'One of the great mythic poems of Europe' The New York TimesSharing its title with the poetic name for Finland - 'the land of heroes' - Kalevala is the soaring epic poem of its people, a work rich in magic and myth which tells the story of a nation through the ages from the dawn of creation.
How the idea of the author was born in the battleground of genderWhen Sappho sang her songs, the only word that existed to describe a poet was a male oneaoidos, or ';singer-man.
This great Central Asian epic, passed down through generations and now brought to life in a new translation, carries the reader into a world of nomads, warriors and horselords'I am a steel-fanged lion, a dragon ready to pounce, a mighty poplar with golden branches rising up to the sky'The bard Sagh mbay Orozbaq uulu composed his oral telling of the great Central Asian Manas epic in the early twentieth century, although it draws on far older sources.
The Saga of the Greenlanders and Eirik the Red s Saga contain the first ever descriptions of North America, a bountiful land of grapes and vines, discovered by Vikings five centuries before Christopher Columbus.
Haunting and enigmatic, Virgil's Eclogues combined a Greek literary form with scenes from contemporary Roman life to create a work that inspired a whole European tradition of pastoral poetry.
Egil's Saga tells the story of the long and brutal life of tenth-century warrior-poet and farmer Egil Skallagrimsson: a morally ambiguous character who was at once the composer of intricately beautiful poetry, and a physical grotesque capable of staggering brutality.
The most renowned of all works of Scandinavian literature and our most extensive source of Norse mythologyWritten in Iceland a century after the close of the Viking Age, The Prose Edda tells ancient stories of the Norse creation epic and recounts the battles that follow as gods, giants, dwarves and elves struggle for survival.
'The most truthful translation ever, conveying as many nuances and whispers as are possible from the original' The TimesAfter a century of civil strife in Rome and Italy, Virgil wrote the Aeneid to honour the emperor Augustus by praising his legendary ancestor Aeneas.
Part of a new series Legends from the Ancient North, The Elder Edda is one of the classic books that influenced JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings'So the company of men led a careless life,All was well with them: until One beganTo encompass evil, an enemy from hell.
Find out what happened when King Midas was granted his wish, how Icarus flew too close to the sun, and relive the adventures of Jason and the Argonauts in these stories of love, betrayal, infatuation and punishment.
A masterful new translation of Suetonius' renowned biography of the twelve Caesars, bringing to life a portrait of the first Roman emperors in stunning detailThe ancient Roman empire was the supreme arena, where emperors had no choice but to fight, to thrill, to dazzle.
