Classical Beach Reads

Summer is here (in the northern hemisphere at least) and with many listeners eyeing trips to the beach, Mary and Charlotte are here with some cracking beach read suggestions. Move over Carley Fortune, Ann Patchett, and Tana French and make way for Herodotus, Lucian and Longus.

Charlotte does a hard sell for Herodotus’ Histories (all 700 pages) and Ovid’s (mercifully shorter) Heroides. Mary pushes the science-fiction humour of Lucian’s Selected Dialogues (while acknowledging it could do with a better title) and Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe. Turning to modern books set in the ancient world, Charlotte champions Colm Tóibín’s House of Names, while Mary chooses Samuel Butler’s The Authoress of the Odyssey - which, published in 1897, pushes the definition of ‘modern’ a little, but we don’t expect anything less from a Cambridge don! 

Finally, something for the kids… Mary is a fan of Caroline Lawrence’s Roman Mysteries and Charlotte feels equally enthusiastic about Percy Jackson. 

Charlotte’s recommendations:

• Herodotus, The Histories comes in many translations – Robin Waterfield for Oxford World’s Classics, and Tom Holland for Penguin Classics

• Ovid, Heroides, also has translations in the World’s Classics and Penguin Classics series

• Colm Tóibín, House of Names, Penguin, 2018

• Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, Puffin, 2013

Mary’s recommendations:

• For Lucian’s Dialogues, the handiest translation is a selection of some of the best of his satire in Oxford World’s Classics. Peter Thonemann is producing a new translation of the whole lot in the Loeb Classical Library (Harvard UP), including the original Greek text too. Two volumes have appeared so far.

• Longus, Daphnis and Chloe is also published in World’s Classics, and in Penguin Classics (with other works of ancient Greek fiction), and on its own in the Penguin Little Black Classics series.

• Samuel Butler’s Authoress of the Odyssey is available in various modern reprints (often independently published) listed in online bookstores

• Caroline Lawrence’s series of Roman Mysteries is published by Orion.

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