Written more than two thousand years ago and one of Western literature's indisputable masterpieces, the Aeneid is the Roman “answer” to Homer's epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. The latter celebrate Greek civilization through the stories of Greek victory in the Trojan War and the exploits of Odysseus. Vergil's Aeneid sings the triumph of Roman culture, transforming Troy's tragedy into a step on the path toward the founding of Rome by the descendants...

Twentieth-century Irish poet Seamus Heaney's verse translation of the Christian-pagan, classic Old English poem "Beowulf," in which a Norse hero saves Denmark's royal house from monsters; provides the Old English version on facing pages and includes brief genealogies of the work's Danish, Geat, and Swedish royal families, and an introduction by Heaney.

A complete translation of the Greek poem recounting the experience of Odysseus during his return from the Trojan war.

A novel in verse on a homosexual romance between two boys. Geryon "understood / that people need / acts of attention from one another, does it really matter which acts? / He was fourteen. / 'Sex is a way of getting to know someone, ' / Herakles had said. He was sixteen." There is a strong mixture of whimsy and sadness in Geryon's story. He is tormented as a boy by his brother, escapes to a parallel world of photography, and falls in love with Herakles--a...

Gift of Pat Roberts