The Classic Text: Ovid

Ovid, 43 B.C. - 17 or 18 A.D.
Ovid's Fasti Translated into English Prose, by Isaac Butt. Dublin: Richard Milliken and Son, 1833.
Call Number: (SPL) PA 6522 .F2 B8x 1833
Special Collections, Golda Meir Library

This edition presents Ovid's text in an unusual prose format. In his preface to this work, Isaac Butt writes of his translation:

I have endeavoured to adhere as closely as possible to the original. "Of translations I acknowledge that to be the better, which cometh nearer to the very letter of the original verity." If this is incompatible with elegance, the latter should unquestionably be sacrificed. . . . I have only taken liberties with Ovid, when his expressions were such as I could not with propriety translate. I have made omissions wherever it seemed necessary to do so, to avoid disgusting grossness, which is bad enough even when veiled by the modest obscurity of a learned language, but in a translation is utterly inexcusable.

Much has been said with regard to the pernicious tendency, real or supposed, of certain passages in this work. I trust that I have translated nothing which is calculated to injure the morals or offend the delicacy of the reader, and more than this it is absurdly fastidious to require.