Translating Rome

Featuring translations of three classical Roman works—Apuleius’s The Golden Ass, Lucan’s Pharsalia, and Suetonius’s The Twelve Ceasars—this collection is vital to the understanding of Roman culture and history. The Golden Ass tells the story of a young man who, through his own stupidity, is turned into a donkey, thus beginning his rollicking quest to regain his human form through worship of the gods Isis and Osiris. Pharsalia is an epic poem that chronicles the conflict between Julius Caesar and the senator Pompey in northern Greece around 48 BC. The Twelve Ceasars is a biography of the Roman rulers from Julius Caesar to Domitian, a vivid and racy account of the sex, politics, and violence that constituted their experiences as Rome’s most powerful men. Rife with the delights and excesses of Roman culture, these three works are a portal into the world of one of history’s largest empires.