Description
By (author) Virgil; Introduction by West, David; Translated by West, David
Short /annotation
Inspired by Homer and inspiration for Dante and Milton, the Aeneid is an immortal poem at the heart of Western life and culture. Virgil took Aeneas as his hero and in telling a story of dispossession and defeat, love and war, he portrayed human life in all its nobility and suffering.
”The most truthful translation ever, conveying as many nuances and whispers as are possible from the original” The Times
After a century of civil strife in Rome and Italy, Virgil wrote the Aeneid to honour the emperor Augustus by praising his legendary ancestor Aeneas. As a patriotic epic imitating Homer, the Aeneid also set out to provide Rome with a literature equal to that of Greece. It tells of Aeneas, survivor of the sack of Troy, and of his seven-year journey: to Carthage, where he falls tragically in love with Queen Dido; then to the underworld,; and finally to Italy, where he founds Rome. It is a story of defeat and exile, of love and war, hailed by Tennyson as ”the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man”.
Translated with an Introduction by DAVID WEST
Review quote
“Fitzgerald”s is so decisively the best modern Aeneid that it is unthinkable that anyone will want to use any other version for a long time to come.” —New York Review of Books
“From the beginning to the end of this English poem … the reader will find the same sure control of English rhythms, the same deft phrasing, and an energy which urges the eye onward.” —The New Republic
“A rendering that is both marvelously readable and scrupulously faithful…. Fitzgerald has managed, by a sensitive use of faintly archaic vocabulary and a keen ear for sound and rhythm, to suggest the solemnity and the movement of Virgil”s poetry as no previous translator has done (including Dryden)…. This is a sustained achievement of beauty and power.” —Boston Globe
Biographical note
Virgil (70-19BC) studied rhetoric and philosophy in Rome where he became a court poet.As well as The Aeneid, his Eclogues earned him the reputation as the finest Latin poet.
Before his retirement, David West taught Classics at the University of Newcastle.
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