A biography of Vergil, Rome’s greatest poet, by the acclaimed translator of the Aeneid   The Aeneid stands as a towering work of Classical Roman literature and a gripping dramatization of the best and worst of human nature. In the process of creating this epic poem, Vergil (70–19 BCE) became the world’s first media celebrity, a living legend.   But the real Vergil is a shadowy figure; we know that he was born into a modest rural family, that he led a private and solitary life, and that, in spite of poor health and unusual emotional vulnerabilities, he worked tirelessly to achieve exquisite new effects in verse. Vergil’s most famous work, the Aeneid, was commissioned by the emperor Augustus, who published the epic despite Vergil’s dying wish that it be destroyed.   Sarah Ruden, widely praised for her translation of the Aeneid, uses evidence from Roman life and history alongside Vergil’s own writings to make careful deductions to reconstruct his life. Through her intimate knowledge of Vergil’s work, she brings to life a poet who was committed to creating something astonishingly new and memorable, even at great personal cost.

A powerful and poignant translation of Vergil's epic poem, newly equipped with introduction and notes "Ruden set the bar for Aeneid translations in 2008, and has raised it now with this revision. I am confident it will be a long time before a translator exceeds the standard that she has set."-A.M. Juster, Athenaeum Review This is a substantial revision of Sarah Ruden's celebrated 2008 translation of Vergil's Aeneid, which was acclaimed by Garry Wills as "the first translation since Dryden's that can be read as a great English poem in itself." Ruden's line-for-line translation in iambic pentameter is an astonishing feat, unique among modern translations. Her revisions to the translation render the poetry more spare and muscular than her previous version and capture even more closely the essence of Vergil's poem, which pits national destiny against the fates of individuals, and which resonates deeply in our own time. This distinguished translation, now equipped with introduction, notes, and glossary by leading Vergil scholar Susanna Braund, allows modern readers to experience for themselves the timeless power of Vergil's masterpiece. Praise for the First Edition: "Fast, clean, and clear, sometimes terribly clever, and often strikingly beautiful. . . . Many human achievements deserve our praise, and this excellent translation is certainly one of them."-Richard Garner, The New Criterion "Toning down the magniloquence, Sarah Ruden gives us an Aeneid more intimate in tone and soberer in measure than we are used to-a gift for which many will be grateful."-J. M. Coetzee "An intimate rendering of great emotional force and purity. . . . The immediacy, beauty, and timelessness of the original Latin masterpiece lift off these pages with gem-like originality."-Choice

Food - how it's grown, how it's shared - makes us who we are. This issue traces the connections between farm and food, between humus and human. According to the first book of the Bible, tending the earth was humankind's first task: "The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed" (Gen. 2:8). The desire to get one's hands dirty raising one's own food, then, doesn't just come from modern romanticism, but is built into human nature. The title, "The Welcome Table," comes from a spiritual first sung by enslaved African-Americans. The song refers to the Bible's closing scene, the wedding feast of the Lamb described in the Book of Revelation, to which every race, tribe, and tongue are invited - a divine pledge of a day of freedom and freely shared plenty, of earth renewed and humanity restored. In the case of food, the symbol is the substance. Every meal, if shared generously and with radical hospitality, is already now a taste of the feast to come. Also in this issue: poetry by Luci Shaw; reviews of books by Julia Child, Robert Farrar Capon, Peter Mayle, Albert Woodfox, and Maria von Trapp; and art by Michael Naples, Sieger Koeder, Carl Juste, Andre Chung, Angel Bracho, Winslow Homer, Raymond Logan, Sybil Andrews, Cameron Davidson, and Jason Landsel. Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus' message into practice and find common cause with others.

The most sophisticated and daring poetic ironist of the early Roman Empire, Publius Ovidius Naso, is perhaps best known for his oft-imitated "Metamorphoses." But the Roman poet also wrote lively and lewd verse on the subjects of love, sex, marriage, and adultery--a playful parody of the earnest erotic poetry traditions established by his literary ancestors. The "Amores," Ovid's first completed book of poetry, explores the conventional mode of erotic elegy with some subversive and silly twists: the poetic narrator sets up a lyrical altar to an unattainable woman only to knock it down by poking fun at her imperfections. "Ars Amatoria" takes the form of didactic verse in which a purportedly mature and experienced narrator instructs men and women alike on how to best play their hands at the long con of love."Ovid's Erotic Poems" offers a modern English translation of the "Amores" and "Ars Amatoria" that retains the irreverent wit and verve of the original. Award-winning poet Len Krisak captures the music of Ovid's richly textured Latin meters through rhyming couplets that render the verse as playful and agile as it was meant to be. Sophisticated, satirical, and wildly self-referential, "Ovid's Erotic Poems" is not just a wickedly funny send-up of romantic and sexual mores but also a sharp critique of literary technique and poetic convention.

In Paul Among the People, Sarah Ruden explores the writings of the evangelist Paul in the context of his time and culture, to recover his original message of freedom and love while overturning the common—and fundamental—misconception that Paul represented a puritanical, hysterically homophobic, misogynist, or reactionary vision.

By setting famous and controversial words of Paul against ancient Greek and Roman literature, Ruden reveals a radical message of human freedom and dignity at the heart of Paul’s preaching. Her training in the Classics allows her to capture the stark contrast between Paul’s Christianity and the violence, exploitation, and dehumanization permeating the Roman Empire in his era. In contrast to later distortions, the vision of Christian life Ruden finds in Paul is centered on equality before God and the need for people to love one another.

A remarkable work of scholarship, synthesis, and understanding, Paul Among the People recaptures the moral urgency and revolutionary spirit that made Christianity such a shock to the ancient world and laid the foundation of the culture in which we live today.

Acclaimed poet and translator Sarah Ruden brilliantly brings Apuleius's comic tale to life With accuracy, wit, and intelligence, this remarkable new translation of The Golden Ass breathes new life into Apuleius's classic work. Sarah Ruden, a lyric poet as well as a highly respected translator, skillfully duplicates the verbal high jinks of Apuleius's ever-popular novel. It tells the story of Lucius, a curious and silly young man, who is turned into a donkey when he meddles with witchcraft. Doomed to wander from region to region and mistreated by a series of deplorable owners, Lucius at last is restored to human form with the help of the goddess Isis. The Golden Ass, the first Latin novel to survive in its entirety, is related to the Second Sophistic, a movement of learned and inventive literature. In a translation that is both the most faithful and the most entertaining to date, Ruden reveals to modern readers the vivid, farcical ingenuity of Apuleius's style.

In this new translation of the Homeric Hymns , Sarah Ruden employs a melodious and flexible non-rhyming line of eleven syllables, offering a close approximation of Greek hexameter verse in natural English rhythms. The result is a Homeric Hymns marked by its accuracy, simplicity, and economy of movement. Sheila Murnaghan's Introduction situates the Hymns within the mythological and performative traditions that gave rise to them. Focusing on the longer Hymns , she perceptively illuminates these oddly charming and sometimes grave accounts of defining episodes in the evolution of the cosmos. Notes and a Glossary of Names are included.

This new Satyricon features not only a lively, new, annotated translation of the text, but fresh and accessible commentaries that discuss Petronius' masterpiece in terms of such topics as the identity of the author, the transmission of his manuscript, literary influences on the Satyricon , and the distinctive literary form of this workaas well as such features of Roman life as oratory, sexual practices, households, dinner parties, religion, and philosophy. It offers, in short, a remarkably informative and engaging account of major aspects of Imperial Roman culture as seen through the prism of our first extant novel.

In this new translation of the Homeric Hymns , Sarah Ruden employs a melodious and flexible non-rhyming line of eleven syllables, offering a close approximation of Greek hexameter verse in natural English rhythms. The result is a Homeric Hymns marked by its accuracy, simplicity, and economy of movement. Sheila Murnaghan's Introduction situates the Hymns within the mythological and performative traditions that gave rise to them. Focusing on the longer Hymns , she perceptively illuminates these oddly charming and sometimes grave accounts of defining episodes in the evolution of the cosmos. Notes and a Glossary of Names are included.