Ovid’s sensuous and witty poem brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation—often as a result of love or lust—where men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings. Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Augustus, Ovid interweaves many of the best-known myths and legends of ancient Greece and Rome, including Daedalus and Icarus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Pygmalion, Perseus and Andromeda, and the fall of Troy. Erudite but light-hearted, dramatic and yet playful, the Metamorphoses has influenced writers and artists throughout the centuries from Shakespeare and Titian to Picasso and Ted Hughes.

<DIV><DIV>Through Mandelbaum’s poetic artistry, this gloriously entertaining achievement of literature-classical myths filtered through the worldly and far from reverent sensibility of the Roman poet Ovid-is revealed anew. “[An] extraordinary translation...brilliant” (Booklist). With an Introduction by the Translator.<br>

For the great Roman orator and statesman Cicero, the good life' was at once a life of contentment and one of moral virtue and the two were inescapably intertwined. This volume brings together a wide range of his reflections upon the importance of moral integrity in the search for happiness. In essays that are articulate, meditative and inspirational, Cicero presents his views upon the significance of friendship and duty to state and family, and outlines a clear system of practical ethics that is at once simple and universal. These works offer a timeless reflection upon the human condition, and a fascinating insight into the mind of one of the greatest thinkers of Ancient Rome.

This collection of Ovid's poems deals with the whole spectrum of sexual desire, ranging from deeply emotional declarations of eternal devotion to flippant arguments for promiscuity. In the "Amores", Ovid addresses himself in a series of elegies to Corinna, his beautiful, elusive mistress. The intimate and vulnerable nature of the poet revealed in these early poems vanishes in the notorious Art of Love, in which he provides a knowing and witty guide to sexual conquest - a work whose alleged obscenity led to Ovid's banishment from Rome in AD 8. This volume also includes the "Cures for Love", with instructions on how to terminate a love affair, and "On Facial Treatment for Ladies", an incomplete poem on the art of cosmetics.

Lawyer, philosopher, statesman and defender of Rome's Republic, Cicero was a master of eloquence, and his pure literary and oratorical style and strict sense of morality have been a powerful influence on European literature and thought for over two thousand years in matters of politics, philosophy, and faith. This selection demonstrates the diversity of his writings, and includes letters to friends and statesmen on Roman life and politics; the vitriolic Second Philippic Against Antony; and, his two most famous philosophical treatises, "On Duties" and "On Old Age" - a celebration of his own declining years. Written at a time of brutal political and social change, Cicero's lucid ethical writings formed the foundation of the Western liberal tradition in political and moral thought that continues to this day.

The Satyricon is the most celebrated prose work to have survived from the ancient world. It can be described as the first realistic novel, the father of the picaresque genre. It recounts the sleazy progress of a pair of literate scholars as they wander through the cities of the southern Mediterranean in the age of Nero, encountering en route type-figures whom the author wishes to satirize. P.G. Walsh captures the spirit of the original in this new and lively translation. His introduction and detailed notes provide the reader with a comprehensive guide to the meanings and intentions of the story and the later history of its literary influence.

The Civil War is Caesar's masterly account of the celebrated war between himself and his great rival Pompey, from the crossing of the Rubicon in January 49 B.C. to Pompey's death and the start of the Alexandrian War in the autumn of the following year. His unfinished account of the continuing struggle with Pompey's heirs and followers is completed by the three anonymous accounts of the Alexandrian, African, and Spanish Wars, which bring the story down to within a year of Caesar's assassination in March 44 B.C. This generously annotated edition places the war in context and enables the reader to grasp it both in detail and as a whole.

Introduction by Philip Hardie; Translation by Robert Fitzgerald

The first and still the best modern verse translation of the Metamorphoses, Humphries' version of Ovid's masterpiece captures its wit, merriment, and sophistication.<P> Everyone will enjoy this first modern translation by an American poet of Ovid's great work, the major treasury of classical mythology, which has perennially stimulated the minds of men. In this lively rendering there are no stock props of the pastoral and no literary landscaping, but real food on the table and sometimes real blood on the ground.

Not only is Ovid's Metamorphoses a collection of all the myths of the time of the Roman poet as he knew them, but the book presents at the same time a series of love poems--about the loves of men, women, and the gods. There are also poems of hate, to give the proper shading to the narrative. And pervading all is the writer's love for this earth, its people, its phenomena.<P> Using ten-beat, unrhymed lines in his translation, Rolfe Humphries shows a definite kinship for Ovid's swift and colloquial language and Humphries' whole poetic manner is in tune with the wit and sophistication of the Roman poet.