A companion to the translation of classical epic

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[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]

A Companion to the Translation of Classical Epic, which seeks to build upon the exciting developments made in classical reception and translation studies during the past two decades, presents readers with an extensive account of issues related to the translation and reception of Greek and Latin epic poetry. The volume contains twenty-eight chapters organized into four parts and preceded by a general introduction. As the introduction makes clear, the editors do not intend this Companion to be either comprehensive compendium of epic translation history or a handbook on translation or reception theory; rather, they hope it will serve as a generative resource which, much like the classical epic tradition itself, will inspire further creative engagement with this (and other) material. As they note: “It has been our hope that the student or colleague consulting this work will treat it far more as an invitation than a bible or handbook” (3). The volume’s focus on the epic tradition is justified by the fact that epic has maintained its centrality in the history of both translation and reception, beginning with the embodiment of both in the Odusseia of Livius Andronicus (c. mid-3^rd century BCE).

In addition to addressing the overall organization of the Companion, this introduction also declares an essential premise of the volume, namely, that translation should be treated as a “cluster concept” encompassing a spectrum of practices from literal, verbum ex verbo translation to transmediations such as cinematic adaptation.[1] Such appreciation for the dynamism and flexibility of translation qua process is, in my opinion, part of what makes this volume such a valuable addition to the discourse on translation, both ancient and modern, as well as classical reception.

Part I (“Disciplinary Openings”) comprises four chapters, including a brief section introduction by editor Alexandra Lianeri. The essays in this theoretical section accentuate the conceptual connection between the study of classical epic and the transhistorical dynamics of translation. Susan Bassnett begins by addressing how translation (or, as she prefers, “rewriting”; 34) remains central to the survival and significance of ancient Greek and Roman epics in a world which is becoming increasingly hostile to humanistic studies. Two of Bassnett’s points stand out as particularly noteworthy: (1) all translations are partial, not least those which rewrite, in many cases, ancient material that is itself fragmentary, and (2) there is considerable interest in antiquity outside the academy which should be neither underestimated nor discouraged by those within it. Lorna Hardwick’s contribution argues that translations of classical epic work multidimensionally, offering subaltern communities material by/against which they can “write back” as well as material through which they can “write forward”—reclaiming these texts by putting to them new interpretations for new contexts.[2] Lianeri concludes this section with a sophisticated chapter on the “translated presence” of Greek and Roman epic that investigates the dynamics of reception beyond the text. As a case in point, she explores how the translation of Homer’s name and persona in the Middle Ages acted as a force of “imaginative power” (63) despite the fact that (or because) direct contact with his poetry was unavailable.

Seventeen chapters constitute Part II (“Explorations in Reception”), which takes up two-thirds of the entire Companion. Apart from the opening chapter, a section introduction by editor Richard Armstrong, the remaining sixteen chapters in this unit are subdivided into five thematic groups: Philology, Textuality, and Transformission [sic] (Chapters 7-10), Agency (Chapters 11-13), Edges and Communities (Chapters 14-17), Medium and Performance (Chapters 18-19), and Transvaluations and Transgressions (Chapters 20-22).[3] This categorization is otherwise not reflected in the presentation of the volume, nor is it found in its table of contents. As a result, these subdivisions do not seem particularly useful for navigation of this section nor particularly essential to the reader in appreciating its contents.

Siobhán McElduff contextualizes concepts and practices of translation in ancient Greece, Rome, and (to a certain extent) Egypt. This chapter includes insightful morsels about translation’s protean essence in an ancient context; for example, despite the fact that creative translation was more widely valued in general, for school translation exercises, students were expected to produce painfully “literal” renditions of the source text (90). In the following chapter, Veronica Ricotta and Giulio Vaccaro explore the central role played by vernacularizing translations (volgarizzamenti) in the complex literary ecosystem that emerges out of Medieval Italy. Next, Susanna Braund treats the translation of meter, by considering how French and English translators of the Aeneid attempted to negotiate the cultural and generic associations which meter carries.[4]  She includes a non-exhaustive appendix that lists meters used in translations of the Aeneid from 1430-2007. Armstrong concludes this first subsection by grappling directly with the matter of “equivalence” in translation. Drawing attention to the material and commercial realities of (epic) translation, he argues for a shift toward “localization” theory as more productive for the study of translations since it looks beyond the immediate concerns of language and accounts for external factors that contribute to the production of translations.[5] As an example, he compares how various English translators attempt to handle Achilles’ famous insult to Agamemnon at Il. 1.225 the force of which is difficult to convey in English without localizing to new historical and cultural contexts.

The next subgroup of essays opens with a chapter by Francesca D’Alessandro Behr, who returns to the volgarizzamenti of classical epic in Italy to illustrate the ubiquitous role played by women in the dedication, production, function, consumption, and distribution of these texts.[6] Julie Candler Hayes examines the literary critical significance of Anne Dacier’s prose versions of the Iliad and Odyssey—texts which helped to reignite a fiery battle over aesthetic values and translation praxis in 18^th century French literary circles. The section ends with Fiona Cox’s exploration of the challenging and timely translation activity of Marie Cosnay, a French school teacher, writer, and activist whose Les Métamorphoses (2017) foregrounds the entanglements of past and present which emerge both from Ovid’s text and from translation at large.

Michael Cronin’s essay argues that the emergence of an Irish translation culture is shaped by two key elements: an internal saga tradition and an external Christian educational program that introduced Ireland to Greek and Roman epic. The former provided Irish translators with familiar tools and tropes for engaging with unfamiliar material, while the latter facilitated the development of a learned culture and new literary forms. This is followed by Benjamin Haller’s essay investigating the ways in which a critical spirit of “benevolent literary colonialism” (199) is embedded in the textual and paratextual material of George Sandys’ 1632 translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I found this to be one of the most engaging essays in the entire volume. Haller brilliantly demonstrates that, while Sandys diverges from many contemporary colonial thinkers in advocating for the humanity of the Powhatan people of Virginia, this divergence in fact only validates the British imperial project in the “New World.” Next, Ramiro González Delgado’s chapter treats the translation of classical epic into minority languages in Spain (Catalan, Galego, Basque, Asturian, and Aragonese). Finally, Leonardo Antunes looks at Lusophone translations of classical epic and argues that, in Brazil, such translations were seen as a key element in a project of enriching national culture.

The next two essays, one by Thomas Jenkins and the other by Benjamin Stevens, examine the translation of classical epic into other media. Not surprisingly, both Jenkins and Stevens emphasize the visual (opsis and ekphrasis respectively) in their discussion of epic’s transmediation onto stage and screen. Stevens’ chapter strikes me as particularly timely, given that the Odyssey was recently translated into film with Uberto Pasolini’s The Return (Dec. 2024) and is set to be translated to film again with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (July 2026).

Annmarie Drury’s essay demonstrates how the translation and reception of classical epic became a tool with which Victorian authors could either affirm or question the project of imperialism. Next, George Kazantzidis discusses the early 20^th century translation of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura by Konstantinos Theotokis. Kazantzidis outlines how the Epicurean materialism of the Latin poem appealed to Theotokis’ political sensibilities, and he acknowledges that Theotokis used Lucretius’ Latin epic as a means of vindicating the literary and philosophical potential of Demotic Greek (just as the DRN originally did for the Latin language).[7] Alexander Beecroft brings Part II to a close by addressing the asymmetrical reception of classical epic from a global perspective. Direct translation of classical epic into languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Persian is a relatively recent phenomenon; however, the classical tradition has long been received into these languages and their literatures in more “indirect” ways (e.g. summaries, retellings, parodies, etc.).[8] Beecroft’s essay thus challenges two key assumptions, arguing that (1) a “source text” is never simply a single, clearly defined, and immutable text and (2) that the dynamics of reception are not necessarily of the same kind in all geographical, cultural, and historical contexts.

Part III (“Dialogues with Translators”) represents an effort on the part of the editors to push back against the invisibility of the translator.[9] The section includes five discussions with contemporary translators of classical epic. Stanley Lombardo reflects on how his childhood love of and “deep immersion in verse” (330)—as well as his later discovery of Zen Buddhism—have shaped his approach to translation. In the following interview, Emily Wilson speaks on (and somewhat against) her acclaim as a “female translator” of Homeric epic. She highlights the reductive (though well-intentioned) tendency to focus on gender only when dealing with female translators—a tendency which even this volume exhibits. The three chapters on gender and agency (Chapters 11-13) focus on women, and questions regarding gender are not directed to any of the male translators interviewed in this section save Herbert Jordan, who ultimately disavows responsibility as a translator to “promote a gender agenda” (364). Susanna Braund once again speaks to the role of the personal in translation; it was her love for Lucan’s “spiky Latinity” (357) that inspired her to translate the Pharsalia. The dialogue with Herbert Jordan, the only interview in the group to record the perspective of a non-academic translator, offers a precious glimpse into the real value of the classical tradition among those who do not belong to its innermost circles. The final dialogue, with Theodore Papanghelis, focuses on the intricacies of translating Latin epic into Modern Greek and thus neatly complements Chapter 21 on Konstantinos Theotokis’ efforts to highlight the literariness of Demotic Greek via translation of Lucretius.

Part IV (“Future Prospects”) contains only one essay, an envoi by Alexandra Lianeri which considers how (and even if) classical reception can engage with the “global turn” in historical and literary research. This is perhaps the densest chapter in the entire volume, but certainly one of the most prescient and rewarding. Lianeri underscores the value of classics in its “(de)stabilizing force” for the present (376) and encourages readers to look for new ways to conceptualize the “paradoxical modes and mediations through which epic legacies cross and simultaneously redefine borders” (379).

Grievances with this volume are few. One wishes, for example, that Part III included dialogues with more non-English and non-academic translators of classical epic. For example, contributor Leonardo Antunes recently published a Brazilian-Portuguese translation of the Odyssey (Odisseia; Mnema, 2025). Perhaps the most egregious fault with this Companion, however, is the surprising number of typos it contains: “faith old dog Argos” rather than “faithful” (13), “MacElduff” instead of McElduff (4 and 16), “though didst inherit” not “thou” (63), and “the vupper part of her body” rather than “vpper” (203), among others.

All in all, in its endeavor to be a generative resource which provokes further research into classical reception and translation, A Companion to the Translation of Classical Epic is quite successful. This volume is a solid contribution to the field which ought to be read by anyone interested in translation, classical epic, or classical reception.

Authors and Titles

1. General Introduction, Richard H. Armstrong

Part I – Disciplinary Openings

2. Introduction to Part I: Conceptual Openings In and Through Epic Translation Histories, Alexandra Lianeri
3. Defying the Odds: How Classical Epics Continue to Survive in the Modern World, Susan Bassnett
4. Between Translation and Reception: Reading and Writing Forward and Backward in Translations of Epic, Lorna Hardwick
5. Entangling Historical Time In and Through the Epics’ Translated Presence, Alexandra Lianeri

Part II – Explorations in Reception

6. Introduction to Part II, Richard H. Armstrong

A. Philology, Textuality, and Transformission

7. What Is Translation in the Ancient World?, Siobhán McElduff
8. Reading the Aeneid in the Italian Middle Ages: Vernacularizations and Abridgements, Veronica Ricotta and Giulio Vaccaro
9. The Ideological Significance of Choice of Meter in Translations of the Aeneid, Susanna Braund
10. The Fighting Words Business: Thoughts on Equivalence, Localization, and Epic in English Translation, Richard H. Armstrong

B. Agency

11. Women and the Translation of Classical Texts in the Italian Renaissance: Between Humanism and Divulgation, Academies, and the Printing Press, Francesca D’Alessandro Behr
12. Anne Dacier’s Homer: Epic Force, Julie Candler Hayes
13. Marie Cosnay – Les Métamorphoses, Fiona Cox

C. Edges and Communities

14. Translating on the Edge: Irish- Language Translations of Greek and Roman Epic, Michael Cronin
15. “Intreat them Gently, Trayne them to that Ayre”; George Sandys‘s Savage Verses and Civilized Commentary at Jamestown, Benjamin Haller
16. The Translation of Greek and Latin Epic into the Other Languages of Spain, Ramiro González Delgado
17. From Scheria: An Emerging Tradition of Portuguese Translations of the Odyssey, Leonardo Antunes

D. Medium and Performance

18. An Epic Leap: Translating The Iliad to the Stage in the Twenty- First Century, Thomas E. Jenkins
19. Film Translations of Greek and Roman Epic, Benjamin E. Stevens

E. Transvaluations and Transgressions

20. Epic Translation and Self- Scrutiny in Imperial Britain, Annmarie Drury
21. Lucretius in Modern Greek Costume: Language and Ideology in Konstantinos Theotokis‘ Περί Φύσεως, George Kazantzidis
22. Epic, Translation, and World Literature, Alexander Beecroft

Part III – Dialogues with Translators

23. Introduction to Part III: Dialogues with Translators: A Voice Too Many, Alexandra Lianeri
24. Stanley Lombardo, Interviewed byRichard H. Armstrong 
25. Emily Wilson, Interviewed by Fiona Cox
26. Dialogue with Susanna Braund
27. Dialogue with Herbert Jordan
28. Dialogue with Theodore Papanghelis

Part IV – Future Prospects

29. Global Sideways of Epic Translation and Critical Cosmopolitanism, Alexandra Lianeri

Notes

[1] For thinking of translation in this way, see M. Tymoczko “Why Literary Translation is a Good Model for Translation Theory and Practice” in J. Boase-Beier, A Fawcett, and P. Wilson (eds.), Literary Translation: Redrawing the Boundaries (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014; 11-31).

[2] The notion of “writing back,” a concept central to postcolonial literary theory, was first elaborated in B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths, and H. Tiffin (eds.), The Empire Writes Back (Taylor & Francis, 1989/2003). See also M. Bettini, Vertere (Einaudi, 2012, vi-xvii).

[3] “Transformission,” which is not clearly defined or explicitly discussed by any of the contributors to this volume, is a term coined by R. McLeod, “Information on Information” (Text 5, 1991) in order to describe the various linguistic, organizational, and visual transformations a text experiences as it undergoes printing, re-printing, and translation.

[4] How to translate meter is a perennial and even contentious issue for poet-translators, as evidenced by Ennius’ Annales (frags. 1 & 206-07); see N. Goldschmidt, Shaggy Crowns: Ennius’ Annales and Virgil’s Aeneid (Oxford, 2013; 40ff.).

[5] On localization and translation theory, see A. Pym, Moving Text (Benjamins, 2004).

[6] As a comparandum, see M. P. Hannay (ed.), Silent But for the Word (Kent State, 1985) on translation’s force as an instrument of expression for women in Tudor England.

[7] See T. Fögen, Patrii sermonis egestas (de Gruyter, 2000).

[8] Since 2019, the Malta Classics Association has compiled a rather useful list of translations of the Iliad with publication dates and links to digital versions if available (https://classicsmalta.org/iliad-translations/); as far as I am ware, no similar lists exist for any other Greek or Latin epic text.

[9] See L. Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility (Routledge, 1995/2018).