Sherod Santos's new translation of classical poems answers Rosetti's mandate that the only true motive for putting poetry into a fresh language must be to endow a fresh nation...with one more possession of beauty. Arranged into four periods--Classical, Hellenic, Roman, and Early Byzantine--Greek Lyric Poetry features works by such ancient masters as Xenophanes, Callimachus, Sappho, and Simonides. For the general reader as well as for poets and lovers of poetry, the translations celebrate the marvelous slips and illuminating reconfigurations that occur when a poet in the present communes with poets in the past.