Faced with Greek and Roman texts which often stray into the downright bawdy, the translators of the Loeb Classical Library have worked hard over the past century to spare the blushes of the more sensitive reader.
Until now that is. In their new publications, the translators are being allowed to cast aside their euphemisms and talk dirty. The colourful profanities of notoriously licentious authors such as Catullus and Aristophanes are being rendered with no-nonsense accuracy, a move welcomed by many classicists.
In Aristophanes's play Women in Thesmophoria, for instance, two Greeks are discussing the poet Agathon, known for his homosexual love affairs. The first Greek says he knows the poet well, but insists that the other is more intimate with him. "You've never seen him?" "Absolutely not, as far as I know," says the second. The previous Loeb translation then has the first man suggesting: "I fear there's much you don't remember, sir." The new translation, out in the autumn, is rather less coy: "Well, you must have fucked him."
Similarly, a new version of Aristophanes's The Acharnians reintroduces into the main text the exclamation "What tits! How firm, like quinces", from a discreet footnote.
In an earlier translation of Catullus, a line was translated: "Tis you I fear, you and your passions, so fatal to the young, both good and bad alike." The new translation is more blunt: "Tis you I fear, you and your penis, so ready to molest good boys and bad alike."
Some passages considered inappropriate were previously simply left out, such as the pungent image in Catullus of "Libo's soft and subtle farting", and the section, in a work by the physician and alchemist Theophrastus, on plants said to cause abortions.
The Loeb Classical Library was founded in 1910 by James Loeb, the son of a New York banker who studied classics at Harvard. His aim, according to an early preface, was to "place these treasures within all who care for the finer things of life".
Loeb called on translators to remove or edit passages which might offend.
A Greek word thought to be too close to the mark tended to be passed over in the main text and translated in a footnote into Latin. A Latin word would be translated into modern Italian.
The Loeb publications are respected aids to classics students, and the use of the sillier euphemisms has become a standing joke among scholars.
When production and distribution was taken over by Harvard University Press in 1989, editors began commissioning new, more accurate and less cautious translations.
Peg Fulton, administrative editor of the Loeb Classical Library, said: "Some of the texts were badly in need of revision. Take Aristophanes, he's raucous and comic but was given a translation that made him sound like he came from the Victorian age. It has a certain charm but it's just not Aristophanes."
