I feel i'm forced into it. It's all over footnotes for Divine Comedy, and often in Shakespeare...

I feel i'm forced into it. It's all over footnotes for Divine Comedy, and often in Shakespeare. Any ideas on translation to go with?

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The Arthur Golding. (You) won't regret it.

I've just read the start of it, but Rolfe Humphries' is pretty good.

Now I'm curious about Golding

no, no no. That's for Shakespeare. Get a truer one first.

How is Horace Gregory?
Was about to start that one.

Humphries

The Golden Age was first, a time that cherished
Of its own will, justice and right; no law,
No punishment, was called for; fearfulness
Was quite unknown, and the bronze tablets held
No legal threatening; no suppliant throng
Studied a judge’s face; there were no judges,
There did not need to be. Trees had not yet
Been cut and hollowed, to visit other shores.
Men were content at home, and had no towns
With moats and walls around them; and no trumpets
Blared out alarums; things like swords and helmets
Had not been heard of. No one needed soldiers.
People were unaggressive, and unanxious;
The years went by in peace. And Earth, untroubled,
Unharried by hoe or plowshare, brought forth all
That men had need for, and those men were happy,
Gathering berries from the mountainsides,
Cherries, or blackcaps, and the edible acorns.
Spring was forever, with a west wind blowing
Softly across the flowers no man had planted,
And Earth, unplowed, brought forth rich grain; the field,
Unfallowed, whitened with wheat, and there were rivers
Of milk, and rivers of honey, and golden nectar
Dripped from the dark-green oak-trees.

Golding

Then sprang up first the golden age, which of itself maintained
The truth and right of everything unforced and unconstrained.
There was no fear of punishment, there was no threatening law
In brazen tables nailed up, to keep the folk in awe.
There was no man would crouch or creep to judge with cap in hand,
They lived safe without a judge, in every realm and land.
The lofty pinetree was not hewn from mountains where it stood,
In seeking strange and foreign lands, to rove upon the food.
Men knew none other countries yet than where themselves did keep;
There was no town enclosed yet, with walls and ditches deep.
No horn nor trumpet was in use, no sword nor helmet worn;
The world was such that soldiers' help might easily be forborn.
The fertile earth as yet was free, untouched of spade or plow,
And yet it yielded of itself of every things enow.
And men themselves contented well with plain and simple food
That on the earth of nature's gift without their travail stood,
Did live by raspes, hips, and haws, by cornels, plums, and cherries,
By sloes and apples, nuts and pears, and loathsome bramble berries,
And by the acorns dropped on ground from Jove's broad tree in field.
The springtime lasted all the year, and Zephyr with his mild
And gentle blast did cherish things that grew of own accord;
The ground untilled all kinds of fruits did plenteously afford.
No muck nor tillage was bestowed on lean and barren land,
To make the corn of better head and ranker for to spread.
Then streams ran milk, then streams ran wine, and yellow honey flowed
From each green tree whereon the rays of fiery Phoebus glowed.

It doesn't matter all that much if you don't know Latin.
I know that Ezra Pound memed this book hard, but I wouldn't go with it. Golding's translation is inaccurate and wordy, and it's written in fourteeners, an outdated meter that simply doesn't scan well to the modern ear.

To add to this, as a Calvinist in 16th century England, Golding also heavily moralized Ovid. His translations change some important parts to make it fit a Christian worldview, and his prefaces try to convince the reader that the pagan Metamorphoses was actually a Christian moral allegory.

G O L D I N G
O
L
D
I
N
G

Then reread it in latin