Recent attacks on contemporary art have portrayed the erotic content of works by Robert Mapplethorpe and others as if it were a deviation from the Western artistic tradition. On the contrary, there is a rich tradition of eroticism in the arts beginning with the erotic verse of ancient Greek and Roman poets.

Games of Venus, the first comprehensive anthology in English of ancient Greek and Roman erotic verse, revives this tradition for the modern reader.

Games of Venus presents the whole spectrum of...