Author: Larry Kooper

Epic poem, in the original. I read a prose translation. Original languages: Icelandic, Middle High German. [First entry here in German] I read the Penguin Classics edition (1965), translated by A.T. Hatto. Finally a plot again! And the scholarly apparatus by A.T. Hatto is excellent, and witty as well. Hatto also very helpfully illuminates and…

Original language: Latin. Born in present-day central Italy, he moved around a lot in Europe.  I read Aquinas’s Selected Writings published by Penguin Classics, 1998. It was edited and translated with an introduction and notes by Ralph McInerny. I found a lot of Aquinas’s early work unintelligible, too jargon-filled and not saying anything of substance. …

Original language: Judeo-Arabic. Born in present-day Spain, then under Muslim control. Also lived in today’s Morocco and Egypt.  I read The Guide of the Perplexed, abridged with introduction and commentary by Julius Guttman, translated from the Arabic by Chaim Rabin, with a new introduction by Daniel H. Frank. It was published by Hackett in 1995.…

Original language: French. [First entry here in French] Epic poem. I read the Penguin Classics edition, translated with an Introduction by Dorothy L. Sayers, first published 1957. Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957) is best known for the fifteen Lord Peter Wimsey crime novels published between 1923 and 1937. I don’t get the impression they’re read much today.…

We’ve left the ancient world behind and entered upon medieval time. Original language: Arabic. The central religious text of Islam. I read the Penguin Classics edition, translated by N.J. Dawood, first published in 1956. According to Clifton Fadiman, “it is important to note that most believers deny that any translation [of the Koran] from the…

Original language: Latin. Born in Thagaste, Numidia Cirtensis, the Roman Empire (present-day Algeria). Lived in Carthage, Rome, and Milan. Was the bishop of Hippo Regius, also in Numidia. I read Confessions and parts of City of God. Confessions was written about 400 AD.My edition of Confessions was translated with introduction and notes by Henry Chadwick,…

Original language: Greek. Plotinus was born in Egypt (at that time, part of the Roman Empire) and spent most of his life in Rome. The Enneads was compiled by his student Porphyry, probably soon after Plotinus’s death in 270 AD. I read the Penguin Classics abridged edition of The Enneads, published in 1991. The translation,…

Original language: Koine Greek. I started with the King James Version (KJV) (published 1611), because it’s the most familiar and most literary. The KJV has lots of felicitous phrasing and poetry. I added a lot to my list of phrases from the Bible. But I found it difficult to understand what the KJV was saying…

He was Emperor of the Roman Empire from 161 to his death (of natural causes) in 180. Original language: Greek. Although Latin was commonly spoken in Rome at that time, Greek was the language of intellectual culture. I read the digireads.com edition. The translation is by George Long (1800-1879) and was first published in 1862.…

Original language: Koine Greek (same language as the New Testament). Samosata was, at the time of Lucian’s birth, in the Roman province of Syria. Today it’s Samsat, in southeast Turkey. I read the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Lucian’s Selected Dialogues, translated by C.D.N. Costa, published 2005. The dialogue “Charon or the Observers” is so…