Illustrated [Quora Media] (100 Greatest Novels of All Time Book 55)

I have been a student of the classics since I was young. Naturally, I had been exposed to the Aeneid early on in the fashion that most students are: with the revered Robert Fitzgerald translation. Through the years many translations, both good and bad, have been published: Humphries, Lombardo (probably one of the best), and Mandelbaum to name a few of the most popular.

My adoration of the Ruden translation started in the most modest way. I was browsing through volumes in a used book store and came across the Yale University Press publication of the Aeneid, a translation that I had not heard of, from a translator I knew nothing about. I hopped on the internet while in the store and did some research, and came up with almost unanimously positive reviews, so I purchased it after reading a few, impressive passages.

Currently, all the rage is over the Penguin translation by Robert Fagles. To my understanding, his is the translation most widely taught in schools next to Fitzgerald. I am a fan of Fagles. His storytelling is grand and vivid. However, anyone who is versed in Classical Latin and has read the Aeneid in its original language can tell you that Fagles takes far too many liberties, embellishing Vergil's epic very subjectively (and not sparingly). This is problem to those who want a faithful reading of Vergil. Fagle's is far from a faithful translation of Vergil's poetry. Latin is a very compact, concise, and flowing language, with many subtle nuances. It is not grandiose and cumbersome like Fagles.

But Sarah Ruden has done something uncanny here. It is a popular saying that "one cannot translate poetry," which is true. It is inevitable that when translating poetry, much of the vigor and hidden meanings are lost. But Ruden's is the closest to the original one can get in modern English idiom. She avoids the flowery embellishments that Fagles is guilty of, preserves the conciseness of Vergil's Latin, without sacrificing the elegance of her or Vergil's pens (Ruden is, after all, an accomplished poet from what I understand). And, even more laudable, is the fact the Ruden's is practically a line-by-line translation, using the exact same number of lines used by Vergil. She also has a talent for preserving Vergil's meter whenever possible. The Aeneid, to some theorists, was made to be orated and heard. And Ruden's is a translation that is a pleasure hear as well as read.

Having read and thoroughly enjoyed Ruden's Aeneid, I like to say that Ruden is to Fagles, as Chickering is to Heaney. Ruden's translation might not be as famous as Fagles', but it is more scholarly, more faithful, and elegant in a different, yet more authentic way (just as Chickering's Beowulf may never achieve the status of Heaney's, yet Chickering preserves the spirit of the original in a more convincing way.

Get Ruden's Aeneid! Whether you are a novice to Vergil's Aeneid, a casual reader (it is a relatively quick read), or a full-on Latinist/Classicist, you will not be dissatisfied with this text.

Iliad begat Aeneid begat Commedia...Virgil links two classic works 20,000 years apart with a masterpiece of his own, wherein Aeneas goes to Rome and wreaks Trojan revenge on the successors of Attic Greece, with everyone satisfyingly getting what's coming to them. Full of images and phrases resplendent either in English or in dodgy Latin. Thus Walter Pater (in Appreciations) "I am reading over again the Aeneid, certain verses of which I repeat to myself to satiety. There are phrases there which stay in one's head, by which I find myself beset, as with those musical airs which are for ever returning, and cause you pain, you love them so much. I observe that I no longer laugh much, and am no longer depressed." Virgil should not be overlooked: he should be drilled into the heads of schoolchildren (for their own good, to cure their terrible mental stooping!) And should any educator object to or shirk this responsibility, they shall go to a place where the locals ausi mones immane nefas ausoque potiti (purpose dreadful deeds and get their way).

I recommend the modern translation by Robert Fitzgerald or for the crusty, the fin-de-siècle (1890) rendering into English prose by John Conington.

This epic follows Aeneas as, guided by Fate and piety/duty, he leads his band of Trojan refugees in search of their new homeland. Though derivative of the Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's story is more coherent, more tied to actual places/events, and more varied in phraseology and vivid description than Homer's poetry (which appears to be heavily shaped by oral tradition). Personally, I prefer Virgil's more literary style.

I have read two different Aeneid translations: Robert Fagles' and C. Day Lewis'. Of the two, I definitely preferred Fagles. Both occasionally use language that is, in my opinion, a bit too modern/colloquial, but Lewis deliberately does so in jarring fashion with some frequency (claiming that it keeps the readers' attention). I find Lewis' words/phrases like "hullo", "brick-a-brack", "boomerang", "armchair general", "lay your cards on the table", etc. to be irritations that knock me out of the flow of the poem rather than devices that are interest-catching in any positive fashion. The only thing I preferred about Lewis' translation was that his lines had a consistent number of beats (6) while Fagles' varied significantly.

This classic is a must-read, though I am still in search of a translation that best suits my personal preferences.

The Aeneid by Virgil is the story of Rome's founding, written over two thousand years ago, with the intention of being a sequel to Homer's Iliad. The story was not a creation of the author's imagination, but derived from oral folk tales that were already hundreds of years old. This is the greatest and probably the oldest of the survivor tales. It tells how a little band of refugees who fled the fall of Troy founded western civilization. Perhaps the most important thing you will come away with after reading this story is how much like us these people were. Their dreams for the future are locked in with their will to succeed and it is interesting that the story plays out like a modern day international thriller.
When I read this book I was living in a very small town. I was dismayed that so many of the teenagers, especially the boys, did not read. They hung around my house, (my nubile niece was staying with me) like young Knights hungering for some quest or other on which to spend their energies. I took to telling little bits and pieces of whatever I was reading and boys who had never read a whole book, started borrowing my books. Some of the books were returned, but the Aeneid, the Iliad and The Monkey wrench Gang were passed on to other friends and never found their way home.
That The Iliad and The Aeneid are no longer assigned reading in middle school is probably one of the reasons so few teenage boys ever learn the joy of reading. If you want to get a video game junkie to read just give him this book and suggest he skim through it and look for ancient winning strategies, he'll be hooked in no time.

There is no such thing as a "best" translation, only translations that suit one's purpose. If you want to read the Aeneid as a gripping story, Fagles's version does very well. I have just finished reading book 4, and Dido's fury, as set against the implacable higher purpose of Aeneas, has perhaps never been as vividly, even scarily, portrayed.

On the other hand, it could be argued that Fagles's verse does not convey the stately or epic quality of the Latin in the way that, for instance, Fitzgerald's does. A short comparison may suffice:

"sed nullis ille mouetur / fletibus aut uoces ullas tractabilis audit; / fata obstant placidasque uiri deus obstruit auris." (Vergil)

"But no tears move Aeneas now. / He is deaf to all appeals. He won't relent. / The Fates bar the way / and heaven blocks his gentle, human ears." (Fagles)

"But no tears moved him, no one's voice would he / Attend to tractably. The fates opposed it; / God's will blocked the man's once kindly ears." (Fitzgerald)

Fitzgerald's version is closer to the Latin (other than not using the present tense), better reflects its formal nature, and achieves a Vergilian metrical effect with the three successive beats of "God's will blocked." But Fagles's free and fluid rendition is undoubtedly more engaging to the modern reader.

Occasionally Fagles does introduce a modern idiom that is trite or jarring. For instance, when the sea-nymph speeds Aeneas's ship on its way in Book 10, she does so skillfully ("haud ignara modi") because she "knows the ropes".

The book has a useful introduction, a few notes, and a pronouncing glossary. Fagles's postscript is, however, a tedious pastiche of quotations from previous critics and could have been omitted.

Books are classics because lots of people have enjoyed reading them over the years. A translation of a classic should be enjoyable. Fagles' translation is easy to read and full of excitement. In short, it is enjoyable and makes me want to learn more about the story and the period; just what we need today.

One reviewer below gave this translation one star and in the process trashed every other English review of the Aeneid (that is, until his own "long awaited" translation arrives on the shelves). His recommendation until then is to learn Latin and then read the Aeneid in Latin. I do read Latin very slowly, but I also have to work and read other things besides the classics. So I have to rely on English translations for most of the non-English books I read, including those in Latin. Fagles' more than meets my need.

If the tradeoff is a translation that is exact to the original langauge but dull or incomprehensible, so that a reader will not finish it, versus one that cheats a bit on the meaning or structure but is readable and exciting, I think the original author is much better served by the latter. If I become so excited about a work (as I have been by, e.g. Dante's Divine Comedy) that I dig into the original, then that's good and I'll make the effort (in Dante's case to learn Italian) well enough to read it in the original. But who wins if I cannot finish the English translation?

I teach the Aeneid at a secondary school as one of the Latin courses, and I have read quite a number of English, French and other translations of the Aeneid. I noticed this book, read a few pages of it and just had to buy it and read it properly. Wow! Ruden begins in her introduction by voicing some very fair criticisms of Vergil that I never thought of making myself (such as his wrapping phrases over to the next line in a very choppy manner at times, and regarding clarity issues.) She then explains that she will make her Aeneid a fully English poem, discarding artificial Latinisms and going with tough, curt, to the point Anglo-Saxon words, and the tough, pulsating English metre (iambic pentameter.) This is just what I am looking for in a translation: one that is just as good or better an ENGLISH poem as the original was a Latin poem. I am sick and disgusted with all the critics of classical poetry ranting on and on about how "faithful" a modern translator is to the original. Forget it. You cannot be. You need not be. If anyone wants to read Vergil's Aeneid, s/he is quite welcome to learn Latin and read it. It is awesome stuff! (I'll teach you if you take my Latin class! It only takes about a year to learn to do!) If you are writing an English version, you are RETELLING the story! Retelling is the most basic and natural of all storytelling. This is what we do with our coworkers at lunch, at the dinner table at home, when with friends, and at the pub (for those of us who hang out at pubs.) This Aeneid is Ruden's Aeneid. It is spectacular! I will not make the ridiculous error of trying to say it's "better" or "worse" than any other great translation. I love Fagles' and Mandelbaum's retellings too, for instance. There are excellent prose ones as well, although I find poetry very much more entertaining to read.
I like how Ruden does not try to read some kind of hidden agenda into Vergil's work. She postulates the Aeneid as a pragmatic work extolling Rome's greatness, rife with nobility and grandeur. I completely and wholeheartedly agree. There is no way to justify the opposite (as some translators have mused) that Vergil had some kind of anti-war, anti-imperial message. This is just Hippie era poppycock. Aeneas exudes many virtues, of which some are humanity, pity and even forgiveness, clearly an indicator that Vergil is writing at the same time period in the Roman Empire which gave birth to Christianity, and not in Homer's, where pity is looked down on as weakness in the face of reality.
Ruden's poetry is eminently clear and natural. Perhaps this is because the English I speak is from the same age and same part of the world, or perhaps she is just simply a master poet who is able to be clear, yet powerful, rhythmical and musical at once. There are parts of the Aeneid I myself understand better in Latin after having read her version.
I think the result is a better Aeneid in English than the Aeneid in Latin - to be expected since she is effectively working as an editor while redacting the work into glorious, strong English metre. Her Aeneid is so pleasing a work and so readily comprehensible, that it has the potential of bringing the Aeneid properly back into the realm of popular consciousness and thereby taking again its rightful place as an equal to Homer in our Western epic tradition.

Roman society was enamoured of Greek culture -- many of the best 'Roman' things were Greek; the major gods were derivative of the Greek pantheon; philosophy, literature, science, political ideals, architecture -- all this was adopted from the Greeks. It makes sense that, at the point of their ascendancy in the world, they would long for an epic history similar to the Homeric legends; the Iliad and the Odyssey, written some 500 years after the actual events they depict, tell of the heroism of the Greeks in their battle against Troy (Ilium). The Aeneid, written by Vergil 700 years after Homer, at the commission of Augustus (himself in the process of consolidating his authority over Rome), turns the heroic victory of the much-admired Greeks on its head by postulating a survivor from Troy, Aeneas, who undergoes as journey akin to the Odyssey, even further afield.

Vergil constructs Aeneas, a very minor character in the Iliad, as the princely survivor and pilgrim from Troy, on a journey through the Mediterranean in search of a new home. According to Fitzgerald, who wrote a brief postscript to the poem, Vergil created a Homeric hero set in a Homeric age, purposefully following the Iliad and Odyssey as if they were formula, in the way that many a Hollywood director follows the formulaic pattern of past successful films. Vergil did not create the Trojan legend of Roman origins, but his poem solidified the notion in popular and scholarly sentiment.

Vergil sets the seeds for future animosity between Carthage and Rome in the Aeneid, too -- the curse of queen Dido on the descendants of Aeneas of never-ending strife played into then-recent recollections of war in the Roman mind. Books I through VI are much more studied than VII through XII, but the whole of the Aeneid is a spectacular tale.

Fitzgerald's modern and accessible translation makes the Aeneid really come to life for modern readers. It is a verse translation, not forced into word-by-word construction nor into false, flowery and stuffy structured verse that would seem formal and distant. This is a language familiar to modern readers, just as Vergil's Latin would have been readily accessible to the listeners and readers of his time.

Vergil died before he could complete the story. He wished it to be burned; fortunately, Augustus had other ideas. Still, there are incomplete lines and thoughts, and occasional conflicts in the storyline that one assumes might have been worked out in the end, had more editing time been available. Despite these, the Aeneid remains a masterpiece, and Fitzgerald's translation will be a standard bearer for some time to come.

Virgil's Aeneid is more than just an epic adventure; it's a declaration of its author's patriotic love for the Roman Empire. Likewise, Aeneas is not just a literary hero, but a symbol of Rome's eventual fortitude and Virgil's vision of the progenitor of Augustus Caesar, the first Roman emperor. Aeneas is the perfect heroic archetype: loyal to his family and his people, fierce and brutal to his enemies, and a stud with the ladies. He is, in the minds of Virgil and probably all Roman men of the day, the ideal for the Roman man.
The background of the story: The goddesses Juno, Venus, and Minerva are arguing over which of them is the most beautiful. They decide to let a young man named Paris, a prince of Troy, judge them in a sort of beauty contest. Each goddess offers Paris a bribe, but the one he accepts is Venus's, which is the promise of the love of Helen, queen of Sparta. Paris and Helen run off together to Troy, which enrages her husband Menelaus and incites the Greeks to declare war on Troy. After many years of fighting, the Greeks topple Troy and the few Trojan survivors, with Aeneas as their leader, set sail across the Mediterranean to search for a new home. It is roughly here that the Aeneid begins.
It is prophesied that the Trojans will end up in Italy in the general area of what is now Rome, where Aeneas's descendants far into the future will build a Roman state of majesty and prosperity. However, they have to endure many hardships along the way because Juno is still holding a grudge against them over the outcome of that beauty contest. She besets them with a multitude of obstacles: They're tossed around at sea by storms, attacked by harpies, and pursued by cyclopses. (There are, of course, direct references to the Iliad and the Odyssey.) Along the way, Aeneas is courted by Dido, the queen of Carthage, but he is impelled to leave her and continue his pilgrimage. After a side trip to the underworld to visit his dead father, Aeneas and his cohorts finally arrive in Italy and make friends with the native people. However, Juno sabotages this friendship and instigates a war between the Trojans and the Italians. The remainder of the Aeneid chronicles this war with graphic descriptions of battles, ending with Aeneas's slaying of Turnus, his nemesis.
I found Fitzgerald's translation easy and enjoyable to read; the grammatical structure and choice of words are very "modern" while still maintaining the poem in its proper context. Fitzgerald himself points out that the Aeneid is not perfect; it's incomplete and has some continuity errors. But it is still a fascinating window on the hearts and minds of a civilization of antiquity.

Virgil's epic tale of Rome's origins are wonderfully recited in Robert Fitzgerald's faithful translation. A great tale on fate, fortune, and courage by one of the greatest Latin writers.

The story follows the travels of the Trojan prince Aeneas who, along with a few other countrymen, are able to flee the sack of Troy by the Greeks. Jupiter is set on making Aeneas and his people great but not before they pass certain trials and tribulations. Prince Aeneas sails to Carthage on his way to Italy and Queen Dido falls madly in love with him. Knowing that his destiny lies elsewhere, Aeneas continues on his voyage and Queen Dido kills herself. Aeneas finally disembarks in the fields of Latium but at first encounters hostile Latin tribes under the rule of King Latinus. After some fighting, the two make a pact and merge as one people setting the stage for the future founding of Rome by Romulus.

This is a great story on par with 'The Iliad' and 'The Odyssey.' It is perhaps even more fictional than the 'Iliad' as Rome was founded more than 400 years after the Trojan War by Romulus in 753 B.C. As Romulus and Remus were the sons of Iuli and so the grandchildren of Aeneas, the latter would have been alive no later than the mid-9th Century B.C. Furthermore, Carthage wasn't founded until about the 9th Century which was 300 years after the fall of Troy. Unless Aeneas lived to a canonic age, it is very unlikely that he or the Trojans had anything to do with the founding of Rome. Such tales of Aeneas and the founding of Rome coincide more closely with the earliest Greek colonial settlements in Sicily, Italy, and southern France in the 9th Century and it is probably from there that the Romans derived this fancy tale as to their origins. The perpetuation of such tales probably had political reasons in either supporting political union with the Greek colonial city-states or an extended political/military campaign against them. In any case, Fitzgerald's background in poetry brings the story to life and makes it a pleasant reading experience: it's a great buy.

It can be difficult to write a review of one of the milestone pieces of literature of Western civilization. Love it or hate it the Aeneid maintains its position as one of the greatest epics ever composed.
The story is simple enough, Aeneas, a Trojan, and a small band of followers must set out to find a new homeland after the fall of Troy. Virgil's verse translated by Robert Fitzgerald reads like a modern day adventure novel.
The book is divided into roughly two parts: the first half of the poem tells the story of the fall of Troy complete with the greatest description of the Trojan horse story in print. This half of the poem matches the Odyssey of Homer providing a narrative of the unlucky travelers who must move on to their eventual homeland with the help of the gods and fate. Here are the stories of Dido, the funeral games, and the descent into the Underworld.
The second half of the book parallels the Iliad of Homer. This half details the landing at Latium and the war of attrition between the Latins and the Trojans. This includes the epic battle between Turnus and Aeneas.
While the poem has a tendency to become a little tedious it is a monumental piece of literature. Written as a national literary epic for the Roman empire it exemplifies the virtues of heroism, faith and family loyalty that were to be the hallmarks of the good Roman citizen. As an example Aeneas has a tendency to be too heroic and less human but the narrative drive is there all the same. At times the poem reads like a Roman propaganda piece but not too often.
I remember struggling with Virgil in a high school Latin class and wondering what the point was. But now, after twenty years and with the help of an excellent translation the story becomes an enjoyable one indeed.

What can be said about this classic masterpiece in epic poetry? Virgil clearly emanated the Homeric style of epic, and his debt to Homer is very apparent in this work. Still, it retains a style and flavor all its own. The poem tells the story of Aeneas, the Trojan hero from the Iliad who survived to found the Roman race in Italy. The first half of the poem are his adventures in reaching Italy (comparable to the Odyssey), and the second half deal with the war that results from his landing there (comparable to the Iliad).
It is said that Virgil wrote this poem at least partially in hopes of fostering the national sentiment of the Romans, of making them proud of their heritage, and of uniting them in a common ancestry. His motives are very clear--there are a number of references to the future glory of Rome, and various visions of the leaders and generals who would bring Rome her greatest glory. Interestingly, this poem was never completed, and Virgil, on his deathbed, asked that it be destroyed. It was preserved, however, by Augustus, and so we have it in its mostly finished form today.
This translation by Fitzgerald is excellent. Like his translations of Homer, Fitzgerald's Aeneid flows very smoothly, and stays true to the feel of the original. Also, there is a postscript in the back detailing both the history of the times, and various events in Virgil's life. This postscript is very helpful in understanding the world in which the poet lived.
There is also a glossary of names in the back, very useful for keeping all the people, places, and deity straight. The Everyman's binding is a great way to go at an affordable price. All in all, this version of The Aenied is very satisfying. I highly recommend it.

This is another one of the books that I had to read for Fall quarter 2000. Like the rest of that group, "The Aeneid" was just extraordinary. My teacher's smart choice of the Mandelbaum translation was good to my pocket and to my mind, since it is accessible and clear. I actually prefer parts of the Fitzgerald version (especially the unusual beginning "I sing of warfare and a man at war..."), but I read the Mandelbaum because it was easier to follow the lectures using the same book everyone else had. Mandelbaum does a great job of translating meaning and feeling from Latin to English, and from the world of Virgil 2000 years ago to our world. The Glossary helps a lot, and the Introduction is instructive and very candid: not every day a major scholar tells us he had intentionally neglected a major work of literature simply based on the biased opinion of others. After reading "The Aeneid" I am convinced that Augustus did the right thing in ignoring Virgil's wishes, even if in his treatment of Ovid he was too harsh. This version of the poem should introduce a fascinating literary work to those who have never read it (like me before Fall 2000), and hopefully interest many readers in other works of Classical Literature. The destruction of Troy, Queen Dido and her tragic fate, the clash of cultures in Italy between the invading Trojans and the native Latins, the descent into the netherworld, the gods playing with humankind, the mythical foundation of Rome, the controversial progression of Aeneas from man to ruler to symbol who sacrifices part of his humanity in order to achieve the mission that has been determined for him, all this forms part of one of the greatest epic poems of all time. "The Aeneid" is war, and men, and a poet who believed that Rome, in spite of all her faults, was a prize worth saving and preserving. Augustus thought the same of Virgil's poem.

A Masterpiece in every sense of the word, although John Dryden's translation wins out. This one was done in about 1870, and I fear sacrifices some clarity to the rhyme scheme. But it is that very rhyme scheme, so outmoded today, that literally carries you along in the reading, making it much easier. Everything is here, war, unrequited love, violence to the max, blood, gore, horrific battle scenes, slaughter unending, the human condition. Which encompasses the gods, who succumb to using mankind as chess pieces to play out their very human emotions. And how Virgil must have clearly understood the futility of war, as well as its horror - and something else - how it catches hold of man and chases away his reason. The poetry is truly soaring; many scenes are as vivid as any movie screen could make them. An example:

There is this king, who was evil and a very bad ruler, so his people manage to throw him out. In his escape he takes with him his infant daughter, Camilla. They come to a raging river, and the king quickly realizes that, although he is a very strong swimmer, he cannot possibly cross with Camilla, a babe in arms. What to do? He has with him a stout lance or spear, and lashes Camilla to this. Then, using all his considerable strength, he throws the lance across the river, where it lands, quivering, with Camilla still tied safely to it. Then he swims across, retrieves his daughter, and raises her to be Camilla, the virgin warrior, who will bring a corps of other like women to the last battle. Is this the stuff of movies or what? Don't be put off by the fact that it was written over 2000 years ago. It is exciting, absorbing stuff.

With Robert Fagles's version of 'The Aeneid' just released, I thought that would be the version I would be reading. I tried Robert Fitzgerald's version some years ago, but I gave up after the 5th or 6th "book".

After reading the numerous glowing reviews for Allen Mandelbaum's translation, I thought I would give it a shot.... plus it cost a lot less than Fagles's! I was not disappointed.

Mr. Mandelbaum's take on Virgil's epic is eminently accessible, very easy to understand (but not dumbed down at all). The glossary at the end is a huge help in identifying characters and places (as many of them go by more than one name).

This is a thrilling tale full of adventure, romance, war, friendship and loyalty. If you buy only one version, this is the one to get.

The editorial reviews shoud be heeded: this is, and remains, the best Aeneid in English. Fitzgerald's rendition is hard as a diamond and as crystal clear and brilliant, stately and spell-binding as watching a tall ship move across the bay.

For many years there was no satisfactory Virgil in modern English, and this was the first. There are now several, and many interesting, but this one should remain paramount because acquaintence with this poem is absolutely essential. It is often overlooked in world lit survey courses which go no farther than the Greeks. There is a lingering prejudice that Roman literature is inferior. That may well be generally true, but Virgil towers above all his Roman peers -- no one approaches him. He is the necessary link and pivot between the ancient understanding of man and civilization and ours; he is our ground, as Dante well recognized by honoring him as guide in the the Divine Comedy.

Love the Greeks as one must, the added dimension of heterosexual passion brought into classical literature by Virgil is breath-taking. Hopefully, you will never be the same after reading the great Aeneas-Dido affair -- to date there is really nothing like it in world literature. Oh yes, the Greeks were interested in women, even intelligent ones, especially honorouble ones, frequently devilish and playful and meddling ones. But Woman was first conveyed in all wholeness, dimensionality and grandeur by this poet -- perhaps something your teacher or mum failed to mention -- but no excuse for missing it now. Makes that business about Helen and Troy seem like bad comix . . . .

It is a shame that Vergil's Aeneid is not as well known as Homer's works today. Starting almost immediately upon its publication during the reign of Rome's first Emperor Augustus, this book, the most highly-esteemed work in the Latin language, remained at the heart of Western European self-image until the rediscovery of Homer well into the Renaissance. In the Middle Ages it was an almost holy text, describing the founding of the Holy City (Rome), and written by 'The' Secular Prophet, who in another poem purportedly prophesied the coming of Christ. Vergil was so revered through the ages that the greatest epic writer of the Middle ages, Dante, chose to not only model his own work upon Vergil's, but has Vergil as his guide through the after-life.

The plot is many-layered, telling three tales with one cleverly directed stroke. It tells of the founding of Rome, choosing to describe an episode prior to that of the embarrasing she-wolf myth; the family history and exploits of Rome's new imperial family-line, the Julians, starting with Aeneas himself and his divine mother Venus; and also the entire history of Rome up to that point, including Rome's fights against the Carthaginians, and the battles of Augustus Caesar against Cleopatra. Combined with the story-telling is philosophical wisdom from the stoics, epicureans, and platonists, which contributed to Vergil's reputation as a great polymath and wise teacher. The poetry is modelled on that of Homer and other famous Greek bards such as Apollonius who wrote the definitive tale of Jason and the Argonauts. To many Romans and Medievals, Vergil's epic represented a compendium of knowledge, artfully worked into a poetic adventure with the highest degree of skill.

Having lived through brutal civil war himself, Vergil brings a great deal of personal life experience dealing with uncertainty, violence, fear and loss, to his endeavour. While clearly uneasy with the loss of freedom the establishment of the Empire and the fall of the Republic brought, he weighs this loss against the previous civil strife and mayhem, and accepts order over chaos even though he retains feelings of nostalgia for the former ways.

Vergil's perfectionism towards his work is reflected in the stories told by his contemporaries that he only composed a few lines of the epic a day, working from a prose model he had written beforehand, and how he asked on his deathbed that the epic be burnt because it was not yet in its fully completed state. To other eyes, the few unfinished lines and very minor discrepancies were hardly of note, and the epic was proudly published by the Emperor, and quickly became the standard text of study by students of Latin, and the patriotic book and fundamental epic of the Empire.

For those of us today wishing the chance to travel to other places and times, the Aeneid whisks us off to Ancient Rome, and in some ways, in some mystical sense, makes us Romans.

Cecil Day Lewis's translation verse has a lucidity and swiftness that keeps the story moving.

C. Day Lewis was a student of Jackson Knight and translated the Aeneid in the early 50's a few years before Jackson Knight's famous Prose version. It was originally prepared and translated for a public broadcast, and so some liberties have been taken by C.D. Lewis, but overall it carries much fire and energy needed for such a long poem.

The only criticism I have is that the font used for the text is a bit hard on the eyes and the sentence layout is a bit cluttery. Personally I think that prose is more suitable for Virgil's Aeneid.

(However, I recently discovered Sarah Ruden's Verse translation and have to saw that I rank it at the VERY TOP of ALL previous Verse translations!...it is that incredible, I'm really short on words for her!)

-I would suggest comparing a few verse translations (Lewis VS Fitzgerald VS Ruden) and a couple prose translations (Knight VS West) to find out which one works the best for your studying / enjoyment.

cheers!

Virgil's masterful epic poem is the story of descent and victory, of ruin and fate. It is the retrospective commemoration of the founding of the Roman Empire. Aeneas is our hero. After the fall of Troy, Aeneas is summoned to reconstruct Troy in Italy, but Juno the Goddess is determined to impede and ultimately overturn his fate. This epic is infused with a sense of interiorized furor, unlike anything we see in Homer. It is an extraordinary presentation of the conflict between the fortunes of fate and the tremors of the heart. Blood drenched, Aeneas and his band will found Rome-yet what it means to be a Roman is doomed to incompleteness. The logic of "pax romana" will never be satisfied if the slaying of the vanquished will never ultimately release you from the fury that enslaves your soul. This is a transcendent work-a temple of violence and passion. Fitzgerald's translation is perhaps not the most poetically graceful, but it reads very nicely and is quite close to the literal meaning. And yet I'm told that Fagles and Lombardo are better.

The Aeneid, one of the most famous and widely translated books of all time, was written during Rome's `golden era' by Publius Vergilius, an unassuming scholar in acquaintance with the Emperor Augustus. Fragmented history informs us that this long Latin poem came into being in part to give the empire a creation-mythos, in part to honor the sagas of Greece from which the bulk of the Roman belief-paradigm originated: scheming Gods, inflexible Fates, the monsters and melodrama human beings can't seem to get enough of...highbrow entertainment of the bygone era; a homage to and subtle critique of the Homeric ideal.
And with hindsight, The Aeneid easily surpasses its source material in terms of scope and sheer writing. The book begins shortly after the devastation of Troy, and the first half chronicles the search of the refugee Trojans for a new home. The task is not an easy one: Aeneas the True and his compatriots are plagued by bad weather and the hallmarks of myth (the Cyclopes from the Odyssey make a brief cameo), while the Gods above, vindictive and conspiring, seek to either halt or hurry along their progress. The second half of the book dictates the arrival of the Trojans to Latium (Italy), the resistance they meet from the natives, and the establishment of Rome proper. The last quarter of the book is a montage of bloody battles, swords and sorrow taking their claim for the greater good of a future empire.
I do not speak the `dead' language of Latin and thus cannot comment on the translation itself; regardless, W.F. Jackson's prose is delight to read - certain passages contain beautiful rhyming schemes; the dialogue and description are extremely well done, retaining an `old world' tone without becoming stilted or faux-archaic. And throughout the epic adventures and the blood-drenched battles, Virgil's theme - that of Rome's foundation and its preconceived glory - shines through abundantly clear, without ever drowning the reader in heavy-handed sermonizing or extreme sentimentality.
An essential text for the student of myth & history. Five stars.

Let me preface my remarks by saying that the true purist of classic literature may well be turned off by this volume. I however, am not a literary purist, so I render my judgment on this book as one who reads for the sheer pleasure of enjoying great literature. With that out of the way, on to the review itself.

I thought professor David West did a masterful job of adding life to an already great narrative about the epic hero Aeneas. By rendering this tale in prose rather than verse, he skillfully and carefully adds an easy flow to the text while losing none of the splendor, style or visceral punch of the original. Readers who have already experienced the writings of Homer and verse translations of Virgil will find it easy to recognize the same literary elements and narrative flavor as these other classics. Professor West has rendered this new version with due sensitivity to the greatness of the original, and with an evident expertise that should satisfy all but the most ardent critics.

As to the story itself, it traces the wanderings of the Trojan warrior Aeneas from the fall of Troy, to Carthage, and on to Latium as he follows the oracles of the gods to reestablish a new Trojan civilization that will one day become Rome. This tale, inspired by Homer, combines the best elements of the Iliad and the Oddysey. Aeneas, son of Venus, faces a series of challenges wrought by the animosity of Juno, as he strives to fulfill the destiny that the oracles have set before him. Upon his arrival in Latium, he is forced to fight a war whose tale captures the epic nature if not the grand scope of the battle for Troy. Heroic exploits are not lacking among either the Trojans, their Arcadian allies, or their Latin enemies, as Aeneas proves his mettle against the fearsome Turnus.

For those who have never read Virgil, or who are not committed to reading it as a purist, this version of the Aeneid is an excellent choice. If you haven't already done so, I strongly recommend that you read the Iliad and the Oddysey first. Otherwise you'll miss much of the flavor, and many of the allusions to Homer's works, that are liberally interspersed throughout this tale. An excellent version of a great classic.

Roman society was enamoured of Greek culture -- many of the best 'Roman' things were Greek; the major gods were derivative of the Greek pantheon; philosophy, literature, science, political ideals, architecture -- all this was adopted from the Greeks. It makes sense that, at the point of their ascendancy in the world, they would long for an epic history similar to the Homeric legends; the Iliad and the Odyssey, written some 500 years after the actual events they depict, tell of the heroism of the Greeks in their battle against Troy (Ilium). The Aeneid, written by Vergil 700 years after Homer, at the commission of Augustus (himself in the process of consolidating his authority over Rome), turns the heroic victory of the much-admired Greeks on its head by postulating a survivor from Troy, Aeneas, who undergoes as journey akin to the Odyssey, even further afield.

Vergil constructs Aeneas, a very minor character in the Iliad, as the princely survivor and pilgrim from Troy, on a journey through the Mediterranean in search of a new home. According to Fitzgerald, who wrote a brief postscript to the poem, Vergil created a Homeric hero set in a Homeric age, purposefully following the Iliad and Odyssey as if they were formula, in the way that many a Hollywood director follows the formulaic pattern of past successful films. Vergil did not create the Trojan legend of Roman origins, but his poem solidified the notion in popular and scholarly sentiment.

Vergil sets the seeds for future animosity between Carthage and Rome in the Aeneid, too -- the curse of queen Dido on the descendants of Aeneas of never-ending strife played into then-recent recollections of war in the Roman mind. Books I through VI are much more studied than VII through XII, but the whole of the Aeneid is a spectacular tale.

Books I through VI show Aeneas on the journey, and a failed love affair with Queen Dido. Aeneas is shipwrecked, and Dido (also an outcast from her homeland, setting out to found Carthage) gets Aeneas to tell her his story, in which he recasts the tale of the Trojan War and his own journey in terms that will lead to Rome. Gods and goddesses factor in here - Jupiter (the Roman Zeus) is protecting Aeneas, but Juno (the Roman Hera) favours Carthage, and is the one who caused the storm to shipwreck Aeneas near Dido so that he might be thwarted in his plan to found Rome. There is jealousy and rage because Aeneas eventually has to leave; Dido dies in a dramatic fashion, but not before her soul being given a blessed release by the favoured gods.

The most dramatic part of the story over, the reader settles into other action that, while interesting, is somewhat pale in comparison to the first half.

The Aeneid is a fascinating text, one of the greatest epics of the ancient world; it takes up the task of the Iliad/Odyssey cycle and 'updates', if you will, the story line into the Roman era. Pharr's book helps the reader to work with it in its original language, easily and methodically, with only a minimum of Latin training (one year is probably sufficient) required for engagement.

Vergil died before he could complete the story. He wished it to be burned; fortunately, Augustus had other ideas. Still, there are incomplete lines and thoughts, and occasional conflicts in the storyline that one assumes might have been worked out in the end, had more editing time been available. Despite these, the Aeneid remains a masterpiece.

Roman society was enamoured of Greek culture -- many of the best 'Roman' things were Greek; the major gods were derivative of the Greek pantheon; philosophy, literature, science, political ideals, architecture -- all this was adopted from the Greeks. It makes sense that, at the point of their ascendancy in the world, they would long for an epic history similar to the Homeric legends; the Iliad and the Odyssey, written some 500 years after the actual events they depict, tell of the heroism of the Greeks in their battle against Troy (Ilium). The Aeneid, written by Vergil 700 years after Homer, at the commission of Augustus (himself in the process of consolidating his authority over Rome), turns the heroic victory of the much-admired Greeks on its head by postulating a survivor from Troy, Aeneas, who undergoes as journey akin to the Odyssey, even further afield.

Vergil constructs Aeneas, a very minor character in the Iliad, as the princely survivor and pilgrim from Troy, on a journey through the Mediterranean in search of a new home. According to Fitzgerald, who wrote a brief postscript to the poem, Vergil created a Homeric hero set in a Homeric age, purposefully following the Iliad and Odyssey as if they were formula, in the way that many a Hollywood director follows the formulaic pattern of past successful films. Vergil did not create the Trojan legend of Roman origins, but his poem solidified the notion in popular and scholarly sentiment.

Vergil sets the seeds for future animosity between Carthage and Rome in the Aeneid, too -- the curse of queen Dido on the descendants of Aeneas of never-ending strife played into then-recent recollections of war in the Roman mind. Books I through VI are much more studied than VII through XII, but the whole of the Aeneid is a spectacular tale.

Books I through VI show Aeneas on the journey, and a failed love affair with Queen Dido. Aeneas is shipwrecked, and Dido (also an outcast from her homeland, setting out to found Carthage) gets Aeneas to tell her his story, in which he recasts the tale of the Trojan War and his own journey in terms that will lead to Rome. Gods and goddesses factor in here - Jupiter (the Roman Zeus) is protecting Aeneas, but Juno (the Roman Hera) favours Carthage, and is the one who caused the storm to shipwreck Aeneas near Dido so that he might be thwarted in his plan to found Rome. There is jealousy and rage because Aeneas eventually has to leave; Dido dies in a dramatic fashion, but not before her soul being given a blessed release by the favoured gods.

The most dramatic part of the story over, the reader settles into other action that, while interesting, is somewhat pale in comparison to the first half.

The Aeneid is a fascinating text, one of the greatest epics of the ancient world; it takes up the task of the Iliad/Odyssey cycle and 'updates', if you will, the story line into the Roman era. Pharr's book helps the reader to work with it in its original language, easily and methodically, with only a minimum of Latin training (one year is probably sufficient) required for engagement.

Vergil died before he could complete the story. He wished it to be burned; fortunately, Augustus had other ideas. Still, there are incomplete lines and thoughts, and occasional conflicts in the storyline that one assumes might have been worked out in the end, had more editing time been available. Despite these, the Aeneid remains a masterpiece.

This is a review of the CD audio book version of Robert Fagles' translation of Virgil's Aeneid.

Victorian Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli once quipped, "My wife is a lovely woman, but she can never remember which came first: the Greeks or the Romans." The Greeks "came first" in two senses. Their civilization produced great works of literature, philosophy and art when Rome was still a primitive village, and although the Romans later conquered the Greek world their cultural achievements never quite matched those of Greece, and they knew it.

The Aeneid is an epic poem that tells the story of Aeneas, a Trojan who flees his city as it is being sacked by the Greeks. (The story of the Trojan Horse is actually not in the Iliad, but there is a moving account of it in the Aeneid.) Aeneas wanders for many years and eventually comes to Italy and founds what becomes Roman civilization. Aeneas is thus conquered by the Greeks, but founds the civilization that will conquer them. And this poem about Aeneas is meant to rival the Iliad (with its accounts of battles) and the Odyssey (with its accounts of the wanderings of its hero on his way home).

The Aeneid is also a commentary on the politics of the era in which it was composed. Virgil lived in the time when the Roman Republic had come to an end and Octavian had succeeded Caesar as emperor. Aeneas is the supposed founder of the Roman royal line, so in honoring him Virgil is honoring his patron. And Octavian came to power only after a period of warfare (just like Aeneas). Further parallels are provided by the relationship between Aeneas and Dido, Queen of Carthage. Aeneas and Dido fall in love, and he is tempted to stay with her. But he remembers his sacred duty to found a new empire in Italy, so he leaves her behind. (I don't want to spoil the story for you, but what happens with Dido after Aeneas leaves her is one of the most famous parts of the Aeneid.) Carthage was a city that fought two wars with Rome. (Remember Hannibal leading the elephants over the alps? That was the Carthaginians.) So Aeneas's psychological victory over the temptations of Carthage foreshadows the later conflict between the empires. Furthermore, Octavian's rule was secure only after he defeated Mark Anthony. Mark Anthony allowed himself to be seduced by a foreign queen (Cleopatra in this case). So in showing Aeneas's resolve against the temptations of a foreign queen, Virgil is condemning Octavian's opponent.

The Aeneid is considered one of the greatest works (perhaps THE greatest) of Latin literature. It was so highly esteemed that it was sometimes used as a book of divination: you opened it up to a random page and stuck your finger on a line, which was your "fortune." (I tried it: apparently I am going to be shot dead with an arrow by a goddess.)

As a story, I find the Aeneid good but uneven. Parts of it are quite gripping. In addition to some of the events I've mentioned, the account of Aeneid's visit to the underworld, and the poetically appropriate punishments that the vicious receive, is engaging. We can see why Dante was so inspired by it that, in the Divine Comedy, he makes Virgil be his guide through Hell. At his worst, though, Virgil can be a bit bombastic. This isn't helped by the actor who reads the text for this audio book. His delivery reminds one of a stodgy British professor delivering a commencement address.

The CD case includes a booklet with the introduction to Fagles' translation by classicist Bernard Knox. This is very helpful, situating Virgil in his time, summarizing the poem (I found this useful as a review after having listened to the whole thing), and offering some personal reflections on the meaning Virgil has for him.

In the final analysis, the Aeneid is very good, but not as great as the Iliad or the Odyssey. I guess the Greeks do still "come first."

What can be said about this classic masterpiece in epic poetry? Virgil clearly emanated the Homeric style of epic, and his debt to Homer is very apparent in this work. Still, it retains a style and flavor all its own. The poem tells the story of Aeneas, the Trojan hero from the Iliad who survived to found the Roman race in Italy. The first half of the poem are his adventures in reaching Italy (comparable to the Odyssey), and the second half deal with the war that results from his landing there (comparable to the Iliad).

It is said that Virgil wrote this poem at least partially in hopes of fostering the national sentiment of the Romans, of making them proud of their heritage, and of uniting them in a common ancestry. His motives are very clear--there are a number of references to the future glory of Rome, and various visions of the leaders and generals who would bring Rome her greatest glory. Interestingly, this poem was never completed, and Virgil, on his deathbed, asked that it be destroyed. It was preserved, however, by Augustus, and so we have it in its mostly finished form today.

This translation by Fitzgerald is excellent. Like his translations of Homer, Fitzgerald's Aeneid flows very smoothly, and stays true to the feel of the original. Also, there is a postscript in the back detailing both the history of the times, and various events in Virgil's life. This postscript is very helpful in understanding the world in which the poet lived.

There is also a glossary of names in the back, very useful for keeping all the people, places, and deity straight. All in all, this version of The Aenied is very satisfying. I highly recommend it.

I urge everyone who hasn't read this to do so, and those who have to pick it up again. A strange book, borrowing nearly everything from other works in antiquity, it remains entirely original. Virgil takes his readers through the adventures of a band of refugees who are on their way to their destiny, the founding of the Roman republic. Unlike Odysseus, Aeneas is fleeing defeat and destruction, not returning to his homeland as a conquering hero.

It's a great book. Aeneas, full of nobility, is not outsized in nearly inhuman greatness like Achilles. He's not the resourceful Everyman that Odysseus is. Aeneas is bound by duty and piety and finds his identity in them. There's something here that a lot of fathers and sons can relate to, the grim determination to be faithful to clan and vocation.

There's also a disturbing sense of circularity here. According to legend, Dardanus, the founder of Troy, was an emigrant from Italy, so his descendant, the refugee Aeneas, is also returning to a storied ancestral homeland in returning to Latium. In completing this circle, he finds himself in Carthage with Queen Dido, dooming her and setting up an emnity between Rome and Carthage that will come to fruition in the bloody Punic Wars that result in the total destruction of Carthage. Upon landing in Latium, he wrests the princess Lavinia from a would-be suitor Turnus, thus reenacting the ravishing of Helen by Alexander, and in the same manner, this causes a bloody war and siege. All history is a vertiginous cycle, round and round, no rest from the iron cycles of history, no respite from the caprices of the gods.

At the center of this is a journey to the underworld, similar to the one in the Odyssey. Unlike that trip, in this journey our hero passes through the netherworld to the upper regions, the Elysian fields, which somehow seem less than heavenly: they appear more like a pleasant distracting earthly holiday in a nice bit of real estate. From this vantage, Aeneas's dead father Anchises surveys future Roman history and the critical role his descendents will play in it.

Fitzgerald's translation is commendable. A friend compared it to Ray Bradbury, and I quite like that: strong, vigorous, manly, unpretentious. This a gift to give yourself, something you can keep going back to your whole life.

First, I'm not qualified to opine on whether Mandelbaum's translation is true to the Latin. I struggled with Virgil's complex poetry as a 4th year Latin student and have no idea if Mandelbaum gets it right. But this translation is eminently readable, retaining the feel of epic poetry. I have the feeling that any flaws in Mandelbaum's rendering reflect shortcomings in Virgil's original text.

Second, this is a very handy edition, especially for the price. Even if you already own the Aeneid in other form, you might want to pick this one up. It is a pocket-sized paperback, yet the print is not tiny and is very readable. This is a better edition to bring with you on the plane than one of the bulkier versions. Plus, this edition provides an excellent glossary, which is an absolute must given the torrent of names that flow through this work.

Finally, the Aeneid itself: Virgil is a literary titan, if only for his Georgics. The Aeneid is also a towering work, but troubling and flawed. Virgil himself was troubled by this work, which he left unfinished with instructions for it to be destroyed. In his effort to give Rome its own epic, combining features of both the Odyssey and Iliad to create the Aeneid, Virgil adopted some of the less interesting mannerisms of those older works. In particular, the battle scenes are violent, soaked in blood, long on smashed brains and decapitations and dripping entrails, short on exploring the pathos of life cut short for the sake of pointless conflict. It reads much like the Iliad, with seemingly endless lines of "A slew B and C slew D and E slew F." Maybe this was good stuff to an ancient Roman but to a modern reader it is boring in the same way as all the "begats" in some books of the Bible. Even more disturbing than the over-the-top, repetitive violence of the work is the sense of underlying pessimism, as every time reason and peace seem about to prevail, some god or goddess shakes things up and -- all too easily -- the killing starts anew. Maybe this reflected Virgil's own disgust with the times that he had lived through, with civil war erupting every few years until Octavian had finally killed off every other rival. But the rivers of blood that are spilled in the second half of the Aeneid do not make for as ennobling a foundation myth as perhaps Virgil was looking for. While Rome is destined for greatness, it is so because Jupiter has said so, has decided to favor Aeneas above his enemies, not because of anything inherently great about the proto-Romans. Maybe, had Virgil lived longer, he might have found a way to tweak this work to have Aeneas end up as more than just an executioner for Fate.

And it is in the first half of the epic that Aeneas indeed is more than just a slayer. His romance with Dido is perhaps the most famous story within the poem and, although it is also marred by too much Olympian meddling, portrays Aeneas as possessing humanity and a capacity to love that is missing at the end. His descent into Hades, so that he can have one last conversation with his father, is also a compelling episode. In short, the Aeneid stands as a great work, a classic, for these beautiful passages, even if the last few books of the poem read a little like someone trying to narrate the events in a violent video game.

An Aeneid fan since high school, though no scholar, I enjoy reading each new translation; this one is clear, vivid, immediate and full of action; it keeps you enthralled! what a poet! or rather what poets! Ruden as well as Virgil. The translation manages to stay much closer to the original than others, while having an effect that is poetic, dramatic, and modern rather than dry and scholarly. Much meaning in relatively few words!

Roman society was enamoured of Greek culture -- many of the best 'Roman' things were Greek; the major gods were derivative of the Greek pantheon; philosophy, literature, science, political ideals, architecture -- all this was adopted from the Greeks. It makes sense that, at the point of their ascendancy in the world, they would long for an epic history similar to the Homeric legends; the Iliad and the Odyssey, written some 500 years after the actual events they depict, tell of the heroism of the Greeks in their battle against Troy (Ilium). The Aeneid, written by Vergil 700 years after Homer, at the commission of Augustus (himself in the process of consolidating his authority over Rome), turns the heroic victory of the much-admired Greeks on its head by postulating a survivor from Troy, Aeneas, who undergoes as journey akin to the Odyssey, even further afield.

Vergil constructs Aeneas, a very minor character in the Iliad, as the princely survivor and pilgrim from Troy, on a journey through the Mediterranean in search of a new home. According to Fitzgerald, who wrote a brief postscript to the poem, Vergil created a Homeric hero set in a Homeric age, purposefully following the Iliad and Odyssey as if they were formula, in the way that many a Hollywood director follows the formulaic pattern of past successful films. Vergil did not create the Trojan legend of Roman origins, but his poem solidified the notion in popular and scholarly sentiment.

Vergil sets the seeds for future animosity between Carthage and Rome in the Aeneid, too -- the curse of queen Dido on the descendants of Aeneas of never-ending strife played into then-recent recollections of war in the Roman mind. Books I through VI are much more studied than VII through XII, but the whole of the Aeneid is a spectacular tale.

Books I through VI show Aeneas on the journey, and a failed love affair with Queen Dido. Aeneas is shipwrecked, and Dido (also an outcast from her homeland, setting out to found Carthage) gets Aeneas to tell her his story, in which he recasts the tale of the Trojan War and his own journey in terms that will lead to Rome. Gods and goddesses factor in here - Jupiter (the Roman Zeus) is protecting Aeneas, but Juno (the Roman Hera) favours Carthage, and is the one who caused the storm to shipwreck Aeneas near Dido so that he might be thwarted in his plan to found Rome. There is jealousy and rage because Aeneas eventually has to leave; Dido dies in a dramatic fashion, but not before her soul being given a blessed release by the favoured gods.

The most dramatic part of the story over, the reader settles into other action that, while interesting, is somewhat pale in comparison to the first half.

The Aeneid is a fascinating text, one of the greatest epics of the ancient world; it takes up the task of the Iliad/Odyssey cycle and 'updates', if you will, the story line into the Roman era. Pharr's book helps the reader to work with it in its original language, easily and methodically, with only a minimum of Latin training (one year is probably sufficient) required for engagement.

Vergil died before he could complete the story. He wished it to be burned; fortunately, Augustus had other ideas. Still, there are incomplete lines and thoughts, and occasional conflicts in the storyline that one assumes might have been worked out in the end, had more editing time been available. Despite these, the Aeneid remains a masterpiece.

Admittedly, this is the first translation of "The Aeneid" I've ever read, but in some ways that was to my advantage. After slogging through clunky prose translations of Homer's two great poems, reading Fitzgerald's quick and clear translation of Virgil in verse was like a breath of fresh air. His afterword about the poem and Virgil's life is well worth the price of the book. I will definitely be picking up copies of Fitzgerald's Homer translations in the future.

There may be something about "The Aeneid" that is inherently less satisfying than Homer's works, but it is probably that Virgil was trying too hard to write an apologetic for Roman rule, and not hard enough to tell a compelling story. The journey to the underworld where Aeneas meets all the future rulers of Rome is audacious and fun to read, but probably not of great interest to anyone who has not studied Roman history (as I have not). Still, there are enough good characters (e.g., Dido, Anchises, Juno and Turnus) that the reader will never be bored.

Virgil never completed the poem, and some inconsistencies can be found in the story. Some have suggested that he intended to write more books to close out the founding of the Trojan/Italian kingdom, but the "downer" ending we have with us is probably more satisfying than another book with political details.

I have read 4 different translations of the Aeneid. This is the best by far. It is not a literal, line for line translation, which often comes off the wrong way. It is a more free translation, to convey the meaning, not the same structure as the original latin work. Allen Mandelbaum does an amazing job and his writing is very beautiful. Even from the very first page this book jumps out at you.
The reason why Virgil wanted this book destroyed after his death was because he felt it was unfinished. But there is very little that should be added. There are a couple of very minor plot holes (such as how did the Trojans built their fortress in Italy so quickly?) that Virgil had not fully polished yet, but who cares? The story is amazing, and unlike the Iliad or the Odyssey, the gods don't interfere in each and every small thing that happens, which was annoying in those books.
If you liked the Iliad and Odyssey, you will love the Aeneid. Consider it like a sequel. You find out what happened to certain characters like Andromache, Helenus or Diomedes after the Trojan war. I just can't recommend this book enough, and it's impossible to put its greatness into a few words. Why a movie version has never been made, I will never know, but maybe that's a blessing, because I shudder to think of the damage a Hollywood version would do to the image of the book.

The book that I received did not suffer "wear and tear" as was described in the description. It suffered massive coffee spills all over the cover and nearly all of the pages. Not to mention that there was a hole stabbed through the cover and pizza sauce crusted onto the face of the book.

One of the first great literary works of Western Civilization, The Aeneid is the founding epic of Rome, making the case for a sort of Roman version of Manifest Destiny. It picks up with the fall of Troy and follows Aeneas and a hardy band of survivors through their victory over and fusion with the Latins. Along the way, it explains the undying enmity between Rome and Carthage, as Aeneas abandons his lover Dido, Queen of Carthage, and, in its day, it served as a justification for the rise and rule of Caesar Augustus, portraying the Roman Empire as predestined and paralleling Aeneas and Augustus as instruments of that destiny. In fact, Virgil, despite over a decade of effort, considered the work to be unfinished and unworthy, so he requested that it be burned upon his death, but Augustus, thankfully, intervened and saved it.
One interesting facet of the story is that Aeneas himself often takes a back seat to other characters. In particular Dido and the Latin warrior Turnus, prince of the Rutulians. Indeed, Turnus emerges as one of the great heroes in literature as he struggles against the fates and he wars against Aeneas and the Trojans, whom the gods have decreed will rule all of Italy.
One of the great tragedies of modern education is the rarity of Latin and Greek in the curriculum, replaced by French and Spanish. Hard to believe I wasted 6 years on Spanish classes (never learning to conjugate verbs mind you) when we could have been learning not merely the languages upon so much of English is based, but also studying the great seminal works of Western Civilization. The epic poems of Virgil and Homer remain vital to our culture and remain well worth reading.
GRADE: A

There are several reasons Virgil is considered the greatest Latin poet: His poetry is a beautiful portrayal of human emotions, his words that describe actions and events are so mesmerizing that one would forget about the significance of these events.

The Aeneid, the result of eleven years of composition, that Virgil didn't live to complete and ordered to burn before his death but which was published later against his wishes, is Aeneas' journey from Troy to Italy chasing his destiny to find the Roman race in Italy.

Then, as now, there was a struggle to win a relatively unimportant prize. The main theme of the Aeneid is who will marry Lavinia. The cause of the Trojan-Latin struggle is a woman; the main theme of one of the greatest pieces of literature is a woman (talk about treating women as objects) . Sadly it seems to me that all human efforts such as literature, creativity, wars and struggles are driven by desire for power and conquest.
In the Aeneid, the Gods, just like humans, are rivals who avenge each other over perceived wrongs and who focus on individual glory, but with the power to use others as their tools to achieve their goals. Minerva, the Goddess who protects the Greeks during the Trojan War and helps them conquer Troy, was driven by her anger towards Trojan Paris's judgment that announced Venus as the most beautiful among goddesses.
Oddly enough, the reason for the Trojan war in the Aenied is not much different than the reason for the war in Homers' Iliad, where a woman, Helen, was the cause of a crazy war(in this story, Venus played a feminine/evil game to get the title of the most beautiful Goddess).

In 19 B.C., the Aeneid was A tale of vengeance, power, desire, love and prophecies, that is not substantially different from today's' tales of craziness. At least then, the words were charming and had some meaning.

Wow. Roman literature is often seen as being derivative of Greek literature, but damn, Virgil is in a class all his own. Robert Fagles' translation of the Aeneid is the single most stunning, powerful book I've read from the classical era. The incredible sense of focus, the sheer intensity of some of the scenes in this book made my jaw drop. I mean, literally drop. The description of the fall of troy, Dido's bitter recrimination against Aeneas, the little moments of average people mourning the loss of their children in battle, the stunning dream sequence when the future lineage of Rome is revealed...gah. Each section is replete with searingly brilliant imagery. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Virgil outdoes Homer. He takes the epic of national identity and makes it personal, makes it heartrending. This book is 2000 years old, and it is damn near impossible to put down. Fagles was an absolute, bona fide master of the art of translation. I'll risk sounding like a pompous jerk and say that his renderings of classical works are more dramatic, and more alive than anything else available in modern English. I cannot recommend this highly enough

Mandelbaum's translation of Dante is among the very best out there, but I was very disappointed with his Aeneid translation. The bottom line is that he changed a LOT of words, names, etc. For example, in book 6 Virgil mentions that Paris slew "Aeacidae," which means "son of Aeacus." The son of Aecus was Peleus, who was the father of Achilles. So Virgil was alluding to the lineage of Achilles, but he chose not to mention Achilles by name. But Mandelbaum just took a shortcut and translated it as "Achilles" anyway. This is a cardinal sin in translation. Virgil did NOT write "Achilles" in that line, so Mandelbaum should not have translated it that way.
Also in Book 6, Virgil spoke of the goddess Trivia. He called her trivia by name. But Mandelbaum changed this to Diana, a more common version of the lesser-known name Trivia. Same person, different name. Again, Virgil did NOT use the word Diana, so why on earth would Mandelbaum do this?
This version is riddled with irritating and unnecessary changes like that.

Roman society was enamoured of Greek culture -- many of the best 'Roman' things were Greek; the major gods were derivative of the Greek pantheon; philosophy, literature, science, political ideals, architecture -- all this was adopted from the Greeks. It makes sense that, at the point of their ascendancy in the world, they would long for an epic history similar to the Homeric legends; the Iliad and the Odyssey, written some 500 years after the actual events they depict, tell of the heroism of the Greeks in their battle against Troy (Ilium). The Aeneid, written by Vergil 700 years after Homer, at the commission of Augustus (himself in the process of consolidating his authority over Rome), turns the heroic victory of the much-admired Greeks on its head by postulating a survivor from Troy, Aeneas, who undergoes as journey akin to the Odyssey, even further afield.

Vergil constructs Aeneas, a very minor character in the Iliad, as the princely survivor and pilgrim from Troy, on a journey through the Mediterranean in search of a new home. According to Fitzgerald, who wrote a brief postscript to the poem, Vergil created a Homeric hero set in a Homeric age, purposefully following the Iliad and Odyssey as if they were formula, in the way that many a Hollywood director follows the formulaic pattern of past successful films. Vergil did not create the Trojan legend of Roman origins, but his poem solidified the notion in popular and scholarly sentiment.

Vergil sets the seeds for future animosity between Carthage and Rome in the Aeneid, too -- the curse of queen Dido on the descendants of Aeneas of never-ending strife played into then-recent recollections of war in the Roman mind. Books I through VI are much more studied than VII through XII, but the whole of the Aeneid is a spectacular tale.

Books I through VI show Aeneas on the journey, and a failed love affair with Queen Dido. Aeneas is shipwrecked, and Dido (also an outcast from her homeland, setting out to found Carthage) gets Aeneas to tell her his story, in which he recasts the tale of the Trojan War and his own journey in terms that will lead to Rome. Gods and goddesses factor in here - Jupiter (the Roman Zeus) is protecting Aeneas, but Juno (the Roman Hera) favours Carthage, and is the one who caused the storm to shipwreck Aeneas near Dido so that he might be thwarted in his plan to found Rome. There is jealousy and rage because Aeneas eventually has to leave; Dido dies in a dramatic fashion, but not before her soul being given a blessed release by the favoured gods.

The most dramatic part of the story over, the reader settles into other action that, while interesting, is somewhat pale in comparison to the first half.

The Aeneid is a fascinating text, one of the greatest epics of the ancient world; it takes up the task of the Iliad/Odyssey cycle and 'updates', if you will, the story line into the Roman era. Pharr's book helps the reader to work with it in its original language, easily and methodically, with only a minimum of Latin training (one year is probably sufficient) required for engagement.

Vergil died before he could complete the story. He wished it to be burned; fortunately, Augustus had other ideas. Still, there are incomplete lines and thoughts, and occasional conflicts in the storyline that one assumes might have been worked out in the end, had more editing time been available. Despite these, the Aeneid remains a masterpiece.

The Aeneid is Virgil's epic tale of how Rome was originally founded by the Trojans fleeing from their destroyed nation. The first six books are "Odyssein", with Aeneas engaging in adventures much like those that Odysseus had encountered in "The Odyssey" (and even coming across some of the same characters!). The second part of the book is Iliadic, and full of battle scenes. If you are familiar with The Iliad and the Odyssey, you are sure to enjoy The Aeneid. It is nice to hear the story of how the Trojans managed to continue after the war. The book is full of such themes as "pietas" and "fatum", that drive Aeneas to avenge his people and play the enormous part of helping start what is quite possibly the greatest empire to exist in history.
This is the third Fitzgerald translation of a classic novel that I have had the pleasure of reading (the first two being Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey) and I enjoyed it very much. In my opinion, the best feature of this version of the book is the "Brief Glossary" at the end. If you are having trouble understanding the story, it helps a lot to take a look at the back of the book. I had experienced some confusion when I began reading the book, because many of the characters and Gods in the story have had their names changed from the Greek version to Roman. However, Fitzgerald makes it easy to translate between the two by addint such a helpful tool at the end.

In the second part of Virgil's "The Aeneid" (brilliantly translated by Robert Fagles), Aeneas and the Trojans have landed in Italy, about to give birth to Rome. Aeneas has already seen his beloved Troy ransacked by the duplicitous Greeks, driven to suicide his lover the Queen of Carthage, and ventured into the land of the dead to hear his prophecy from his father. Much of the torment that the Trojans faced was devised by Juno, and the mercurial and mischievous Goddess was still intent on wreaking mayhem to prevent the Trojans from fulfilling their fate. Prodded by Juno, the Italian tribes, led by Turnus, gather to repel the Trojans from their shores. It is at this moment that Aeneas' mother Venus pleads with her husband Vulcan to intervene. Vulcan irons for Aeneas a shield, and in this shield is the history of the Romans, from the sacking of Troy to the founding of the Roman Empire by Augustus Caesar. Aeneas' shield collapses time and eternity into its metalwork, comforts Aeneas with the thought that he is empowered by fate and destiny, and promises the triumph of the Trojans and their Roman descendants. And in this very way "The Aeneid" is also the shield of the Roman empire.

More so than the conquests of Julius Caesar and the empire-building of Augustus Caesar, Virgil's "The Aeneid" founded the Roman Empire by bestowing upon the Roman people an imperial consciousness. There is a timeless and eternal quality to "The Aeneid," but more so it sings of truths and values that make the Romans destined to rule the world. Aeneas is courageous and virtuous, but above all he is pious. When Jove sent Mercury to Carthage to beckon Aeneas to set sail for his destiny and to abandon his great love he did so without thought, despite the insane pleadings of Dido. And when Aeneas landed in Italy and he was surrounded by treachery and betrayal, instead of despairing or scheming he simply led his troops into battle. And in their love of clean virtue and clear justice the Trojans are not like the scheming and treacherous Greeks portrayed by Homer and Herodotus. That's why the Gods deem the Romans must rule the world. While "The Aeneid" follows closely the structure of "The Illiad" and "The Odyssey" Aeneas is really the anti-Odysseus.

In fact, Aeneas lacks any intellect or personality. All he understands is duty and honor. He comes alive only in battle, and his heroism brackets the epic: at the beginning he defiantly leads the Trojans against the Greeks in defense of Troy, and at the end he confidently leads the Trojans against the Latins. He neither complains and cries like Achilles nor cheats and schemes like Odysseus. More than any of the classic heroes Aeneas has come to define what a true hero is in Western eyes.

There is an ironic and contradictory moment in "The Aeneid." Throughout the epic we are told human will and agency are superstitious beliefs, and we are nothing more than the playthings of that dysfunctional family that is the Gods. The fall of Troy and the rise of Rome have long been preordained, and given that a thousand year have already been written the battle between Aeneas and Turnus should only be worthy of a paragraph instead of half of "The Aeneid." But before this battle Jove must preside over an intense debate among the Gods, especially between Juno and Venus. And Jove, the master of all things, decrees that the battle's fate is one that the humans must decide for themselves.

This is silly because either Jove is being a disingenuous politician and insulting everyone's intelligence or there's a tremendous contradiction in the book. But it is a testament to the power of Virgil's poetry that this literary device actually does work, and we are left wondering what the outcome between the battle of Aeneas and Turnus will be. And the battle is epic poetry at its best, reaching dazzling heights of suspense, drama, and emotion.

There is no denying Virgil's impact on Western consciousness: Milton's "Paradise Lost" and Tolkien's "Return of the King" are two of the epic's descendants. But what's truly amazing about the book is that it is an eternal present truth unto itself. Dido's lament at the betrayal of her lover and Turnus' decision to leap into chaotic battle and certain death despite the wise counsel of his elders would be stirring pieces of poetry in any time and in any culture.

How do you review a true classic? Virgil's Aenied, written around 25 BC, is the epic tale of the founding of the Roman empire. In beautifully descriptive language, Virgil (and Fitzgerald as his able translator from the Latin) tells the story of Aeneas, a refugee from the fall of Troy, who famously follows his fate ordained by the gods through violent storms in the Mediterranean, a passionate love affair in North Africa, a haunting visit to the underworld, and victory on the Italian peninsula after several shockingly brutal battles. If you enjoyed Clash of the Titans, or even the Percy Jackson series (Percy Jackson pbk 5-book boxed set (Percy Jackson and the Olympians)), give the Aeneid a try.

Fagles's Aeneid is swift, vivid, and sonorous. With his translations of Homer behind him, Fagles enjoys a surety of reference that allows him--and the reader--to concentrate on the visual and auditory and intellectual action. Fagles gets a lovely running-before-the-wind feel by alternating fourteeners and hexameter, trimming the course with pentameter. Some transitional phrases seem too smooth, as if perhaps Fagles has stolen the ball, and occasionally I missed the poetic precision in the English that more delicate translations e.g. C.Day Lewis's achieve at points. Bernard Knox's introduction is interesting and moving, if hastily written. The glossary of persons/gods and places is useful and ample and in the back of the book where it can be ignored as desired. This reads wonderfully aloud, perhaps 1/2 to 1 book per evening, aloud with friends or family or by yourself. This is delectable action poetry, to take you lands away--to Rome no less.

Fitzgerald's metrical poetic translation flows smoothly across the page. His vocabulary is largely contemporary, lucid yet noble, with few archaisms, which is as it should be. Highly recommended as one of the best, if not the best, English translation available.

To those new to Virgil: The epic, written at the time of Augustus Caesar, relates the flight of a band of survivors from the fall of Troy led by prince Aeneas, who eventually establishes a precursor settlement to Rome in Italy. (Aeneas' son Ascanius/Julus is also the mythic progenitor of the Julian tribe, and so of Gaius Julius Caesar.) A basic knowledge of the background myths and legends is of help in fully appreciating the epic, though not essential. (As a knowledge of his extensive fictional background mythology is perhaps not essential to enjoying Tolkien, to posit a contemporary analogy.) Perhaps the first few books of Livy discussing the mythic founding by Romulus would be somewhat of an introduction to the Aeneid, though Virgil's epic forms a "prequel" to that story. Also lost for modern readers will be Virgil's evocation of historically important figures and sites, which for the Roman reader would evoke connotations similar to "Pocohontas" or "Plymouth Rock" for Americans.

Homer v. Virgil: If in Homer Odysseus is the man "of many turns" ["polytropos", which has connotations both of "wily" and "wandering"], Aeneas is the man "in duty bound" [as Fitzgerald aptly translates the Latin "pius"]. Though there is some peril in reading a modern sensibility into this, Odysseus is his own man, rather amoral, who loses all his companions during his voyage, in his personal goal to regain his throne and his wife Penelope. Aeneas is a man driven by the needs of a future imperial destiny, who must forsake one love (Dido of Carthage) to "bring home his gods to Latium." (Compare the blithe mutual termination by Odysseus & Calypso of their several years dalliance with Dido's suicide.) Still, modern readers may find less sympathy with the somewhat plodding Aeneas than with the more vibrant Odysseus. I'm not sure this wasn't intentional on Virgil's part.

For if the Aeneid is on one level a glorification of Roman might, yet Virgil reminds us throughout that "sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt" - "Tears there are in human affairs, and such things mortal touch the mind." And why, after Aeneas journeys to the underworld and is shown the yet unborn souls of Rome's future leaders, does he return to the earth through the gate of false dreams...the ivory gate, which would likely remind Roman readers of the ivory curile chair of office on which Roman officials - and Augustus - sat?

***This review may contain spoilers***

Destiny shrouds and permeates the epic triumvirate of "The Iliad", "The Odyssey", and "The Aeneid" (which parallels, intersects, and melds elements of the previous two). In all three epics, Destiny governs not only the affairs of (chosen) mortal men, but also even the activities of the Greco-Roman immortal gods. None, not even regal Jupiter (Zeus), can oppose, alter, or prevent Destiny's dictates. Indeed, one of Jupiter's (Zeus's) main functions is ensuring Destiny's dictates take place. Gods and (chosen) mortals may resent or even hate their destiny (fate), but at best they can delay its occurrence, or accept it with grace and courage.

To my mind, "The Aeneid" is the most vivid and noblest illustrator of how to cope with unchangeable destiny, because the destiny it depicts is the grandest of the three epics'. In "The Iliad", the overarching, but genocidal, destiny to be fulfilled is the utter obliteration of Trojan society for the petty sake of retrieving wayward Greek queen Helen. In the Odyssey, the dominating, but relatively ordinary, destiny to be fulfilled is getting Greek king Odysseus home to Ithaca. Ah, but in "The Aeneid", the ubiquitous, enveloping destiny to be fulfilled is Trojan prince Aeneas's preservation of Trojan society remnants and the establishment of a new Trojan/Italian nation/dynasty. Throughout the epic, we witness not only how Aeneas reacts to and realizes his destiny, but also how his destiny intertwines with the lives of others (humans and gods) and begets their own counterpart destinies and forces them to confront theirs.

Fleeing the Trojan conflagration, with the help of divine Troy supporters Neptune (Poseidon) and especially his obsessively protective mother Venus (Aphrodite), demigod Aeneas and Trojan survivors brave storms, monsters, and other adversities to reach Carthage, the kingdom of Queen Dido. To ensure Aeneas and company find safe sanctuary there, Venus conceals Aeneas until the time comes to introduce himself to the Carthaginians, and, as love goddess, kindles a flame of love and desire within Dido for Aeneas. Aeneas accepts her hospitality, and relates his sad tale of Troy's inevitable downfall through the Trojan Horse and his escape from the carnage. In this tale, thunderous firebrand signs from Jupiter and the ghost of his slain wife Cruesa (who had bravely accepted her death as a better alternative to Greek slavery) had given Aeneas the resolve to overcome his doubts and fears and take his ancient, crippled father Anchises and fight his way to freedom.

Time passes, and Aeneas gradually reciprocates Dido's feelings from him. Jupiter's wife Juno (Hera), who opposed the Trojans in the war, encourages this mutual passion until it is consummated in a cave during a rainstorm. Like a lotus-eater in "The Odyssey", seduced Aeneas seems on the verge of forgetting his future homeland, until Jupiter sends the messenger Mercury (Hermes) to upbraid him for his neglect and remind him of his ultimate goal.

Meanwhile, Queen Dido's illicit infatuation with Aeneas is affecting her administrative and personal judgment. She instinctively knows that Aeneas plans to leave her to continue his mission. Even though Aeneas does his gentle and considerate best to explain why he must go, Dido condemns him for his treachery. Dido is fated not to be with Aeneas. Dido does not accept this fate bravely and resolutely. Like a madwoman, Dido stabs herself with a sword, curses Aeneas with affliction and bloodshed, and burns herself on a funeral pyre.

Aeneas gravely sails on to the Sicilian coast of Eryx, where he meets a settled fellow demigod Trojan Acestes and conducts various funeral sports to commemorate his father Anchises's death. Even in funeral games, provided you pray to the proper gods, if you are fated to win, you will win. Juno further frustrates Aeneas by sending the dawn goddess Iris to set some of his ships ablaze and forcing its crew members to remain with Acestes. Despite the crushing setback and his own wavering will, Aeneas renews his purpose through encouragement from Anchises's blessed spirit. However, to continue, Aeneas must, with some divine aid (including Venus's and Neptune's) descend to the underworld to converse with his spirit there and receive further instruction.

In the underworld, Aeneas learns that the manner and attitude towards one's death (The Ultimate Destiny) determines that person's happiness in the afterlife. For example, Aeneas meets his former helmsman Palinurus, destined to drown to ensure the safe passage of Aeneas's fleet. Because he regarded his fated death as essentially a self-sacrifice, Palinurus, with proper Trojan burial, had earned a happy death. In contrast, suicides like Dido endure endless sorrow because of their shameful reaction to fate. Similarly, perhaps due to an adulterous, bigamous union with Menelaus's wife Helen (after Paris's death), Deiphobus's ghost is fated to be forever maimed. Those who dishonor their lives with greed, deceit, rebellion, or murder are fated to dwell in Tartarus, the abyss for the worst sinners. In contrast, those who honor their lives with altruism, invention, devotion to the gods and kindness are fated to dwell in the edenic Elysium Fields, where Aeneas meets Anchises and learns not only of his full destiny but also that of his descendants.

Aeneas eventually reaches Latinum in Italy, where he is fated to wed Lavinia, daughter of the region's King Latinus, unite the Trojans and Latinus, and found the Roman race. However, Lavinia is betrothed to the fiery warrior Turnus. Latinus seems to accede to Aeneas's destiny. However, the prophesized union of races is not fated to be peaceful. Yet again Juno, Aeneas's primary godly tormentor, strives to delay the inevitable in any way she can, including driving Latinus's wife Queen Amata mad and sending shadowy Allecto to goad the once-impartial Turnus to battle the invaders. Latinus vainly tries to avert war.

Initially, Aeneas decides to face Turnus and his allies from a fortress instead of in the field. But the bellicose Turnus manages to infiltrate the fortress and would have settled the matter right then if he had opened the gates to let his army in. Instead, fatefully, he was too consumed with bloodlust to do that. Turnus and Aeneas's forces continue to clash in a reprise of "The Iliad", with Juno aiding the former and Venus aiding the latter, including arms for Aeneas forged by the blacksmith god Vulcan (Hephaesteus). Regardless of which side a warrior is fighting on, those who fight and die courageously are honored and remembered, including the woman warrior Camilla. Those who fight and die ignobly are shamed and forgotten (like the Trojan Arruns, slain by the forest goddess Diana for his sneaky attack upon Camilla).

The inevitable Turnus/Aeneas showdown (reminiscent of the Hector/Achilles showdown) occurs. River goddess Juturna aids her brother Turnus; Venus, of course, aids her son Aeneas, including healing a severe spear wound. Overcoming all sad and fearful emotions, Turnus resolutely accepts unavoidable death at Aeneas's hands. Aeneas destiny is complete, but, as he nobly vowed, he will not rule over the new united Trojan/Latinum nation, and furthermore, per Jupiter, the Trojans and Latins will keep their separate, distinct identities.

So, is "The Aeneid" relevant to us today? We may not think so, because its obsession with destiny uncomfortably clashes with our notions of free will and self-determination. Still, one might argue, destiny does at least partially control our lives, because we all have different characteristics and gifts and we are all fated to die. We can't change (some) of our characteristics/gifts and we can't stop death, but we can control how we use those characteristics/gifts and how we respond to our legacy and death. We can abuse our gifts and cringe at death, and thus bring dishonor and oblivion. Or we can make the most of our gifts, face death with courage, and gain immortal honor. That, I believe, is the main triumphant theme of "The Aeneid".

As I read some of the more scathing reviews of Fitzgerald's translation of the Aenied, I felt compelled to come to his defense. No translation is capable of reproducing the effect intended by the author. It is impossible to translate the meter and sublties to which Latin lends itself. Something is always lost. Vergil's mastery of the Latin language is impossible to extract from any translation. Fitzgerald does as admirable a job as any translator I have seen of maintaining an epic and poetic "sense" to the work. It is by no means a literal translation, and he does take many liberties in his interpretation of the text, but perhaps this was his objective in creating this work. Every translator inherently applies his or her own biases, his own culture, and his own "sense" to the original work. In this way, something new is produced every time a work is translated into another language. As I read Fitzgerald's translation I hold in mind that there are things Vergil intended to be understood that are perhaps lost, but I also recognize the art of the translator and his own understanding and influence on the work.

[This review refers to the Dover Thrift verse
edition of the AENEID translated into English
by Charles J. Billson in 1906.]
As incredible as it may seem, I prefer this
Billson verse translation over that of Allen
Mandelbaum (which I also have in the Bantam
Classic edition, 1970). What causes one person
to like one translation, and another to prefer
someone else's? It is a matter of taste, but
also of conditioning through aesthetic experience
and expectation. I have read a great many poems
in a great many forms. To my sense and sensibility
there is something about the Mandelbaum translation
of the AENEID which is too confining...too clipped...
it does not seem, to me, to flow freely. And yet
Billson's translation has archaic word choices --
but the flow of his translation seems more interesting
and "freer" than that of Mandelbaum.
Here is a sample of Mandelbaum:
I sing of arms and of a man: his fate
had made him fugitive; he was the first
to journey from the coasts of Troy as far
as Italy and the Lavinian shores.
Across the lands and waters he was battered
beneath the violence of High Ones, for
the savage Juno's unforgetting anger;
and many sufferings were his in war --
[Bantam Classic, 1970.]
And here is Billson in the Dover edition with
the same passage:
Arms and the Man I sing, who first from Troy
A Doom-led exile, on Lavinian shores
Reached Italy; long tossed on sea and land
By Heaven's rude arm, through Juno's brooding
ire,
And war-worn long ere building for his Gods
A Home in Latium: whence [came] the Latin race,
The Lords of Alba, and high-towering Rome.

To my senses, and sensibility, there is something
about Billson's language and flow which seems to
have more august grandeur -- epic style, sound, and
sweep.
Here is an even more telling example -- the famous
scene in which Aeneas plucks the Golden Bough:
[Mandelbaum:] ...just so
the gold leaves seemed against the dark-green
ilex;
so in the gentle wind, the thin gold leaf
was crackling. And at once Aeneas plucks it
and, eager, breaks the hesitating bough
and carries it into the Sibyl's house.
[Billson:] So on that shadowy oak the leafy gold
Glimmered, and tinkled in the rustling air.
Forthwith Aeneas grasped the clinging bough,
And plucked, and bare it toward the Sibyl's
cell.

There seems to me a fineness of poetic sensitivity
there, in Billson, to choose those words just so --
and have the words almost resonate with the sounds
of the objects they are describing.

The book is new, and in perfect condition. It is a great book, which I enjoyed reading in high school, and am happy to have in my home library. This is the only version of the translated Aeneid that I have read, so I can't really compare with the others, but reading this book tells the epic very fluidly. It is not hard to read, though I guess it can be awkward at points, the side effects of translation. The sentence structures are complex, a reflection on the Latin it has been translated from. Great read, I highly suggest it.

I read this poem because I love the Iliad so much, and this one does not disappoint. It is an epic poem that covers the time immmediatlely after the Trojan War. This poem again reafirms why Virgil was the greatest poet ancient Rome ever produced. In it we see the ancient gods and are privy to all their inner strife and political aspirations. (It's not that much different from the present day). We get a description of the Great Trojan War as told by Aeneas. We also see the love that blossoms between Aeneas and Dido, but even with that Aeneas knows that his destiny will lead him elsewhere. He must go to the western coast of Italy. We see as he is inexorably drawn to this part of his life. It's difficult to do a review of great literature because one knows one can't improve on perfection. Those interested in the Trojan war and some great literature surrounding it should definitely include this epic on their reading list.

What happens when you read a work you know is great, know is evaluated highly by those more learned than you which you simply do not like? The 'Aeneid ' like the pious Aeneas himself was for me one of the works most difficult to get through. Plodding, serious, structured and fierce it moves ahead like a Roman legion devastating and conquering all before it. There are of course humanly moving elements in the work, the cry of Dido at her abandonment by Aeneas, the burning of the city and the dramatic rescue upon the shoulders, father and son- but the work as a whole including its many battles and slayings rated high along with Spenser's ' Faerie Queen' in my mind as one of the most boring of all the great masterpieces.

This of course says more about my own limitations as a reader than it does about the work itself. And I should at least mention the virtues of loyalty and courage so clearly embodied in this most Roman of works. However no matter how I try this celebration of Augustus Empire, this Roman prelude to the greater Dante always seemed to me so relentlessly humorless ,

as to be skimmed through rapidly rather than really chewed and digested.

I began reading the classics recently on purpose and one of the first things I noticed is the difference a translation could make. With our knowledge of language and its flexibilities, no translation can be judged as "correct" or "wrong" yet translations can, with the right artistry behind it, bring a work to life moreso than another.
This is where Robert Fitzgerald comes in. He has translated all the major Greek and Roman classics - Iliad, Odyssey, Aenieid - and they all shine as works of art on their own. No one can deny the importance of these books, and one would have to foul up the translation horribly to demean the raw power of Homer's and Virgil's works. Fitzgerald though, takes the work to another level. With simple word and spelling choices, Fitzgerald translates the feeling of hearing this poem out loud as recited by an ancient poet into a reading pleasure hard to surpass. I have tried other translations, and can not help but come back to Fitzgerald..
The Aeneid is one of the most important poems ever. It lets us understand the Romans, the Greeks, and an art done so long ago from a civilization that is no more. To give this poem any kind of low rating is ridiculous; its influence is almost unsurpassed.

Fagles is, as usual, impeccable. The problem is the reader. If this guy is a star of stage and screen, I'm glad I haven't seen him. I want to hear the nuances in the prose, but this lame excuse for a reader spends his time shouting and shout until he literally gave me a headache and I had it turned down low. He over acts as if he's some old silent film star trying to make it intgo talkies and failing...miserably. Avoid, avoid, avoid, unless you want to go deaf. He totally bollockses the whole thing up. Pity...

Although Virgil spent years writing the Aeneid, by his death, he felt that it was imperfect and asked that it be burned. Luckily for all concerned, his request was denied or we'd never have this epic. If you are new to Greek and Roman epics, I'd recommend starting with the Iliad and the Odyssey first. Not only will most novices find them more readable (especially the Odyssey), any reader will pick up important background information that will help immeasurably in following the Aeneid. Although I'm a huge fan of the Aeneid and have read many of the books in the original Latin, I'd suggest to most readers just to read books 1,2,4 and 6 unless you are really drawn in. It's not that the other books are not great (they are), it's just that unless you are a specialist, you won't want to read all about the battles and extra stuff -- book 4 is the love story of Dido and Aeneus and for many is the highlight of the poem. Book 6 is the trip to to the underworld which is so important to later writers and poets like Dante, TS Eliot, etc.... The fall of Troy is contained in books 1 and 2. I enjoy Fitzgerald's translation, but as an amateur Latinist, I prefer Allan Mandelbaum's translation with Moser's illustrations. When I was translating from the Latin, only Mandelbaum was so close to the original that he could help a student. I think Mandelbaum is a genius for rendering the poem so close to the original. It's unfair to call him wooden -- Virgil wrote the whole thing in Dacytlic hexameter which is hardly wooden in Latin, although it can be repetitive at times. Not to worry -- he used a lot of spondaic substititions (altering a long, short short with a long, long) to vary the meter.
So, if you just want a taste, read books 1,2,4 and 6 and if you love it, by all means read the whole epic.

The story begins with the main character Aeneas, going out to sail for Italy, where he is destined to found Rome. As he nears his destination, a fierce storm throws them off course and lands them in Carthage. At Carthage, he finds the lovely woman named Dido. She is supposedly the most beautiful woman in the land,and is a runaway princess to her retreat island of Carthage. She is very welcoming to the lost travelers and eventually falls in love with Aeneas. In my opinion this is simply one of the most beautiful love stories that has ever been written. The story of love that is shown between Aeneas and Dido show the ups and downs of a what seems to be a perfect relationship. The way that Fitzgerald translates the realtionship that is formed between the two, makes a modern audience feel the romance that is between the two lovers. Sadly, Aeneas must go off to war, and he is not sure as what to do about Dido, so he leaves in the middle of the night. It is never mentioned whether or not he has true feelings for Dido, but in my opinion you can see that he really does have feelings for her. Can one imagine how hard that would be to know that you have to go off to war in order to bring great pride to your country, and you found the woman that you adore, what is the easiet way to make a decision. By leaving in the middle of the night, he will not have to confront her and change his mind, but you can tell that he will come back to her one day. Dido does not see the situation in this manner and she kills herself. This same love story can be seen in present day situations with men going overseas and their loved ones back home go to drastic means due to the distance.

Overall, this powerful story about war and love, has a powerful message about fate and how different people react to situations.

(NOTE: This review deals entirely with Fitzgerald's translation.)

The translation by Fitzgerald is very good. The problem of translating poetry is twofold: stick to a literal translation, and you loose the verse; try to keep the verse and you probably will have a hard time staying true to the text. Fitzgerald's translation is in verse, and it is very lucid and flowing, not at all difficult to read. He may take some artistic license from time to time for the sake of preserving the verse, but I have the feeling he has stayed very close to the Latin text, and there is something to be said for reading the book as Virgil intended it - in verse.

Lastly, I recommend this particular edition (Everyman's Library, ISBN 0679413359) because of the introduction (Philip Hardie), the Post Script (Fitzgerald) and the extensive notes (Fitzgerald) on each chapter, explaining much that the casual reader would otherwise miss. There is also a index of the people and places mentioned in the book, which is absolutely essential given the various people and events Virgil alludes to.

By the way, Fitzgerald has also translated the 'Iliad' and "Oddessy', and I would recommend those translations as well. It would be helpful to read: 'Iliad' and "Oddessy' by Homer, 'War at Troy' by Quintus of Smyrna, 'Annals' by Tacitus, and some of the relevant lives from Plutarch. Although this is certainly not required to enjoy the 'Aeneid', it would help the reader get more out of the book.

The Aeneid the final work resultant of the Illiad, ties the foundation of rome to the mythic hero of Troy, Aeneas. Juno (Hera) carries on her passionate hatred of Troy on to the few survivors guided by Aeneas.
The Aeneid is probably the least of the works of the Illiad trilogy, the Illiad the greates, the Odyssey just below, and the Aeneid the least, but the least of some very good work.
The Aeneid written by Virgil, is distinctly different from the others written by Homer. Homer's work while complex, is still on a grand scale, with broad strokes, but does so as brilliantly as an other works in the same category.
The Aeneid can truly be appreciated by the level of introspection that Virgil brings to the trilogy, there is more investigation of the interior life of a hero, and of those around him.
The most dynamic passages are the early ones concerning Dido, and Aeneas' final battle to secure the future Rome. The Aeneid stops mid-sentence, but does not leave you unsatisfied. There is a sensitivity in the Aeneid which saves the work, but does not elevate it to the level of its father, the Illiad.

I've read the Aeneid in verse, but this (high) prose translation of Virgil's great work knocked me over. The beauty and the power of the epic is so evident! The translator, David West, argues in the translator's introduction that the received wisdom that epics are best rendered into verse does not do justice to the power and range of modern English prose. I think he's right.

For anyone, like myself, whose eye is more accustomed to prose than poetry, this is a far better way to read this great classic. No doubt others are fine with verse (I like the translation by Stanley Lombardo), but I'm sure many modern readers will love a prose translation that is both clear and accessible but does not compromise on beauty in any way.

This is a very good English verse rendering of Virgil's classic. If you like epic poetry but can't read classical languages this translation is probably the next best thing. Though nothing compares to the original this is a faithful translation, and the verse makes for a more interesting presentation than prose.
This is a "no frills" volume (hence the price), so it is best for readers who already know the basic premise of The Aeneid and the main characters. It has a basic glossary that may be a useful refresher for knowledge already acquired, but it lacks the translator's introduction that typically sets the stage (both for the plot and the poem's place in history) and triples the price in other volumes.

The works of Virgil no doubt conjure up images of stodgy academia, and dusty leather-bound tombs full of dusty leather-bound Latin-English phrases. I will leave it up to more worthy minds to praise Virgil's contribution to modern language and literature. Aeneid was a prestige read for me - I wanted to buckle down and see if I could muscle my way through it.

I was very pleasantly surprised. Classics, both modern and ancient, are, collectively the most widely known and sparsely read books this side of the yellow pages. Some are just more of an undertaking than the average reader is willing to go through - but once in a while, when you pick up the right book - you begin to understand.

Aeneid is the founding epic of the Roman Empire and follows the protagonist, Aeneis son of Aphrodite - from his flight from the sack of Troy, to his part in founding what will become Rome. Aeneis, was a great warrior featured prominently in the Iliad, and one of the few to escape from the fallen city. Throughout the epic, Aeneis and his Trojan followers wage war with the Latins, and eventually found Rome and the Roman Empire that Virgil himself lived in. . . .

There is abundant praise for the translation of Aeneid, while I have no frame of reference, I must nevertheless agree. The confines of Dactylic hexameter are abandoned at times, to the great benefit of readability, and story. It was an engrossing read, equal parts entertainment and challenge. Next time you are in a book store pick it up (make sure it is translated by Fagles) and read a few pages - perhaps you will like it as much as I did.

I do not want to get into a discussion as to who was the greater poet - Virgo or Homer. One was Roman and one was Greek. Both wrote with wondrous and beautiful words, but this book by Virgo is a stunner. This lengthy poem in twelve books traces the mighty Roman empire from the end of the Trojan war to the beginnings of the great empire which was led by Julius Caesar. Aeneas was the first of the great Roman rulers. I had read this story many years ago, and as I read it again, I remembered why I enjoyed this Roman story so much. I have always liked the Roman gods and goddesses, and this epic poem was the reason why. In this poem Virgil presents a struggling Aeneas who has to fight and win many battles before he can claim his crown. We also see the mighty gods and goddesses getting involved in human strife while the drama is played out on earth. But it is the descriptive language that is the beautiful thing here. Words like these can truly live forever.

Having read this immediately after Homer's Iliad & Odyssey, I resultingly found it annoying more than a few times. Sorry, Virgil, but I'm not okay with dissing Odysseus (aka Ulysses) while you're in the very act of stealing his story.

Fitzgerld is an exceptional poet/translator. His translations always have a sense of motion to them. The character are vital and passionate in this transtlation. The story is of Aeneas and his quest to find a home for the survivor of Troy. The story is of mythic travels and temptation of Aeneas as he travels to Italy (Odyessey like.) Then the conquest of Italy(like the Illiad). This poem is a mixture of the Illiad and Odessey, a story of a warrior/traveler. Fitzgerld caputres this duelity in his translations. If you don't believe that a translator can make a difference then read this version and compare to others.

Robert Fitzgerald's translation of the Aeneid is the best contemporary poetic translation of the poem. While prose translations are more faithful to the Latin (and Fitzgerald's certainly deviates from the original Latin in places), poetic translations have a chance to capture in some way the "feel" of Virgil's poem. Fitzgerald's translation does convey the grandeur of the Latin into English without sounding too Latin (e.g., C. Day Lewis' translation) or wooden (e.g., Mandelbaum's translation). Accessible to the nonspecialist, and a pleasure to any reader, Fitzgerald's Aeneid brings the Roman poem to the English speaking audience with grace and dignity.

Very good translation throughout. At times, repetitive and chalk full of similes that go on for a few stanzas, but the details, the imagery and forces moving the book along are top notch. Written centuries ago, and translated more recently, the epic poem of the pius Aeneas is one that should probably be read by everyone everywhere, daily. Or if that's not possible at least just once in their life to see the nature of humanity as having not changed all that much since the ancient days of the Greeks and Romans. The characters, pathos and scenes (very bloody for those who like gore) and underlying themes are of course quite simply classic. The almost metered tone of the translation and its vivid renderings are exceptional. Read the epic once, even if it's not this translation.

I could not agree more with the other positive reviews of the this translation. My Vergil professor assigned this translation for our Aeneid course a few years back, and I read it cover to cover during the first two weeks of class.

Before opening this book, I thought that I knew the Aeneid well enough from reading Fitzgerald's version in high school, reading selections from the Latin, etc. I was wrong. This translation is, as others have mentioned, concise and vivid. So many of the details stand out to me after having read Ruden's translation; the same cannot be said for the bulky prose renditions of Vergil's magnum opus.

Ruden's verse is perfect for the serious Latinist wishing to quickly read the whole work, the literature/humanities enthusiast looking to add the Aeneid to their reading list, or even the casual reader who can appreciate the conventions of epic poetry.

It goes without saying that Vergil's Aeneid is one of the greatest works of literature, but Ruden's translation does it particular justice.

The Roman poet Virgil, normally content with evocations of farming, animal husbandry and rustic scenes, here takes up the task of crafting an epic worthy of Rome's greatness and success as a world power. Taking as his model the Odyssey of Homer, Virgil traces the wanderings of Aeneas, hero of the Trojan Wars, as he wends his way toward Italy and his destiny -- to found Rome. Along the way he falls in love with Queen Dido of Carthage. There are lots of scenes of battles and one-on-one fighting, and they are occasionally more gory than Homer ever was (or perhaps it just seems that way because we know more about the victims' psyches than we did with Homer's characters). Be prepared for a rather abrupt ending, but the good news is you won't have to wade through obsequies and other formalisms in a denouement that could only have been anticlimactic. The prose translation I heard (on the Blackstone unabridged tapes) was undoubtedly accurate but not very noble. Someday I'll try it again with a poetic version.

Of course this is a Classical book, one of the most important in all English literature. The poetic translation is excellent. It's not a "beach read" -- it takes time and attention to enjoy it. If you enjoy books by Homer, or other Classical writers, you'll find this captivating.

This does not seem to be the most commonly read translation of the Aeneid , but I am afraid that it is the only one I have read so I cannot compare it to other translations. I have not read the original Latin, either, so I cannot compare Mandelbaum's translation to the original. But I do feel I can say that Mandelbaum's verse is well written, so that the story is beautiful, flows smoothly, and is easy to understand.

The Aeneid is a great story, which everyone should read, but I find that it does suffer in comparison to the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" because it feels much more constructed. You always feel a step removed from Aeneas--it is easy to imagine instead Virgil sitting at his desk praising Caesar and the Romans. Virgil clearly was very heavily influenced by Homer, and wanted to write a version for the Romans. The first half of the Aeneid seems to mirror closely the structure and locations of the Odyssey, while the second half is quite similar to the Iliad. Aeneid even recieves a shield from Hephaestus/Vulcan, just like Achilles.

The Aeneid definitely strikes me as more lyrical and less gritty than the Iliad, at least in translation. Still, many passages are powerful. especially Book II, which narrates the fall of Troy. I almost cried when Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, slaughtered King Priam.

I highly recommend the Aeneid as both a fascinating, thought provoking read and a work essential to Roman and Western culture.

Despite being presented in a prose format, David West's is the most poetic modern English Aeneid around. The words just keep coming, rolling and rich with inventive clarity, senuous allusions, roiling action and stirring speeches, all without the distraction of broken lines, poetic meters and awkward constructions. It has been hard for me to put down, and often hard to refrain from quoting to uninterested persons, particularly in the case of descriptions of Dido's lovesickness. A truly great translation of a great book.

This translation of Virgil's masterpiece is the perfect choice for a reader who wishes to experience the original form of this Augustine work of art. It is written in easy flowing and accessible blank verse, unlike the rather cloggy and unattractive prose translations. After all The Aeneid was written to be read as an epic poem: not the post Renaissance format of a novel, and Lewis's translation is as close to capturing the originally intended delivery as you can get without the lengthy process of learning Latin .
This classic epic poem was commissioned by Augustus Caesar in 31BC, a task which was reluctantly accepted by Virgil. Ten years of writing followed, and unfortunately the poet died, by contracting a disease, whilst returning from a trip to Athens. The epic was not fully revised by then, yet the contents of all twelve books are complete except for a rather abrupt ending.
However, just before his death Virgil left strict instructions for The Aeneid to be burnt: lost to the world for all time. Yet this commanded was counteracted by Caesar. Why was this? Why didn't Virgil want the greatest poem in Latin to be discovered for its prominence?
These are questions which will truly interest any reader. When you hold this book in your hands you cannot help thinking that Virgil did not want you to read this - if it had not been for the Imperial arm of Caesar we would be forever lacking this great Latin work. Thus a guilty feeling pervades when reading The Aeneid, moreover, those of you already well versed in Greek mythology will know that Actaeon paid very highly for his antlers, a lesson hard to forget whilst perusing prohibited splendour.
When commissioned to write an epic with the sole purpose of portraying an almighty Augustus in 31 BC it is difficult to capture the magic of Homeric Hymns. To have the inclusion of gods and mystical powers in ordered Roman society would have been simply laughed at. Therefore Virgil chose the legendary founder of Rome - Aeneas of Troy - as the protagonist of his epic. This poem documents the various adventures of Aphrodite's son: whose quest is to find his destined homeland - Italy. Jupiter has ordained that Aeneas's ancestors will become the great masters of Rome, and it is here that Virgil can cleverly celebrate Augustus's magnificent achievements.
But what is the underlying meaning to Virgil's epic? What you can witness in The Aeneid is Homer's similar appreciation of acts of bravery; yet what you will observe for the first time is the dreadful price that Imperialism exacts. Aeneas is forced to reject his passionate love, experience the death of his father, and kill the noble sons of people he is destined to rule.
Therefore a fundamental enigma in Virgil's work must be to endeavour whether this is a work that supports Imperialism or refutes it. Did Virgil advocate Augustus's omnipotence? If yes, why did the poet wish the epic to be destroyed? The price of blood for the fellowship of freedom is one continual theme that pervades not only archaic history, but also that of the modern day; and in Virgil's masterpiece it is portrayed no less effectively than in all great works of literature.

Allen Mandelbaum has given us the greatest English verse translation of the greatest Latin epic, the Aeneid. Mandelbaum manages to tune the Latin lyre to the beats of English verse without befouling it with the tediousness of the rhyming couplet. One truly hears the ancient voice of Virgil resounding in the contemporary pages of Mandelbaum's work. Aeneas on quest for homeland, Juno's savage rage, the burning passion of Dido, the two hero's struggle for the hand of Lavinia--all these themes and more will be realized almost fully in the original light upon which the master Virgil cast them.

Ruden, Fagles, Dryden, whatever, who cares? These reviews are all mixed up, with all the different translations thrown in together, including recorded versions. Just glancing over the 330 reviews I see some of everything, and others that don't specify what. Its the Ruden, as pictured, that I'm enjoying at this present moment. It is completely gripping, with all the beauty, clarity, and pace anyone could hope for.

I am not a fan of Verse...I've always prefered Prose but I think this is the first time I actually fell in love with Verse!

Sarah Ruden's translation is absolutely incredible! I can't believe how powerful and exciting (not to mention poetic) it is!

It almost seems that it could have even been written in (high) English verse

After comparing multiple versions I have to say that it is perhaps the most faithful, epic and poetic translation I've come by written in Verse.

It ranks at the top together with Jackson Knight's and Stanley Lonbardo's translations.

Hats off to Sarah Ruden and all who read this magnificent version!

Ryan

This is my favorite of all the verse translations of _The Aeneid_ out there. Last September one of my students chose Aeneas and played that role in _The Iliad_ and _The Aeneid_ in my Classics class. He wanted to buy the book and I recommended this translation. Of course he couldn't find it, so I assumed it was out of print. When his mom invited several of his teachers to his graduation party, I knew what I had to get for him. I ordered both this and Edith Hamilton's _Mythology_. He was delighted! Cecil Day Lewis' translation is both accurate and beautiful.

The Aeneid by Virgil was an interesting read. For those who have read the Iliad or Odyssey, you will probably find that the Aeneid is an easier epic to read and comprehend. Virgil uses a similar style of writing as Homer but goes on to add some of his own twists. One thing to note about the Aeneid is that due to its translation from Latin, the gods and some of the characters of the Iliad and Odyssey names have changed, but their character in the epics is relatively constant. The Aeneid is an interesting epic of Aeneas's journey from the fallen Troy to Italy, where he establishes a city that will later become the Roman Empire. The first half of the Aeneid is seen as the Odyssean half because it describes the travels of Aeneas from Troy to Italy. The second half of the book is referred to as the Iliadic half because it involves fighting, similar to fighting of the Iliad. If you are looking for an epic filled with love, death, divine intervention, fate, and war then the Aeneid is a great choice.

Fitzgerald's version of the Aeneid is literature in its own right. Readable without being sing-songy, classic without being stilted, this translation kept me hooked on the Aeneas story long after high school Latin class ended at Book 6, and it stirred my imagination to such an extent that I got the impudent idea to emulate him in The Laviniad: An Epic Poem.

And as for the poem itself, this seminal work of Western literature deeply inspired everyone from Augustine to Dante, but unfortunately seems to be passing out of academic consciousness. Vergil's Aeneid is the very pinnacle of Ancient Roman literature, a classic story of piety, duty, and honor as opposed to immediate gratification and selfish interest. It represents the very best ideals that ancient Rome had to offer. Perhaps in this modern age those virtues don't seem relevant--but if so, that's why we need this poem all the more.

Aeneis by Virgil is a classic of its time. I am required to read this book by my English teacher, but I would not put it down if he told me I didn't have to. This book gives a mythological account of the trials of Aeneas and the Trojan refugees after exiled from their homeland by the Greeks. Jupiter (the king of the gods) would have Aeneis found a colony that would eventually become an empire in Italy, while Juno (the queen of the gods) tries to delay Aenies' fate for as long as posible. Aeneis goes through many trials in this epic and if you enjoy history with a twist of fantasy and mythology then you will be hooked the moment you start into this book.

There is a reason that this story, along with the Iliad and Odyssey, remain in print today. The reason is that this story is wonderful. The introduction by Mr. Knox is also very good.

I have been waiting for Mr. Fagles to provide a translation of this story since I read his translations of the Iliad and Odyssey. Of the three, this one ranks third. However, this does not mean that the Aeneid is not a great story. It is certainly the least known of the three but it is still worth the read. The translation by Mr. Fagles gives us a story that is readable and understandable. I know that this is a poem like the ones by Homer but giving up the poem style for a more modern translation makes the story more understandable and readable.

If you have not read this story but have read the Iliad and Odyssey, then read this one. If you have not read any of the three, then I suggest reading them all and make sure they are the ones translated by Mr. Fagles. I also would suggest starting with the Iliad and then continuing with Odyssey and then the Aenied.

The only problem that I had with this story is that the gods are the same as in the Iliad and Odyssey but they have different names. In the Iliad and Odyssey the gods are identified by their Greek names, such a Zeus and Hera. In the Aeneid, however, the gods are identified by their Roman names, such as Jupiter or Jove (Zeus) and Juno (Hera). It took a little getting use to but after a book or two it was no longer a problem.

I truly enjoyed this story. The last 6 books are much better than the first 6 books but the first 6 are also very good and necessary to the whole story.

This story will not dissappoint. Again, there is a reason that this story has been around for so very long - it is just a wonderful read.

The Aeneid is the least known of the classical triumvirate of the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid. Some parts are boring, but overall it has a great story. It's basically How Aeneus fled Troy after it's fall to find New Troy, or more commonly known as a little city called Rome. Also, many have ignored the great battle scenes of books 6-12. This is really where the story of the Trojan horse comes from and the phrase "don't trust Greeks bearing gifts" (actually, it's really supposed to be: "Even when Greeks bring gifts, I fear them, gifts and all!") This is the best translation there is, Fitzgerald is a master.

I will keep this short and sweet. I am a fan of epic poetry. I have read a few different translations of the Iliad, Odyssey and the works of Dante. The Penguin translation is a great translation of a great story. the is excellent, with good notes. I was very impressed and look forward to read others to compare. For a beginner to epic poems, I recommend the Penguin as a starter.

Any avid reader will eventually come to a point where he/she should read the classics, whether it is in school, or on their own time. The problem with reading literature like the Aeneid of Virgil is that you are not going to be able to read the poem in the original, unless you have learned Latin (which is not something many people do these days, though I myself have learned and continue to learn more Latin). Translations can either capture the essence of a piece well, or they can't, and you never truly will know whether the translation you've picked is one of the "good" or the "bad." In my opinion, having read Dickinson's translation, and several others, as well as having looked at the original as far as my abilities would permit, I'd have to say that this translation isn't the greatest. It will do in a pinch, however, I believe there are better to be found, specifically Allen Mandelbaum's and the recently released Robert Fagles translations. They would probably give you a somewhat better feel for the actual epic, while at the same time making the English itself sound beautiful. But, as they say, about taste, there is no disputing.

The point of this poem is to celebrate Roman qualities and to promote Roman patriotism. Roman civilization has a lot of strong and beneficial qualities that are still of use to us today. After all, about 70% of our language is Roman, and so is an awful large part of our culture and ways of thought. The Romans had many noble qualities and this story culls them all together in one man: Aeneas. Aeneas is very much like the Maximus character portrayed in the film 'Gladiator' and Artorius in 'King Arthur': enduring, brave, noble, honest, kind. These qualities are always refreshing to read about and well worth emulating in our own day to day lives even if we don't express them to each other at home and at work in highly polished Latin or English verses. This poem has never stopped being read from the time it was first written and was as important a part of Medieval culture as it was of Imperial Roman. Many of our ideas of Knighthood owe their inspiration to this poem of Vergil's. Vergil writes in a highly compact and polite style reflecting the polished culture of his times. He celebrates Rome's divine mission as civilizer of the world. He weaves in what was the best of Roman culture into his tale to create an ideal portrait of the ideal Roman man. In this web is all the Greek lore and philosophical speculation side by side with the belief in a divine King inherited from the fusion of Greek and Eastern cultures known to us as the Hellenistic world. Rome here is an ideal society composed at once of Greek scientific and moral thought and Near-Eastern monarchy decorated with Greek art and native Italian legends. What the Greeks lacked in political union, the Italians in literature and art, and other lands in 'civilization', Rome would supply by combining them all into one global realm. Rome is to provide the shelter under which civilization can flourish: that is her mission. To lead this mission are required brave leaders and warriors, of which Aeneas and his followers are the ideals and the Emperor and Roman elite the reality. At the time of writing, Rome was seen as the greatest political unit that had ever existed, and none of this was lost on the author of this nation's greatest poem. Vergil was thus writing in his intent the greatest nation's greatest poem, and by logical deduction therefore the 'most important' work of literature ever written. On his deathbed Vergil apparently felt he had not quite succeeded in this attempt yet and requested the book to be burned, but it was far too valuable a piece of praise for the 'divine' Emperor for it to be allowed to be destroyed. Far from being obliterated, its verses were recited all the way to the far corners of the Empire, and were still being sung without cease, the living words remaining long after the Empire itself collapsed. The ideal of Rome told in this story, of a Roman 'Camelot' of sorts, has inspired countless readers with cloudy dreams of nobility and glory ever since. This is a tale to inspire the legions and every Roman with a brave sense of duty and mission "to teach the ways of peace to the conquered, to spare the defeated, tame the proud". This tale of divine monarchy, Greek art & thought and Roman spirit was to formulate what it means to be a Roman, and to delineate the basic principles of the Roman way of life. Vergil's tale is pure magic when understood in this light. This is not just another fictional novel, and should not be read as such; it is rather the very essence of Rome. If you are a Medievalist, you should be pleased to know that the Aeneid was very important in promoting the idea of the "Holy Roman Empire". Also, Dante draws a great deal of inspiration for his Divine Comedy from Vergil, up to the point of actually having Vergil as his tour guide of Hell and Purgatory. One note of caution to those who have read Homer already is that the Aeneid mimics many elements of both homeric epics.

I've compared multiple versions of the Aeneid and West's is easily a great version, but his subtle revisions made for the new Penguin edition of 2002, do more harm then good in my opinion.

He has divided his original long paragraphs now into two or three paragraphs for this edition, has changed the order of his sentences and structure, also adding words into them. All this making it feel more "modern" and novel-like.

Don't get me wrong it definitely doesn't sound like a translation when you read it, but this version departs from the original epic form David West had created for the original Penguin Edition entitled "Seven Wonders of the World" released in 1991.

I would try to get West's original translation instead of this release.

I find the Fagles translations superb, and personally I appreciate their moderate modern colloquialism. I have read (but not listened to) his rendition of Homer's Odyssey, and I have heard (but not read) this audiobook of the Aeneid. The latter experience revealed clearly, in a way that silent reading did not, Fagles' extreme care with assonance and alliteration in his translations. This is both useful and beautiful. If you have only read Fagles' Aeneid, you may appreciate both Virgil and Fagles in new ways if you are lucky enough to hear this audio version.

Callow's performance is theatrical, yes, but I welcome that: When the storm thunders so does Callow, when a harpie screeches so does Callow. His enunciation is crystal clear and yet so agile that it carries the listener in a compelling flow. He races when the action does, and stops dead at profound moments. I felt myself in the hands of a master throughout.

Ancient poetry was meant to be performed, heard. Give yourself the gift of hearing this one -- though it's in English, those of us with no Latin could do no better than these CDs, and this is a noble and delicious English rendition.

I am currently in the process of re-reading this translation of Vergil's Aeneid. When I first read it, I had much less experience in Latin than I now have. Thus, the language seemed cumbersome to me, and the story was simply a rather uninteresting spin-off of Homer's classics.

For my senior year of hich scool, I studied the original Latin of the Aeneid, and have come to a greater appreciation for the poetic beauty and complexity which is wrought throughout the work. Occasionally I resorted to Fitsgerald's translation to see exactly how my rendering compares with his, and this is where I feel the books few weaknesses became transparent.

Fitzgerald's translation is a noble contribution to English verse in its own right. His variety of word choice and understnading of the original texts makes this translation one of the best. However, for someone like myself, who wants to compare translations, the lines of the book are numbered accoriding to how Fitsgerald has translated them. For example, the first page shows 26 lines, while covering only the first 16 lines of the first book. This can be annoying, but it is truly minor if one is reading Vergil for pleasure.

The other weakness (and this can hardly be considered one) relates to Fitxgerald's translational style as a whole. For those of you who are Bible translation-buffs, I think that Fitzgerald captures Vergil's original meaning as well as the NLT (New Living Translation) retains the sense of the Biblical texts. This is not an indictment of the NLT, but merely a comparison. And like the NLT, this translation has its rightful place on the shelf of any serious Latin scholar. However, for those of us who are more literal-minded, a more literal transation may be better.

On the whole, a great book.

This review is one of the this particular translation and not of Virgil's Aeneid. This translation is outstanding. It is a prose translation undoubtedly made by some nineteenth century British Classicist. That, however, takes nothing away from it. This is the one translation I have found that actually succeeds at keeping the beauty of Virgil's words. It makes for great sounding language and it is not spoiled by modern idioms or expressions. The translator keeps his text very literal and yet somehow manages not to sound redundant or awkward. Indeed, the words simply flow. I do not know who the translator is and oddly enough, the book doesn't tell you either. I highly recommend this translation especially to anyone who is tired of the classics not sounding like classics.

"Of arms I sing and of the man who first From Trojan shores beneath the ban of fate..."
I first read this book when I was 14 and can still vividly recall the first book of this work of art verbatim.
Arguably, the most poignant writer of his era, Virgil wrote with a grace and style rarely ever read. My advice: Purchase this book. A fine bottle of cognac, set aside an evening without the family and let this book take you on an unforgettable journey into what it is to be human.

This is the translation we read in my Latin 3 class in high school when we studied Vergil. The prose was very readable and not much seemed to be lost in translation as it tends to be with poetry translations. I purchased my own copy to use for reference, and although I have read several translations of the Aeneid since my junior year of high school, this is by far my favorite. David West did an excellent job, and I loved the summaries and analyses of each of the 12 books he puts in the beginning of the text--it makes it easy to refer to. The introduction provides great historical background, and this is a great reference to use when working with the Aeneid in the original Latin. I highly recommend this to everyone interested in the Classics looking for a good read.

Thanks to Augustus Ceaser for not buring the Aeneid, not listening to Virgil's request before he died thinking that it wasn't finished. Well Augustus Ceaser read and completely refused due to the well written story(epic) that Virgil has written.

This story is well written, with many flashbacks going to back to the "Illiad" by Homer, in Book #2 and really shows how the "Trojan Horse" was used. Many discredit this theory. But I personally think there is a lost book of Homer the 3rd one where it is between the "Illiad" and "Odyssey" Well Virgil, made that book since we have not found it. Thanks to Virgil who fills in theories of what happen between the "Illiad" and "Odyssey"

This form of the Aeneid is well written and very well understood. Overall Effect: 5/5

I first read this translation several years ago, and recently re-read it. It is a very accurate and enjoyable translation. Like the other reviewer, I have read it in the Latin. Obviously if you know the Latin, nothing compares to the original language, but if you don't read Latin or you don't want to work at translating it yourself, this is the translation that is best for you.

Robert Fagles translation turns a classic piece of literature into a readable text. I bought the book because I so enjoyed Fagles translations of The Illiad and The Odyssey, and I have not been disappointed. The translation eschews hexameter verse (almost impossible to preserve in a translation) in favor of the story and readability, but he preserves the poetry which makes these works such a marvel. It makes me want to read the text aloud so the drama will be felt. The introduction by Bernard Knox was tedious and prolix, so I would skip it unless you need background in the classics. I believe Virgil was the first to use a woman, Dido, as a main character. The story of her love of Aeneas and depression when he leaves her at the behest of Mercury is both powerful and contemporary--mankind has not changed. Kudos to Fagles. If you have not read Greek or Roman classics before, the translations by Fagles are sure to captivate you.

...excessive or ornate, unneccesarily complex.(from the Latin tugere- to be swollen.)
Mandlebaum's translation is heavy and dull, like an Al Gore speech
from his pre-neo-populist days. The glossary is succinct and helpful, but there are so many references and classical allusions that putting the glossary in the back serves to frustrate the reader. An edition with facing-page glossary notes, like the old Folger Library Shakespeares, would be an immense help to the general reader.
(The translator seems to emphasize capturing the original meter over rendering a breezy narrative. To be fair to Mandlebaum, Virgil ISN'T a light and lively poet, and unlike Homer he didn't write for a popular audience, at least not on purpose.)
All in all, a serviceable but uninspiring translation, at least to boob like me.

I actually translated The Aeneid from Latin to English when I was a junior in high school. However, I realized as I studied it for my Masters Epic/Mythology class, I was definitely not translating for comprehension. I must say that Homer has ruined me and I did not find Virgil's tragic view of life as inspiring... especially if we are to learn about Western civilization from it. If Aeneas went through the "ivory gate" of false dreams... what does that say about our fate as a country? This is a question still being debated about the propaganda this book supposedly represented of Roman history. Ultimately, I feel for Aeneas and his fate. It was his destiny to establish the foundations of Rome, and due to Juno's fury, those who loved him (especially Dido and Lavinia) suffered.

David West's translation of this epic (actually rather manageably sized when compared with the Odyssey) pulls away from the tradition of the translations from the first half or so of the 20th century, in which great works of grand Greek and Latin poetry were forced unyieldingly into affected (and often stilted) English verse (think Fitzgerald's beautiful but distractingly florid renditions). West charts a different course, reflecting more modern trends in scholarship. He chooses not to match verse with verse and recreate the epic in English in an attempt to draw the contemporary reader into it as deeply as the original reader. Instead, he conveys as much of the original epic's meaning and nuance as possible in simple, clear, surprisingly elegant prose, allowing Vergil himself to draw the reader in once more.

This is a lucid, graceful delivery of the Aeneid. It's an enjoyable read that moves quickly and offers more of the original than any other translation. I've read several, and this mature, well-presented work is the most useful, satisfying, and accessible of all. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

This is an excellent example of classical literature. Mandelbaum excites his readers with his creative translating abilities. He really captures the essence of the classical genre. Virgil's masterpiece is indeed the very work that inspired Dante in his Divine Comedy trilogy. It is existential, authentic, and inspirational. Virgil's epic focuses on the historical vicissitudes of imperial Rome. The epic format is perhaps the only credible characterization that could possibly re-enact for the reader the empire that was Rome. An incredible read, a must for all classical enthusiasts, and the student alike.

It's Virgil's answer to Homer. It's Rome's answer to Troy.Virgil may have imitated Homer, but he did not imitate his language and this remains the finest example of literary genius in the Latin language. It has been splendidly translated in this Everyman edition.

Okay, so it's dense and difficult to follow -- especially Book 3 -- but if you want to read The Aeneid, this is a great translation. Robert Fagles keeps the poetic imagery of Virgil very well and there are some passages you aren't likely to forget in a hurry. If you're looking for an exciting, easy-to-read book, don't read this. If you're looking for good writing, some history, and an entertaining but long story, this is for you.

5 stars for the translation: The meaning and context is clearly understandable and easily readable. Mandelbaum's translation was very good. The Fitzgerald translation was passable. I always felt that Fitzgerald "rewrote" the Aeneid in a style HE thought should have been written. Fagles' translation does justice to Virgil in that Fagles has translated it in a style and manner more closely to what Virgil orginally wrote.

MINUS 2 stars: voicing and voice characterization
This is the most annoying aspect of this reading. Simon Callow is no George Guidall or Frank Muller as fans of recordedbooks will quickly notice.

Callow's voice characterization can only be described as high screechy/wailing and raspy for female reading parts. This includes all harpies, sibyls and most disappointing of all Dido. He just seems to use the same characterization for all of them and it gets rather tiresome quickly. And to top it off, sometimes he starts in this high screeching raspy voice and then reverts to his stentorian Shakespearean voice for the rest of the part.

Most disappointing considering that Simon Callow does have a very forceful dramatic voice when he reads in his own style. I just wish he had used it for the entire read.

MINUS 1 star: Voice dynamics
His voice dynamics is uneven...sometimes his voice is booming and at other times it is almost at an inaudible whisper. I listen to this in my car and I find that I have to rewind numerous times to hear what he said.

Summary: Until there is a better audio - read the poem instead and let your imagination take you to a time and place long gone but whose hero's travails are somehow relevant to this time and place. I guess that's why this poem is still being read today.

Simon Callow is a wonderful narrator, and his booming, mellifluous voice is remarkably suited to this poem. Also, this is unabridged, which is wonderful, if rare. This recording inspired me to go out and buy the unabridged Odyssey and the (regrettably) abridged Iliad, read by Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi respectively. I wish recordings of the classics were available, unabridged, and read by any of these three masters.

I cannot really say what made me read the Aeneid, except that it jumped off the shelf at me. The way books do! Just before, I had read the Odyssey and the Iliad (both were the Robert Fitzgerald translations). Allen Mandlebaum's translation of the Aeneid was excellent. I appreciated the glossary, as I referred to it many times. I also had an old copy of Monarch's notes for the Aeneid and this helped, too.

Hi this review is largely inspired by the review by ronald kane, and partly in response to a review by a nineth grade prodigy following ronald's review. The book itself is grand, however i must agree that the rhyming (or lack there of) distracted me greatly. Jewel is a wonderful poet, so is michael bolton, i think that Virgil might (let me stress the word might here) have fashioned many of his stanzas on bolton's remake of "when a man loves a woman" (ie not always rhyming but beautiful nonetheless.) I feel that perhaps many poeple (namely pedantic nineth graders) will read this text and not truly grasp the depths of Virgil's musical backround and/or influences-- take more time with your next review little fellow... the book is not that bad.

If you like the works of Homer then you will thoroughly enjoy The Aeneid. The story begins right after the fall of Troy and tells of the travels of the Trojans as they search for their destined land. Virgil writes very much in the style of Homer and anyone who is a fan of the Iliad and Odyssey will really enjoy this book.

I also picked up the scribner library soft cover edition- have to say it's a handsome book. This is my first time reading Aeneid- I brought this edition for a reading copy to bring the rome. Nothing is going to blow a sophisiticated reader a way in terms of the analysis, but it was fine to read.

I am listening to this book on a reading download. It is indeed a wonderful, wonderful book. I am listening to it on a second go-round and only this time realized the greatness of what I was listening to. The introduction by the reviewer was very helpful for me.

The reader is at his best on this one.

Ben

This is a fine new translation and edition of the Aeneid. Fagles is a well known translator whose translations of Homer are outstanding. While not literate in Latin, I enjoyed reading this translation and found it to be comparable in poetic impact to older translations such as those of Fitzgerald and Humphries. I can't say, however, that it is better. This is a very handsome volume with an excellent introduction by Bernard Knox, a fine bibliography, and a good index and glossary.

I suspect enthusiasm for this translation will be largely a function of enthusiasm for Virgil. In the Aeneid, Virgil attempted the difficult task of producing an epic that combined the voyaging elements of the Odyssey with the combat of the Iliad. In addition, it is a panegyric to the newly established Augustan Empire. Its impossible to avoid comparing this work to Homer and I fear that it suffers in that comparison.

Well bound good translation. Worth a long intense read if you haven't read it, but keep a pad ready if you want to keep extensive track of the universe that is a bit different from our own. Don't confuse Virgil's world with the poor imitation that Hollywood has put forth.

I think Fagles's translation is not good or one to one, if you compare it with original text. Fagles removed or neglected some conjunctions, contextual copulatives and Virgil's original mid-sentences. For example in 10.285, Virgil says "haec ait, et secum versat quos ducere contra", but Fagles translates as "urging them on but torn: whom to lead..." Where is "haec ait" ("he said this" or "so saying" as Loeb's) and "secum versat" ("he ponders with himself" as Loeb's)? I found a lot of examples like this. If you wanna say this translation is good, I think you should compare it with original text firstly. I recommend Fairclough's (Loeb), Ahl's (Oxford) translations.

Robert Fitzgerald's translation of The Aeneid, while highly acclaimed, is a very low fidelity translation. Fitzgerald shows throughout the translation that he is an excellent writter, poet, etc. However, as a translator, his work is much below what I would have hoped. Unfortunately, Fitzgerald seems to have decided that Vergil was not as great a writer as himself in any way, because he blatantly ignores the Latin in his translation. While one would expect all translators to interpret The Aeneid in a different way, one should NOT expect them to completely paraphrase, cut out words, and add many extra ones to a quality translation, like Fitzgerald has. If you are not using this translation and comparing it to the original Latin, than this is a great read. However, if you are looking for a translation that holds high regard for the words of Vergil, look elsewhere, because Fitzgerald seeks not to translate the Aeneid, but to rewrite it as his own work.

this book is overall an "epic" read, detailing the origins of one of the world's greatest empires, it does a wonderful job of weaving in the many mythological origins leading to the creation of Rome as a city and indeed also includes a full list of the line of Emperors that will change the world and shape it to be what we now know. Mixed in with the history is of course the talents of Virgil to create scenes that evoke the tender sentiment of love to that of the strongest blood lust. this makes for a great book to read and one that will generally attract readers of all ages and interests. the translation is also quite helpful in making the reading enjoyable as opposed to a trial.

This version of The Aeneid is very accessible and exciting. I enjoyed reading the Aeneid more than I did the Iliad. Maybe that's because Aeneas is a more centralized, likeable character than Achilles. This is a very good book and it is a pity there are not more epics written like this today.

without an exhibition of my knowledge of the poem, since i am repeatedly iritated by the reviews on this site, because theyre not reviews so much as pretentious displays of what the reviewer 'knows', just long winded psuedo-lectures from people who think they know something remarkable . . . enough about that. the closest the printed word ever came to making me cry was book 2 of this poem, it is quite simply the most moving thing ive ever read, and ive read alot. fitzgerald is wonderful. buy this.

Hello, this is the ghost of the Roman poet, Virgil here to clear up a few things. Do not inquire why I am typing in English, it is a greater mystery why a ghost is so concerned with internet reviews, that he returns from Elysium to right a few wrongs. First, I lived over 2000 years ago, rhyming didn't exist back then. And second, I feel as though I have a far stronger connection with my muse, Calliope, than this "Bolton" character. Now, if you will excuse me, I hear Dis and Proserpine beckoning me back to the sheer bliss of Elysium. P.S. No, I never met "Maximus"

The Aeneid is definetly a great book and Mandelbaum is a great translator. I had to read the Aeneid for my Latin class this year. My teacher has used this version for quite a few years. It is easy to understand, flows well, and captures the original essence of the poem. The Aeneid is a incredible poem with just about everything in it. I most definetly reccomend this book.

The author is the best translator of Homer that I have read, his Aeneid is very very good, but something still tells me that the best translation for our era is still to come. This version is the version I read if I want to read the Aeneid, Virgil's unquestionable masterpeice. Or maybe, Virgil just isn't quite as good as Homer. If I had time to learn Greek and Latin I could tell myself, but I will just have to keep reading translations to approach as close as I can to the originals.

I read this translation of the 'Aeneid' in preparation for an AP latin course. Consequently while I was reading the translation I was comparing it with the original latin. In doing this I saw that Fitzgerald kept very close to the meaning of the original text but there were times in which he took a little bit too much artistic liberty. But this can be said of any translation of the 'Aeneid' because the grammer in it does leave room for interpretation. In comparison with other translations of the 'Aeneid' I have to say that this is one of the best. (Note to the wise: Stay away from the Dryden translation of the 'Aeneid')

The key to a good translation is to make it accessible to a reader living milennia after it was written. Fagles is simply superb in rendering Vergil's poetry for a modern English reader. He will rescue the Aeneid for generations of students in much the same way that Heaney has rescued Beowulf.

This is probably one of the most often reproduced, translated and published books on earth, and with good reason. The mythical foundation of Rome is laid out in this book, with its epic characters and plot, it is a must-read for anyone interested in the classics.

[This review relates to the wondrous Penguin Classics
edition of THE AENEID, "Tranlated into English Prose with
an Introduction by W.F.Jackson Knight."]
If Virgil could lead the poet Dante through the wasteland
and Inferno at the end of the Middle Ages, perhaps the poet
Virgil, aided by the skill and inspiration of the translator
W.F.Jackson Knight, might perform the same needed function for
us, here at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st
centuries.
W.F.Jackson Knight, in his very interesting and insightful
"Introduction," makes the argument that "the AENEID of Virigl
is a gateway between the pagan and the Christian centuries."
That much, itself, might serve as the basis for some excellent
essays of analysis and interpretation. But Knight has his own
path to tread. So we should let him.
-------------
"In the beginning, Rome had been a tiny settlement
surrounded by enemies -- and it had needed a strong will:
proud,disciplined, and sustained -- to survive at all.
Rome did survive and was led on by successive hard-won
victories to world dominion.
The early history is obscure, but the process seems
to have taken at least five centuries of almost continuous
warfare, and during that period the Romans achieved
unparalleled success, apparently through unique merits
of their own, combined with a special share of divine
favor and good fortune [a nice touch of Pagan sentiment,
there, to counter-balance the perhaps over-emphasis on
the Christian tie at the beginning]. This spectacular rise
of Rome was a matter for wonder and a certain reverence
to the Romans themselves, especially when, in the
later years of the republican period, new chances of peace
and prosperity, AND A NEW ACCESS OF SKEPTICISM threatened
THE OLD HABITS OF LOYALTY, INTEGRITY, and SELF-SACRIFICE"
[capitals are mine].
---------
Knight continues with his excellent "Introduction" and talks
of Publius Vergilius Maro [usually denoted as "Virgil"], the
excellent, visionary poet and artist who created the epic
poem for Roman patriotic pride, values teaching, and national
identity -- THE AENEID.
I especially like Knight's discussion of the influences on
Virgil as he wrote the epic.
--------
"The AENEID is the third, last, and longest of Virgil's
poems. It is a legendary narrative, a story about the
imagined origin of the Roman nation in times long before the
foundation of Rome itself. * * * The AENEID, as any epic should
be, is an exciting story extremely well told and full of
incident; it can be read as a story and nothing more. However,
besides being a story, it is a kind of moving picture --
carrying allusive, and in a sense, symbolic meanings. * * *
In the poem [the gods and goddesses]communicate with mortal men
either directly or through dreams, visions, omens, and the
words of prophets and clairvoyants. Virgil had no doubt that
the affairs of the earthly world are subject to the powers of
another world, a world which is normally, but by no means
always, invisible, but no less real for that....
* * * The great poets have a way of making what is seen
reveal the unseen; and they seem to do this better if they
collect an enormous quantity of observations on life, their
own and other people's, and then condense it under strong
pressure so that even a few words have a great power of
suggestion and persuasion. No doubt they are all the time
choosing with precise accuracy what is most important. The
result is an allusive and partly symbolic kind of language
able to communicate not merely single happenings but the
universal truth behind them.
These greater poets also reach back across past time, and
represent a view of the world which belongs not to one man
or one generation of men but to the men of many succeeding
generations or even a whole civilization. The experience
which is distilled may be the experience of many centuries;
and it may be condensed and focused by a single genius in
a single poetic statement. That is what Virgil did to the
experience of the Greeks and Romans in the AENEID."
["Introduction." W.F. Jackson Knight. AENEID. Penguin
Classics.]
-----------------
In talking of the other literary influences which helped
inspire Virgil and which he distilled into his own poetic
process with the helps of the fires of creative energy
and intuition, Knight mentions (of course) the fact of Homer
and his two major epics, the ILIAD and the ODYSSEY.
He also mentions the influence of Lucretius. But he says:
"Virgil knew his [Lucretius] work well and made free use
of many hundreds of his phrases in the AENEID, and let them
suggest ideas. But since HE VIOLENTLY DISAGREED WITH
THE MATERIALISTIC PHILOSOPHY of LUCRETIUS, he could not
adopt his thought. Indeed, he apparently delighted in turning
it upside down, and expressing something far more like the
idealistic philosophy of PLATO, even when the phrases of
Lucretius were influencing him."
I very much prefer Knight's "prose" English version of the
AENEID over most of the other ones which I have encountered.
His English prose flows like poetry, and is eminently readable
as well as instantly understood. One encounters that famous
opening, translated so well into intuitive, inspired English
prose: "This is a tale of arms and of a man. Fated to be
an exile, he was the first to sail from the land of Troy
and reach Italy, at its Lavinian shore. He met many
tribulations on his way both by land and on the ocean; high
Heaven willed it, for Juno was ruthless and could not forget
her anger. And he had also to endure great suffering in
warfare."
Inspiring and instructive, for Romans, for Dante, and
for us!

I just started this book, and have really been looking forward to it. Now Im so disapointed because I cant understand it because of the readers dramatic reading. I am still listening but Im in the market for another copy read by someone else. rb

I think I was way in over my head trying to get into this book. I have read some other ancient texts (Gilgamesh, Odyssey), but those seemed a lot simpler and straight-forward than this. A classic so they say, but so many gods and stories all thrown together...I just couldn't make heads or tails about it.

No reflection on the book, which looks like a nice read (It rhymes!), but the writer of the blurb at top seems to think the work is Greek. Dude, it's a warhorse of high school Latin classes. Vergil is THE Big Deal Latin poet. Also, while I'm at it, WHOSE translation is this? That's fundamental. Vergil didn't write THESE words, or engineer these rhymes. Whoever did should get credit.

This is a terrible reading by Simon Callow - it is hammy and impossible to listen to at a single volume. His voice drops so low at the end of most sentences, you simply can't hear him. It sounds as though he has run out of breath, not something you expect from a professional actor. Did the producer not listen to the takes before it was published? It has put me off buying from Penguin in future. Stick to Naxos - they maya be expensive but you can hear them.

I don't think that anyone could ask for a better presentation of Virgil's classic. Fagles's translation is scintillating. When I listen to a work like this I generally simultaneously read or consult a number of translations, and Fagles definitely has created a wondrous and exceptional work in English. Simon Callow's rendition is simultaneously exhilarating and haunting. Highly recommended.

I am a great lover of all things classical. Got my first book of Greek myths in elementary school, started taking Latin in 9th grade, loved the Odyssey, liked the Iliad, love Ovid, Aeschylus, Suetonius, Livy, all the ancient heavy hitters....except Virgil. Robert Fagles does a good job translating, this story just didn't do it for me.

There were a lot of really good exciting bits in the Aeneid, but the whole thing didn't hang together. It seemed really disjointed, like there wasn't a thread uniting the whole thing. I know the thread is supposed to be Aeneas and the last of the Trojans' escape from Troy and wander and struggle to reach Italy and establish their destined empire. But it kept going off on tangents. It started out really well, with the sacking of Troy (here Fagles really shows his skill as a translater) and then just unraveled.

I also found Dido extremely annoying. I know she's supposed to be tragic, but to me she just came across as clingy and spineless. Maybe that's just this translation, or my inability to think in a historical mindset, but it was her choice to hook up with Aeneas even though she knew he wouldn't be sticking around, so I had little patience for her complaints when he left. She was a great queen before he turned up, why couldn't she still be a great queen?

This is one of the few classics I've had to make myself finish.

In a world where there isn't a big enough demand for English translations of the Aeneid, this superb edition has come and gone. The translation itself, the introductions and appendices -- by far the most readable, teachable, and accurate work out there. All I can say is that we can hope the next generation of reading technologies will pick this up and make it available again. Vergil's Latin was clear and elegant, and this translation delivers not only the sense but the style.

Virgil's Aeneid is one of the great books the geniuses of humanity have written. Great is the tale, great is the sense and perception about the human affairs. Just like a classic, it impossible to describe its greatness on few lines, or even on many, because the light of the genius brights above it all.

It is rather dismaying to see this translation of The Aeneid so highly rated on the store. Mandelbaum's version is not poetically attractive whatsoever. Considering how highly acclaimed Fitzgerald's Iliad is, along with this version of The Aeneid, I suppose it is safe to say that the collective ear and aesthetic sensibilities of readers has declined substantially over the ages. Our age is particularly terrible in this respect. This being said, Mandelbaum's Inferno is actually relatively well done, I prefer it to the "classic" Longfellow translation.

There is a website that gives a comparison of recent Aeneid translations, I suggest googling it, to see which one you prefer by the excerpts given.

I have no idea what the previous review has to do with thebook. I'd like to say that the Aeneid is a beautiful tale and thatthe translator did a beautiful job of maintaining its beauty in English. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and recommend to anyone interested in Classics and Ancient Epic poetry. The above review should be taken 'cum grano salis' (with a grain of salt).

As a professor of Witing and Literature, I often have the luxury of studying timeless (and contemporary) classics in sizeable groups of smart people. That said, The Aeneid just doesn't get it done for me.
As a fan of The Iliad and The Odyssey--quite possibly the greatest tale ever told--I was originally excited to launch into The Aeneid. That, however, didn't last long. For ever reason The Iliad and The Oddysey are good, The Aeneid is, well ... anemic.
The characters of Achilles and Odysseus are heroic because they take no crap. Nobody tells them what to do. They're dynamic leaders who make the rules. Pious Aenius is the complete opposite. His continued adherence to the will of the gods becomes predictable and tiresome. He is flat.
Virgil's genius, even in translation and thousands of years later, is clearly evident. If you are a student of the craft or a fan of the well turned phrase, there is plenty here for you. If you are looking for a cover-to-cover must read that probes deeply into the human psyche, I'd recommend something else--preferably by Dostoevsky.

This new translation provides an enthralling yet accessible translation of a timeless masterpiece. Fagles achieves a tour de force at keeping the rhythm and pace of the latin hexameter without too much fluff. It helps the reader focus on and engage in the story.

This is by far the best translation of The Aeneid I have found. And the reading suits the translation and Virgil's intentions. But the original Latin work is over-ornamented, derivative, very violent (likely the highest body count of any ancient epic), and pure propaganda for Augustus. The main character is totally without personality. It was written for the entertainment of educated pampered Romans reveling in their triumph over the rest of the world. That being said, this is a classic of Western Literature and has been widely praised for centuries. It (literally) speaks volumes about the Romans of this period! One is uneducated unless he or she knows this work and this audio version is the most painless way to approach it. Unfortunately, Virgil isn't Homer and this epic lacks much found in the Greek epics.

The translator has given us the real Virgil in English. And it is neat to know how to pronounce all those ancient names that I have been stumbling over for years.

Robert Fitzgerald takes this Trojan-saga Rubix Cube and spins it to coordination with ease. For the average 17-year old high school senior, this story shouldn't be so easy to read, much less as compelling and entertaining as it was. I didn't find Fitzgerald's translation the least bit difficult to comprehend or enjoy. You can't help but agree, after finishing the story, that Aeneas is The Man.

I've read several English translations of The Aeneid, and have translated the majority of it. Unfortunately, this is not a terribly good translation. While it flows nicely, and keeps a poetic form, Fitzgerald takes far too many liberties with the Latin language for my tastes. It is difficult to follow along with the actual Latin text, as he does not keep the same lines as Virgil. My recommendation is Mandelbaum's translation; he sticks closely to the Latin.

For those erudite readers writing reviews to respond to Ronald Krane's earlier review, you might want to branch out with the romans and read a little Seneca and Petronius, who both explore this strange beast, with which you are obviously not familiar, known as "satire." (In other words, methinks Mr. Krane may not be altogether serious.)

To my annoyance, no credit is given to the translator, probably because Dryden's translation is public domain and because the editors thought fit to change every contracted preterite to modern usage (i.e. forc'd to forced).

As another earlier reviewer appropriately stated, this book is not for a Classics Scholar. Having read a large number of different translations of the Aeneid and having translated about 80% of the text from the original Latin myself, Fitzgerald's translation here is lacking in many aspects. He does not keep with the same lines as the original text, he takes great liberties in the use of various words, and sometimes his grammatical poetics is overly drammatic for the section of translation. While the Aeneid is a poem, one must consider that an Epic poem is not a Haiku.

If you're looking for an English translation to use in conjunction with a Aeneid translation course, seek another book. I prefered David West's translation when I was taking a few courses in college.

The Aeneid is a wonderful story, just don't read Fitzgerald's translation of it.

I only recently read the very famous Homer books, 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey' in translation (knowing no Greek); they are slower going than modern stories (maybe because they are less about feelings and intimate relationships) but leave a much deeper impression, and I would recommend anyone at all curious about them to go ahead. But this - maybe much well less known, translated (into something very readable) from Latin, about exiled Trojans who settle in Italy and ultimately found Rome - is at least as worthwhile, and even a better place to start (shorter overall than either, its first half is modelled on 'Odyssey' and its second on 'Iliad').

It's been 10 years since Robert Fagles published his translation of the Odyssey and 16 since the Iliad. Now in 2006 we finally get to hear of the story of Aeneas and the Trojans from the sacking of Troy to the foundation of the new Trojan city in Italy. Fagles again has brought the works of Homer and Virgil into the language of the 21st century. Some purists might object but if more laypeople like myself read these great works then Fagles has done his job as a teacher of history.

Like the Odyssey, Virgil has Aeneas and the Trojans beset by the wraths of the gods (Roman gods that is) after escaping the sacking of Troy by Odysseus and Agamemnon. After being waylaid in Africa we see Virgil weave the conflict with Carthage into the Aeneid. We also see how the Romans envisioned the underworld as Aeneas travels there to talk to his father. Aeneas and the Trojans then settle on the Italian mainland after more bloodshed, where Aeneas slays a rival suitor for the hand of the daughter of King Latinus.

Here the story ends as Virgil dies with The Aeneid unfinished. Virgil himself was unhappy with the book and wished it to be destroyed upon his death. Thankfully we have a new translation of a book that almost didn't survive.

The Aeneid, written by Virgil, was a wonderful book. It was easy to read, and I could relate Aeneas's experiences to my own life. Aeneas is portrayed as a hero who leads his people through many hardships. Throughout the story he struggles to discover his destiny. Readers will be inspired by his courage and bravery.

This review is directed towards this, apparently anonymous, translation. It is written in "poetry," so that every two lines rhyme, but it is almost impossible to make sense of because of the archaic sentence structure. I am a Latin major who has read most of the Aeneid in Latin. In my opinion, it will be easier for potential buyers to learn Latin than to read this particular translation.

First off, I'm neither a literary expert nor Latin scholar. I'm a guy that enjoys Roman history in his free time and has been riveted by the Illiad and enjoyed the Odyssey. So when I found out there was a Roman creation myth epic that was written in a similar manner to the epics of Homer, I was excited. After slogging through 200-some pages of Virgil's Aeneid, I can report that excitement has turned to disappointment.

The story is interesting and in the classic way it winds from scene to scene in indirect manners and with long sections that serve to explain something historically rather than move the plot along. This adds the rich texture of myth but does tend to make the story plod in sections. Explained in brief, the story seems intriguing and worth the effort.

It is in the telling that I lost my dedication. The first half of the story is a journey with the latter half being a battle as the Trojans land and attempt to found their destined city to the demise of some of the locals. Thus the story in a sense, tries to encompass both the Odyssey (journey) and Illiad (battle) in a single volume that is at best half the size of either of the others. Real stories are crammed down to a couple pages at times, entire histories of multiple warriors are explained in a single paragraph. Compare this to Homer's explanation of Diomed or Odysseus' archery contest in Ithaca and it becomes frustrating and memory-testing with the density of the material. No time is really allowed to soak in the myth, to feel the characters and imagine them before they have exchanged blows and lie dead on the field.

Virgil is said to have wanted his manuscript burned upon his death, only to have it saved by Augustus' mandate. I wish instead that it had been picked up by another and revised into the work it could've become.

West translates this in prose, like a novel, probably trying to make it more accessible, but it ends up feeling too pedestrian. After reading some other translations, this one seemed the most muddy, the least readable. If you can handle the verse translations, look at Robert Fitzgerald's work. I found that much more enjoyable.

I liked to book The Aneid. I thought that the story was very entertaining and that Virgil did a good job writing it, even though it wasn't completely finsihed. It is sort of slow in some parts but is very exciting in others. Even though Aneas is a pawn in the game of the gods, you don't know what is going to happen to him next.

I didn't like the Aeneid as much as the Odyssey. I thought that it was not as interesting and I had trouble reading parts. It is basiclly the same story as the Odyssey, just not as good. If I hadn't already read the Odyssey, I probably wouldn't have finished this or liked it at all.

Simon Callow is excellent; articulate, clear, powerful! I leave the lit. crit. to others, this presentation was
a living illustration of the book. I would highly recommend it as an emetic for corporate media baby food.

In the same clunky, dry style of his Iliad & Odyssey translations, Robert Fagles brings us the unofficial third volume of the Trojan Trilogy: Virgil's Aeneid. His translation makes all of the action and events very clear, but Fagles lacks an ear for poetry & lyricism (compare to the Fitzgerald, infinately superior) and many of his tin-eared word and phrase selections leave the reader cold.

However, the book itself is incredibly beautiful and well made, and the extras (Introduction, notes & Glossary by Bernard Knox; maps; translator's notes; bibliography) make this a book well worth owning!

This classic Roman book is based on the life of Aeneid, son of Venus (Aphrodite in Greek Culture). Home, the writter, writes about Aeneids trubles, and his misfortunes. It is a great adventure book that you will fall in love with, such as my peers and myself. Enjoy!

What kind of poetry is this? The words don't even rhyme! I guess in Vergil's day there weren't so many rhyming words in English. It takes real a poet, like Maya Angelo or Jewel, to rhyme words properly. "My hands are small, I know/ But they're not yours, they are my own." Now THAT'S poetry.
But turning to the plot of this "poem," I don't understand what this Juno has against this Aeneas guy. He seems like a straight fellow, but she's always trying to drown him and stuff. And what's the big deal about Rome? It seemed so stupid that Aeneas had to go off and found this city and couldn't stay with that chick who killed herself. I've been to Rome. It's not all that great, and they don't even speak English. Aeneas is not a good role model for kids.

I got my first look at Fagles' Aeneid today. My test passage was the death of Turnus. Fagles' work is perfectly good, of course, but that wasn't the point of my looking; I wanted, instead, to see if he had improved on Allen Mandelbaum's masterful version. (I don't want a good English Virgil, I want the best English Virgil.) I'll look microscopically at word choices, but I am not a bean-counter, and the point I'm driving at here has to do with how they read and feel as poetry.

12.940, Latin flectere, Mand. "move," Fagles "sway"; 12.941, Latin infelix, Mand. "luckless," Fagles "fateful"; 12.943, Latin Pallantis pueri, Mand. "of Pallas, of the boy," Fagles "young Pallas"; 12.944, Latin straverat, Mand. "stretched," Fagles I forget exactly, something like laid low, felled, killed, etc.

My judgment on these differences: Fagles' words are diffuse and lose some of Mandelbaum's admirable simplicity and directness. When he chooses to be less literal, it seems he's aiming for polish, which I don't want. No doubt he wants to avoid vulgar overliteralness--he knows that the Romans didn't feel the full specific and literal impact of every verbal stem--but instead of deepening the accuracy through attention to idiom, I feel that his choices intrude just a bit too much stuffiness between me and Virgil. Mandelbaum is passionate, his Virgil's pathos unmistakably aimed at the English reader's heart (much like his Dante). Fagles is refined, but without the crisp focus refinement needs. Mandelbaum writes a noble and sober American English that is literary in all of the good senses but none of the bad.

I'll be the first to admit that these are quick and irrational prejudices speaking. I enjoy reading Homer in Greek and Virgil in Latin, and I enjoy reading these epics in English. I will say that Fagles' Virgil is way better than his Homer, where he seizes on every stately epithet and falsely tries to wring dramatic significance out of it (I prefer Lattimore: let Homer speak for himself in his own language). But I beg you, even if you loved Fagles' Homer, check out Mandelbaum's Virgil, because you may not know what you're missing.

Bottom line: Anyone who thought Fitzgerald was better than Mandelbaum should give Fagles a good look, because these two versions do rival each other. But no one who appreciated what Mandelbaum achieved beyond Fitzgerald will find any reason to abandon Mandelbaum here.

I wasn't sent the correct version I purchased. Instead I was sent the "Penguin Classics" version, translated by W.F. Jackson Knight. Since I needed the specific translation for a class, it was definitely an issue and I wasn't pleased.

This is one of the books on the 100 Best Books of all time list.

I am very happy to add it to my collection in my library. It looks

rather formidable but I am sure that I will at some point read it.

An annoying, self-conscious, overly dramatic, often bombastic reading that draws all the attention to the reader and none the work. The only reason to buy it is that it seems to be the only unabridged recording available, but even that is not a compelling argument for it. Truly terrible.

Excellent job on the translation by Knox and Fagles. Unfortunately, the story is not as good as that on the Iliad, or even the Odyssey. The Aenid is a classic, but its a weak plagiarized version of Homer's books. It's hard to enjoy reading the meandering Aenid after the relentless Iliad or the evocative Odyssey.

I thought this translation of the Aeneid was only so-so. I thought the introduction had a very complete and thoughtful way of analyzing Virgil's text. It was very helpful in explaining some of the more in depth parts of the Aeneid. But, the work itself came across as long and confusing. Even though there are only 12 books in all, the Aeneid is very drawn out. This is really the fault of Virgil, however. I also am not a huge fan of long epics such as the Aeneid. If you like this style of writing, though, this is the book for you.

takes "Armis virumque" and gets "I sing of warfare and a man at war"? The consensus in the reviews is that Fitzgerald has written a fine epic. It just is not the same one written by Virgil. If you want to read Fitzgerald, this is the book for you. If you want to read Virgil you need the Mandelbaum translation.

Ghastly translation. Unreadable.

Try the opening:
"Arms and a man I sing, the first from Troy,
"A fated exile to Lavinian shores
"In Italy.

Should be re-titled "The Telegraphic Aeneid." Or "The Aeneid--A Machine Translation."

One can only conclude that the glowing reviews were written by the translator herself or by her mentors, students, and friends.

Stick with Mandelbaum for a verse translations or West for a prose translation.

If ever you needed a definitive reason not to read The Aeneid, this translation provides it. What's next for this translator.? Translating The Aeneid so it can be read on Twitter? I gave it a one star because the rating does not provide for a black hole which is where this work should be consigned.