That’s the story of, that’s the glory of Loeb

Today is all about Greek lyric poetry – not made easier by the fact that it’s not available on Perseus, so I can’t use my usual ‘crib and copy’ technique. Fortunately, there is an excellent Loeb edition of the relevant poems by Douglas Gerber, which strikes a good balance between close adherence to the text and plausibility in English. The Loeb series is very patchy – at its best it’s excellent, but some of the older texts are bowdlerised and clunky. But sometimes the archaic language does the job; I still think ‘Good were it for thee even to have dalliance in a woman’s embrace’ is a great way of putting Thetis’ advice to Achilles in Iliad 24.