Little known in Spanish language, John Addington Symonds is a poet , essayist , critic, translator , travel reporter and generally , but not a very typical English homme de lettres extraordinary nineteenth century. His homosexuality closed the doors of Oxford but not in continental Europe where he took refuge , which allowed him to become a deep student of , among other things, the Renaissance in Italy who wrote a monumental study.

The two trials comprising this volume are part of Studies of the Greek Poets (1873 ) , a book that , as its name implies , consists of a series of philosophical and literary analysis of works and authors of Greek classical antiquity, from Sappho to Aristophanes.