The Aeneid
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
Follow Aeneid as he flees a burning Troy with his family and sets out on a dangerous journey to found what will one day become The Roman Empire. Thrill with him as he gets caught up in conflicts between the gods, all the while striving to complete his own grand destiny. Virgil intended this book to be a sequel to the Iliad and the Odyssey, and as such it takes up with events just after the finish of the Odyssey. Inscribed here are myths and legends and tales of bravery destined to last for all time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
