Colonel T.E. Lawrence was one of the most flamboyant figures of his era, known throughout the Western world as Lawrence of Arabia. Glory-seeking yet self-effacing, this soldier, archaeologist, spy, and scholar was a war hero whom Winston Churchill called "one of the greatest men of our time." Less well known were his abilities as historian and author, which won him the admiration of such writers as Ezra Pound, W.H. Auden, and Robert Graves.
While stationed on a desolate R.A.F. outpost on the fringes of the Karachi desert in India, Lawrence began his acclaimed translation of The Odyssey. He devoted himself to the project for four years, and during that time he came to feel that he was uniquely suited to the task. "I have hunted wild boars and watched wild lions," he wrote. "Built boats and killed many men. So I have odd knowledges that qualify me to understand The Odyssey, and odd experiences that interpret it to me." Relying on an innate sense of language and truly gifted abilities at translation, Lawrence transformed Homer's Odyssey into mellifluous prose. The result was an overnight bestseller. The New York Herald Tribune hailed it "perhaps the most interesting translation of the world's most interesting book," and The New York Times called it "ruggedly and roughly masculine" and added that it "gives a vividness to the story beyond any other text familiar to us."
Lawrence breathes new life into the adventures of Odysseus, smoothing the reader's path through a fantastic array of monsters, temptresses, gods, and goddesses. For a generation of readers accustomed to verse translations of Homer, this bold and vivid prose version is well worth rediscovery.

A glorious boxed set featuring Robert Fagles's award-winning translations of the three great epics of Western literature
ONE OF THE PREEMINENT translators of our time, Robert Fagles's interpretations of these epic poems give new life to three seminal works in the Western canon. The Penguin Classic Deluxe Editions of "The Iliad, The Odyssey," and "The Aeneid" are collected here for the first time in a specially designed gift box. Each volume contains a superb introduction by renowned classicist Bernard Knox.

about The Odyssey

Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters presents us with Homer's best-loved and most accessible poem in a stunning new modern-verse translation. Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy. So begins Robert Fagles' magnificent translation of the Odyssey, which Jasper Griffin in The New York Times Review of Books hails as "a distinguished achievement." If the Iliad is the world's greatest war epic, the Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of everyman's journey through life. Odysseus' reliance on his wit and wiliness for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces, during his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, is at once the timeless human story and an individual test of moral endurance. In the myths and legends that are retold here, Fagles has captured the energy and poetry of Homer's original in a bold, contemporary idiom, and given us an Odyssey to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery. Renowned classicist Bernard Knox's superb Introduction and textual commentary provide new insights and background information for the general reader and scholar alike, intensifying the strength of Fagles' translation. This is an Odyssey to delight both the classicist and the public at large, and to captivate a new generation of Homer's students.

The Iliad is the first and the greatest literary achievement of Greek civilization - an epic poem without rival in the literature of the world, and the cornerstone of Western culture.

Fagles combines his talents as poet and scholar to present this masterful, elegant translation of the stirring story of the Trojan War and the rage of Achilles.

Antigone defending her integrity and ideals to the death, Oedipus questing for his identity and achieving immortality - these heroic figures have moved playgoers and readers since the fifth century BC.

Towering over the rest of Greek tragedy, these three plays are among the most enduring and timeless dramas ever written. Robert Fagles' translation conveys all of Sophocles' lucidity and power: the cut and thrust of his dialogue, his ironic edge, the surge and majesty of his choruses and, above all, the agonies and triumphs of his characters.

"The World of Odysseus" is a concise and penetrating account of the society that gave birth to the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey"--a book that provides a vivid picture of the Greek Dark Ages, its men and women, works and days, morals and values. Long celebrated as a pathbreaking achievement in the social history of the ancient world, M.I. Finley's brilliant study remains, as classicist Bernard Knox notes in his introduction to this new edition, "as indispensable to the professional as it is accessible to the general reader"--a fundamental companion for students of Homer and Homeric Greece.

"From the award-winning translator of The Iliad and The Odyssey comes a brilliant new translation of Virgil's great epic"
Fleeing the ashes of Troy, Aeneas, Achilles' mighty foe in the "Iliad," begins an incredible journey to fulfill his destiny as the founder of Rome. His voyage will take him through stormy seas, entangle him in a tragic love affair, and lure him into the world of the dead itself--all the way tormented by the vengeful Juno, Queen of the Gods. Ultimately, he reaches the promised land of Italy where, after bloody battles and with high hopes, he founds what will become the Roman empire. An unsparing portrait of a man caught between love, duty, and fate, the "Aeneid "redefines passion, nobility, and courage for our times. Robert Fagles, whose acclaimed translations of Homer's "Iliad "and "Odyssey "were welcomed as major publishing events, brings the "Aeneid "to a new generation of readers, retaining all of the gravitas and humanity of the original Latin as well as its powerful blend of poetry and myth. Featuring an illuminating introduction to Virgil's world by esteemed scholar Bernard Knox, this volume lends a vibrant new voice to one of the seminal literary achievements of the ancient world.

Gripping listeners and readers for more than 2,700 years, The Iliad is the story of the Trojan War and the rage of Achilles. Combining the skills of a poet and scholar, Robert Fagles brings the energy of contemporary language to this enduring heroic epic. If The Iliad is the world's greatest war story, then The Odyssey is literature's greatest evocation of every man's journey through life. Here again, Fagles has performed the translator's task magnificently, giving us an Odyssey to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery. Each volume contains a superb introduction with textual and critical commentary by renowned classicist Bernard Knox.

In this widely praised book, an eminent classicist examines Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus in the context of fifth-century B.C. Athens. In attempting to discover what the play meant to Sophocles' contemporaries-and in particular in disentangling Sophocles' ideas from Freud's psychoanalytical interpretations-Bernard Knox casts fresh light on its timeless and universal nature. For this edition, Knox has provided a new preface and a list of suggested readings. "What a joy it is to welcome this book back in print. As perennial as Sophocles' great play itself, Knox's work has never gone out of date, and never will."-Robert Fagles Reviews of the earlier editions: "A superb analysis, demonstrating that when classical study is aware of Freud and the techniques of modern literary criticism, it can be as exciting nowadays as it must have been during the Renaissance."-New Yorker "A superb critical and textual investigation."-New York Times "One of the major contributions to Sophoclean and to Greek studies in recent years."-Virginia Quarterly Review "A magnificent contribution ... which is really required reading."-Cedric Whitman, American Journal of Philology "A brilliant piece of work combining the best of classical scholarship with the best of modern literary criticism."-John E. Rexine, Hellenic World

Linked by the events of Bernard Knox's remarkable life, the twenty-five chapters of "Essays Ancient and Modern" cover subjects ranging from Hesiod, Homer, and Thucydides to Auden, Forster, and the Spanish Civil War. With a masterful eye for the telling detail, Knox continually reminds us that we share the present with antiquity's living past. A soldier in Italy finds a battered book in the rubble of a bombed-out firehouse-- and opens it to read Virgil's denunciation of war. An illiterate Greek bard composes a garbled Homeric song to celebrate the recent heroism of local partisans. A traveler heading north from modern Athens must choose between the Sacred Way-- or the NATO Road.

Whether the subject is the role of women in ancient Athens or the novelists of modern Italy, the wit and erudition of Bernard Knox never fail to instruct and delight. Now in paperback, "Essays Ancient and Modern" takes it place alongside the distinguished essays of Knox's "Word and Action," a book whose title brings together, in the words of Anthony Hecht, "the double strand of his admirable career."