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An Apple Books Classic edition.
Virgil’s epic poem, composed over two thousand years ago, gives the Roman Empire a founding myth as sweeping and grand as Homer’s tales of Troy.
After the fall of Troy, the hero Aeneas—son of a Trojan prince and the goddess Venus—gathers a fleet of survivors to found a new homeland. His quest is in some ways divinely guided, but not all the gods want to see him succeed.
What follows is a journey through storms, plagues, the underworld itself, and battles that test whether mortal determination can overcome divine opposition. Epic in scope and rich with adventure, The Aeneid blends myth and history into a story of perseverance and self-invention that’s held readers spellbound for millennia.
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Princeton scholar Fagles follows up his celebrated Iliad and Odyssey with a new, fast-moving, readable rendition of the national epic of ancient Rome. Virgil's long-renowned narrative follows the Trojan warrior Aeneas as he carries his family from his besieged, fallen home, stops in Carthage for a doomed love affair, visits the underworld and founds in Italy, through difficult combat, the settlements that will become, first the Roman republic, and then the empire Virgil knew. Recent translators (such as Allen Mandelbaum) put Virgil's meters into English blank verse. Fagles chooses to forgo meter entirely, which lets him stay literal when he wishes, and grow eloquent when he wants: "Aeneas flies ahead, spurring his dark ranks on and storming/ over the open fields like a cloudburst wiping out the sun." A substantial preface from the eminent classicist Bernard Knox discusses Virgil's place in history, while Fagles himself appends a postscript and notes. Scholars still debate whether Virgil supported or critiqued the empire's expansion; Aeneas' story might prompt new reflection now, when Americans are already thinking about international conflict and the unexpected costs of war.
