In contrast to most anthologies of Greek poetry which consist mainly of excerpts from plays and epics, this volume is concerned only with lyric poetry. Included here are virtually all of the existing poems and the better poetic fragments of the major lyric poets.

Willis Barnstone, a poet in his own right, presents his translations in modern English thereby retaining the melodic expressiveness or ordinary speech which marks the original.

Fire, water, religions, ignorance and time have treated the lyric poetry of ancient Greece very poorly . . . . In what has survived--perhaps one percent of the important lyric poetry--we still have enough to comprise one of man's greatest achievements in the arts. For we have poems by Sappho, Pindar, Meleagros, Archilochos, Simonides, Plato, Kallimachos, Alkaios, Anakreon and many others.