The Rape of Helen.

£2,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Foxon, R118**. Rare**. ESTC lists copies at the BL (lacking the frontispiece), Cambridge , and Bodley ; Duke , and Harvard (ESTC erroneously records two copies) in the US. A curious translation of an obscure account of the abduction of Helen of Troy. Translated by a young man and intended, “to be read, previous to Mr. Pope’s Translation of Homer’s Illiads”. A translation with critical notes of the only surviving work by Colluthus, an Egyptian poet of the fifth century AD. Colluthus’ poem recounts the story of Paris and Helen. This translation contains a biographical extract on Colluthus from Suidas, a preface from the anonymous translator, the poem itself (with editorial notes by “Michael Nicander”) and Paris’ speech to Helen as recorded by Dictys the Cretian (included as an additional leaf at the end of the work.) The poem itself is a short work of 392 lines which covers the Judgement of Paris, his subsequent abduction of Helen, and the grief-stricken reaction of Helen’s daughter Hermione - told firstly from the poet’s perspective, and then from Hermione’s. The long preface is in some ways more interesting and entertaining than the poem which follows it. The translator seeks to defend the quality both of Colluthus’ poetic style, and of his translation of that style - and in so doing, oscillates between cautious self-justification and bullish self-assertion. The translator notes “some gentlemen, to whom I lie under no small obligations” (p. v) persuaded him to publish this tr

• Year: 1731

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