..". eminently readable, supple, and coherent... essential... " --Choice

..". translated into English verse with great force and precision... " --History

"There is... a very real need for a new poetic version, and Mr. Widdows has carried out the difficult task most creditably.... his translation is both accurate and readable, and in our age, so much kinder to baroque art than the ages that preceded it, he should have many readers." --New York Review of Books

"On all counts this translation of the Pharsalia is a resounding success and will, one predicts, stand as the...

Animal fables are said to have originated with Aesop, a semilegendary Samian slave, but the earliest surviving record of the fables comes from the Latin poet Phaedrus, who introduced the new genre to Latin literature. This verse translation of The Fables is the first in English in more than two hundred years.

In addition to the familiar animal fables, about a quarter of the book includes such diverse material as prologues and epilogues, historical anecdotes, short stories, enlarged proverbs and sayings, comic episodes and folk wisdom, and many incidental glimpses of...