps most originally, Childers aims to get us to perceive connections across not only centuries and poets but languages. Different metrical patterns are associated with different subgenres or 'vibes', and Childers is programmatic in his rendering of said patterns ... Childers consistently, and sometimes brilliantly, turns out translations that also work as English poems ... Childers's elegant prose wears its learning lightly, and is often stealthily hilarious ... The notes also point us to allusions to these poems or translations of them in the whole sweep of Anglophone poetry, and beyond, making this a relevant sourcebook for readers of Western poetry of any era ... This book would make an excellent gift for anyone interested in classical literature: it practically amounts to a degree in classical literature in translation A. E. Stallings Daily Telegraph