Stanley Lombardo

Plato

Presents the translation of a dialogue on virtue, wisdom, and the nature of sophistic teaching. This title provides an introduction that illuminates the dialogue's perennial interest, its Athenian political background, and the particular difficulties and ironic nuances of its argument.

Protagoras

Dante Alighieri

Introduction and Notes by Anthony Oldcorn. Offers a bilingual text and features a new translation of the best known canticle of The Divine Comedy by the accomplished translator of Virgil's Aeneid and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

Inferno

Publius Vergilius Maro

Aeneid

Gary M. Beckman

Gilgamesh

Homer

Selections from both Iliad and Odyssey, made with an eye for those episodes that figure most prominently in the study of mythology.

The Essential Homer : Selections from the Iliad and the Odyssey

Virgil

Stanley Lombardo's deft abridgment of his 2005 translation of the Aeneid preserves the arc and weight of Virgil's epic by presenting major books in their entirety and abridged books in extended passages seamlessly fitted together with narrative bridges. W. R. Johnson's Introduction, a shortened version of his masterly Introduction to that translation, will be welcomed by both beginning and seasoned students of the Aeneid, and by students of Roman history, classical mythology, and Western civilization.

The Essential Aeneid

Peter Abelard

Heloise

The most comprehensive compilation of the works of Abelard and Heloise ever presented in a single volume in English, The Letters and Other Writings features an accurate and stylistically faithful new translation of both The Calamities of Peter Abelard and the remarkable letters it sparked between the ill-fated twelfth-century philosopher and his brilliant former student and lover—an exchange whose intellectual passion, formal virtuosity, and psychological drama distinguish it as one of the most extraordinary correspondences in European history. Thanks to this edition, Latin-less readers will be better placed than ever to see why this undisputed milestone in the intellectual life of medieval France is also a masterpiece of Western literature. In addition to the The Calamities and the letters--the first complete English translation of all seven in more than eighty years--this volume includes an Introduction, a map, and a chronology, Abelard's Confession of Faith, letters between Heloise and Peter the Venerable, the Introduction to The Questions of Heloise, and selected songs and poems by Abelard, among them a previously untranslated shaped poem, Open Wide Your Eyes. Extracts of lost letters sometimes ascribed to Abelard and Heloise are given in appendixes.

Abelard and Heloise: The Letters and Other Writings

While preserving the basic narrative of the Iliad, this selection also highlights the epic's high poetic moments and essential mythological content, and will prove especially useful in surveys of world literature.

The Essential Iliad

Lao-Tzu

Laozi

Stephen Addiss

Simply and poetically translates the ancient Chinese text that presents a philosophy of life, leaving readers to interpret for themselves what the true meaning is.

Tao Te Ching

Ovid

W. R. Johnson

The Essential Metamorphoses, Stanley Lombardo's abridgment of his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, preserves the epic frame of the poem as a whole while offering the best-known tales in a rendering remarkable for its clarity, wit, and vigor. While making no pretense of offering an experience comparable to that of reading the whole of Ovid’s self-styled history from the world's first origins down to my own time, this practical and judicious selection of myths at the heart of Roman mythology and literature yet manages to relate many of the most fascinating episodes in that world-historical march toward the Age of Augustus--and is accompanied by an Introduction that deftly sets them in their cosmological, theological, and Augustan contexts.

The Essential Metamorphoses

"Gripping... Lombardo's achievement is all the more striking when you consider the difficulties of his task... (He) manages to be respectful of Homer's dire spirit while providing on nearly every page some wonderfully fresh refashioning of his Greek. The result is a vivid and disarmingly hardbitten reworking of a great classic." — Daniel Mendelsohn, The New York Times Book Review

Iliad

The year is 1991, and the ancient evil of the Nephilim, long dormant, has awakened. Ashmodiel, centuries-old Patriarch of the Children of Ramiel, has decreed that the time has come to summon their ancestor, the fallen Watcher Ramiel, from the desert realm of Dudaëra, to which he has been exiled. For nurse Liz Grisanti, the terror begins when the Ramielites announce they will kidnap and sacrifice six blond, blue-eyed six-year-old children at a series of rituals between Halloween and the Winter Solstice -- and Liz's younger daughter, Bella, exactly fits the description of the cult's chosen victims. Called in as the Massachusetts State Criminal Investigation Division's specialist on cults, Detective Lieutenant Patrick Michael Pentangeli consults his mentor, occult master Trevor Faulkner, whose contacts in the field include rabbis and priests, as well as medievalist Sebastian Barber - who happens to be dating Liz Grizanti. As a series of angelic children are kidnapped and sacrificed and the days progress inexorably toward the Winter Solstice, the tightly knit circle of friends endeavors to protect Bella from falling victim to the Banim Ramiel - and, ultimately, to stop the final sacrifice before Ramiel can be summoned for from his imprisonment and free the legions of Nephilim to create a Hell on earth.

The Return of the Nephilim

A Rumor of Innocents

Like his groundbreaking Inferno (Hackett, 2009) and Purgatorio (Hackett, 2016), Stanley Lombardo's Paradiso features a close yet dynamic verse translation, innovative verse paragraphing for reader-friendliness, and a facing-page Italian text. It also offers an extraordinarily helpful set of notes and headnotes as well as Introduction—all designed for first-time readers of the canticle—by Alison Cornish.

Paradiso

This generous abridgement of Stanley Lombardo's translation of the "Odyssey" offers more than half of the epic, including all of its best-known episodes and finest poetry, while providing concise summaries for omitted books and passages. Sheila Murnaghan's Introduction, a shortened version of her essay for the unabridged edition, is ideal for readers new to this remarkable tale of the homecoming of Odysseus.

The Essential Odyssey

A translation of the epic poem retells the story of Odysseus's ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War.

Odyssey

While preserving the basic narrative of the Iliad, this bare-bones abridgment highlights the epic's high poetic moments and essential mythological content, and will prove especially useful in surveys of world literature, and in Western civilization surveys.

Long a master of the crafts of Homeric translation and of rhapsodic performance, Stanley Lombardo now turns to the quintessential epic of Roman antiquity, a work with deep roots in the Homeric tradition. With characteristic virtuosity, he delivers a rendering of the Aeneid as compelling as his groundbreaking translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey, yet one that—like the Aeneid itself—conveys a unique epic sensibility and a haunting artistry all its own. W. R. Johnson's Introduction makes an ideal companion to the translation, offering brilliant insight into the legend of Aeneas; the contrasting roles of the gods, fate, and fortune in Homeric versus Virgilian epic; the character of Aeneas as both wanderer and warrior; Aeneas' relationship to both his enemy Turnus and his lover Dido; the theme of doomed youths in the epic; and Virgil's relationship to the brutal history of Rome that he memorializes in his poem. A map, a Glossary of Names, a Translator's Preface, and Suggestions for Further Reading are also included.

Judith Roitman

Introduction by Paula Arai. This is the first collection to offer selections from the foundational texts of the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Zen traditions in a single volume. Through representative selections from their poetry, letters, sermons, and visual arts, the most important Zen Masters provide students with an engaging, cohesive introduction to the first 1200 years of this rich -- and often misunderstood -- tradition. A general introduction and notes provide historical, biographical, and cultural context; a note on translation, and a glossary of terms are also included.

Stanley Lombardo

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