Translations of the Greek and Latin classics: an exhibition of material from the Monash University Library Rare Book Collection, 25 June to 11 August 1996

The exhibition was held in the Rare Books Exhibition space, Sir Louis Matheson Library, Monash University from 25 June - 11 August, 1996.<p>This exhibition concentrates mainly on English translations from the Restoration and the eighteenth century; the period for which the Monash Rare Book Collection has significant holdings. It allows us to see the texts upon which the ideal of the English Gentleman is partly based, and it also shows us that the classics were translated into a variety of styles from the vulgar to the dignified, but always with a view to their accessibility to the people of the time.<br>As skills in the classical languages decline, most students will come to the Greek and Latin authors through translations. One can see by examining the items on display, that these translations were undertaken by some of the masters of English literature and by many competent, although now forgotten writers. The study of such works is an area of research largely ignored. If closer attention were paid to this genre, among the benefits gained would be a greater insight into the education assumed in the writers and audiences of t he seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and an increase in the ability to understand our own literature from that period.