THE ARGO GOT AWAY
Poems from the Greek Anthology and Other Ancient Sources, Translated and Adapted by Brett Rutherford.
The works of nineteen Greek poets spanning more than 1200 years of Hellenic culture, from ancient Greece to Egyptian Alexandria to Rome, and to the violently anti-pagan Byzantine Empire, are the basis for this new collection. Greeks being Greeks, the love poems point more toward the frat-boy street idlers of the Greek city-states, but legendary women such as Meleager’s two great loves Heliodora and Zenophila even out the gender score. In Theocritus’s “Love Spell,” a seduced-and-abandoned young girl turns to sorcery to induce her wrestler boyfriend to come back to her. On a higher plane, the goddess Athena spoils a more-than-sister friendship with a Greek queen by striking blind a young prince who stumbles upon their nudity. The arrows of Eros strike in every direction, and the Greeks, from kings and warriors down to the lowest fishermen, it seems, give in to every impulse.
In adapting and expanding poems from the legendary Greek Anthology, parts of which were suppressed for more than three centuries, poet Brett Rutherford has also chosen the best examples of epigrams and poems on other themes favored by the ancients: family calamities, shipwreck-deaths, the grief of parents losing young sons and daughters, the loneliness of exiles, the fear of what comes in the afterlife in cold Hades, real or imagined epitaphs, and barbed insults, were all compacted into poems as succinct and terse as tabloid newspaper headlines. Some of the poets are self-aware enough to know, and say, that someone will be reading them two millennia later. The things that mattered to them most sing out here, in crisp and clear versions that readers need not fear.
Poems from two very early authors, Solon the Athenian and Theognis, erupt up in this book as well, with political admonishments and a more stern view of human character. Pulled to the skies by gods, and to the ground by our baser nature, we, too, are the imperiled heirs of the Greeks. These poets have much to say to us.
Poets included in this anthology: Alcaeus of Messene, Antipater of Sidon, Antipater of Thessalonika, Apollodorus, Aulus Licinius Archias, Ascledpiades of Samos, Bion of Smyrna, Callimachus, Diogenes Laertius, Empedocles, Julianus the Egyptian, Leonidas of Tarentum, Meleager, Palladus, Paul the Silentary, Poseidippus, Rufinus, Simmias of Rhodes, Solon the Athenian, Theocritus, and Theognis of Megara.
This is the 426th publication of The Poet’s Press. Published October 2026. Paperback, 6 x 9 inches. 294 pages. $16.95. ISBN 9798160051154. CLICK HERE to order from Amazon.
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Version 1.0. Updated October 05, 2026.