“Cupid Wounded,” a translation of Greek pastoral poet Theocritus’ Idyll 19, was published in a May 1729 copy of the Maryland Gazette by William Parks. Likely a copy of a translation of Latin translations of the early Greek, “Cupid Wounded” told the tale of a Cupid who walked into a garden and was stung by a bee. Cupid cries to his mother, and she tells him that he cannot be upset by a mere sting when he inflicts such great harm upon other people. See Hutton, James. “Cupid and the Bee.” PMLA 56, no. 4 (1941): 1036–58 for notes on the translation of Cupid Wounded (Idyll 19) from antiquity to the modern.

Parks’ Gazette followed the typical colonial model, meaning it was divided into two parts: the first section contained new items and essay-material that was often reprinted from foreign publications or other American newspapers and the second included advertisements – legal notices, real estate offerings, slave sales, even lists of merchandise (Schultz, Martin, and Herman R. Lantz. “Occupational Pursuits of Free Women in Early America: An Examination of Eighteenth-Century Newspapers.” Sociological Forum 3, no. 1 (1988): 92).

I borrow this terminology from Caroline Winterer’s The Culture of Classicism.

Wroth, L. C. Typothetae of Baltimore. (1922). A history of printing in Colonial Maryland, 1686-1776. [Baltimore]: Typothetae of Baltimore: 69.

Winterer, Caroline. The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004: 1.

Langer, Francesca. 2018. On the Utility of Antiquity In Early America: 35.

Ibid.

Ibid., 3.

Although the most successful urban papers had only a few thousand paying subscribers, actual readership was far greater than the rate of circulation. White literacy rates in British North America were quite high by the end of the eighteenth century, and newspapers reached even illiterate audiences. Taverns, coffeehouses, and neighborhood organizations provided communal copies to be passed around or read aloud at public gatherings (Langer, Francesca. 2018. On the Utility of Antiquity In Early America: 3).