"This first comprehensive anthology of ancient Greek and Roman erotic verse includes Sappho, pederastic verse from Anacreon and Theognis, Virgil's homoerotic 2nd Eclogue, and other gay and lesbian poems."

--Lambda Book Report

". . . an extremely useful reference work for tomorro's students. It is handsomely produced and fills a most important gap."

--Daily Telegraph

"The introduction is scholarly; the translations are new; one can easily imagine the practicality of a text that provides an alternative to worn and stodgy collections of classical love poetry."

--The Yale Review

"Their translations display the freshness of an Ezra Pound rather than the late-Victorian murk of a Gilbert Murray. . . . Their renderings of Catullus, a challenge to generations of fledgling poets, are first rate . . . [T]his is a splendid book. Perhaps it is the best book that could have been devoted to an ethos that underlies all subsequent Occidental erotica."

--Libido: The Journal of Sex and Sensibility

Routledge Web Site, May, 2000

Games of Venus, the first comprehensive anthology of ancient Greek and Roman erotic verse, revives the tradition of eroticism in the arts for the modern reader. Unblushingly rendered with robust translations, Games of Venus presents the whole spectrum of erotic poetry from Sappho to Ovid. Recreating in English the full range of styles and tones present in the original Greek and Latin, the translators capture the gamut of amorous situations portrayed in these poems.

The volume contains a useful introduction acquainting the reader with ancient sexual mores in their social setting, and offers a helpful guide to reading ancient erotic verse. The poems are prefaced by brief sketches of each poet's life and times, poetic output and style, and are accompanied by informative notes elucidating references to myth, geography, historical events and personages, as well as unfamiliar sexual and social customs.