The Temple of Gnidus
A prose poem in seven cantos, published in 1725, The Temple of Gnidus is Montesquieu's venture into pastoral romance—an ornate, Anacreontic idyll of love set in an idealized Greece and presented as a translation from an ancient Greek manuscript. Lighter than his political works, it displays the literary elegance and sensuous imagination of the young Montesquieu.
Translation
Thomas Nugent (1777)