7 Greeks

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Versions of these translations have appeared before: Archilochos in the magazines Poetry and Arion and as a book, Carmina Arcbilocbi (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964); Sappho as a book, Sappho: Songs and Fragments (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1965); Alkman in Arion (Winter 1969). Lukas Foss and Richard Swift have separately set some of the Archilochos fragments to music, and Swift has made a song of Alkman’s “The valleys are asleep and the mountaintops.”

Anakreon was first published in Conjunctions: 6 and as a book by the University of Alabama Parallel Editions, 1991. Herakleitos and Diogenes and The Mimes of Herondas were published by Grey Fox Press, 1979 and 1981 respectively.

First published as New Directions Paperbook 799 in 1995.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

7 Greeks / translations by Guy Davenport.

p. cm.

Contents: Archilochos – Sappho – Alkman – Anakreon

Heraldeitos – Diogenes – Herondas.

ISBN 978-0-8112-1288-5

ISBN 978-0-8112-2456-7 (e-book)

I. Greek literature – Translations into English. I. Davenport,

Guy.

PA3621.A13 1995

881’.0108 – dc20

95–4227
CIP

New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation,
80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011