BOOKS

Of the several novels that have survived from Greek and Roman times, most have been blessed with many translations, e.g. The Satyricon, The Golden Ass, Daphnis and Chloe. But one of them, whose author is deemed by many experts in classical literature to be foremost in style and professional craftsmanship, is sadly deficient in English translations, and in fact there is no complete translation. The fact that it has substantial sexual content (The Columbia Encyclopedia refers to it preposterously as "pornographic") might have been deemed a satisfactory explanation of this deficiency until recent times. But with the works of Jay Little, and the most famous of D. H. Lawrence's works, available to the public, there is no longer any valid explanation. Let us hope there will soon be a complete English translation, perhaps in a "quality" paperback, of this remarkable novel, Leucippe and Clitophon.

The only readily available translation in print today is found in the Loeb Library (#45) and dates from a 1917 translation by an especially prudish Cambridge University don (Sir Stephen Gaselee). He not only translates into Latin instead of English the enthusiastic Greek original on the delights of homosexual love, but shows his non-discrimination in doing the same for the preceding passage on the delights of sex with

women.

Another translation, available in some used-book stores and public libraries, is part of the 19th Century

one

"Bohn Library." In this case, it is one of three Greek novels found in "The Greek Romances of Heliodorus, Longus and Achilles Tatius" by Rev. Rowland Smith (London, 1955; reprinted several times by John Bell). Surprisingly enough, the clergyman is less prudish than the professor: he translates in full the passage on the delights of heterosexual passion, and gives a summary paragraph to the homosexual one. Like Prof. Gaselee, he gives a Latin translation (in a footnote) supposedly of the complete famous passage, but it is much sloppier than the scrupulously accurate Latin translation of the Professor.

One rather rare translation does have the famous passage more or less complete. It is really a translation from a French translation and quite likely is quite faithful to the somewhat delicate French version. This is in a 2-volume edition that forms, jointly, volume 7 of a series called "Antique Gems from the Greek and Latin," published by Barrie, Philadelphia, 1902 (based on French translation by A. Pons, 1885). This is a de luxe, 1000-copy "subscribers only" edition, the excessive two volumes arising from the preposterous affectation of text per page occupying only a two by three inch inset in the center of the page, Greek on the left and English on the right. In a somewhat similar "semi-rare" category is a 250-copy de luxe, subscribers edition for the Athenian Society of London in 1897, but this