In the 1990s, Robert Fagles produced the most celebrated poetic translations of Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey. These highly readable translations tell the stories of the Greek victory at Troy and Odysseus's ten-year voyage home. In European literature, these poems started it all.

The Aeneid by Virgil, first century A.D., is Rome's answer to Homer's epics. A cross between political propaganda and high literature, Virgil's poem tells the story of an escaped Trojan prince and his adventures while searching for a new homeland. The Aeneid is available in multiple prose and poetic translations including editions by John Dryden (1680) and Allen Mandelbaum (1972).

Dante Alighieri's three-part Medieval masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, ranks as one of the most widely read and influential epic poems ever written. Dante has Virgil guide the main character through Hell and Purgatory, while Beatrice (his childhood...