Virgil's epic on the journey of Aeneas and the founding of the Roman Empire is an epic not to be missed. Dryden's 1697 translation of said epic, however, is. It's dense, it's daunting, it's in perfect meter. The introduction (71 pages) is vainglorious, the poem tedious.

The story itself was a wonder. It could be a movie (but probably won't be). Aeneas escapes the carnage of Troy, only to gets tossed about by jealous gods from city to city, all the while just trying to secure his prophesied lineage. If you're going to read this, go with a more modern translation (Fagles is good).

This was great I would take Virgil over Homer any day ( )

Oh, yes. I love classics. One of my favorites. ( )

In what you'll recognize as a classic "reading group review" (if you've been paying attention . . . and why would you be?), some thoughts from The Aeneid Week 1:

-I haven't been this excited about a reread in a long time.
-Indeed, what is fate here? That which must be? The desultorily enforced whim of Zeus? Its own proof, because if you just did something awesome, some god or other must have been on your side?
-I read that Virgil studied under Sino the Epicurean. I'd always thought of V. as more of a Stoic. Will read with that in mind.
-What is all this about them braving Scylla and the cyclops? Like, Aeneas did everything Odysseus did, only offscreen? Burn!

Week 2 (hooree!):

-this only barely has anything to do with the Aeneid, but a Classics prof came to our group today, and do you know what Helen did when the Greeks were all clamouring for her blood after the war and Menelaus was all "what do you have to say for herself"? She flashed him. And he was all "I can't stay mad at you!" and home they went
-not only is this Homer in reverse, it's also the definitive separation of love and war. The Greeks went to war to bring a woman home. Aeneas leaves a woman behind, and not to come back like Odysseus, but to leave her to die. I blame him for totalitarianism.
-so Virgil's Epicureanism might have informed a fashionable atheism, but that concides with a superstitious bethedging like our don't-walk-under-ladders, but with far greater consequences, because much as they didn't totally believe in the gods, they didn't have good alternative explanations. See also Cupid arrowing Dido for insight into how this funny fate-and-free-will no-cause-and-effect non-dichotomy works--it happens because it's fated; it's fated because it happens.

Week 3: Partying with Luisa, but nothing much happens in this chapter anyway except the bush bleeds.

Week 4: It all ends in tears, and it's so, so modern, except that there's the scourge of public duty separating the Romans from us, and incidentally, the Greeks. But not the Hebrews, and isn't it funny how similar Aeneas is to Moses. 21st-century civilization--on the Hellenic side of the line? I'd love to think so. Also, I love how Jove just wants to have a good time. Why you trying to harsh his mellow, all the other gods and humans?

Week 5: I missed talking about the Trojan Exile Olympics because of a banking emergency:(

Week 6: Down down to the underground! Highlights of this week included how Aeneas snubbed dead Dido to talk about football with dead Misenus; how Borges's interpretation of the gates of horn thing is that death is merely a door, time a window, and nothing is real; and how they went past all those sweet Ancient Greek monsters and there was no fight, and then they introduced some other dead unburied dude when they already had Palinurus to fill that plot role from THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER, because they (they? Virgil) didn't attend session 6: tight plotting, in Michael Bay's Hollywood Scriptwriting masterclass.

A classic, worth reading over and over ( )

My wife read a version of this to the kids back in the 90's. Hooray for a wonderful wife.

I was not amazed by The Aeneid. I think that it pales is comparison to the Greek epics that it is mimicking, and the only thing that saves it from being a total waste of literary time is the addition of the chapter on the Fury that is unleashed on the city. To be honest, I'm just not sure that I can stomach reading the Fitzgerald translation; for some reason, I feel like there are better words than "Poseidon's car" that could have been used. It is poetic, and the language is sometimes incredibly inspiring, but that still doesn't pull me away from the fact that it could be so much better. ( )

A classic

After reading Fagles’ Iliad and Odyssey I thought Aeneid could not match it. Though I like the Greek epics better, some scenes in the Aeneid more than hold their own and might surpass those of its predecessor. For example, the siege of Troy, Dido in Carthage, and the battle for Italy.

Aeneas does not have a distinctive animating character of an Achilles or an Odysseus. It seems as if Virgil, in endeavoring to create the ideal Roman, was afraid to add any character traits other than devotion to his men, fear of the gods, and pity for his vanquished enemies lest other character traits have a bad side. Indeed because of this, the ending, where pity for a vanquished foe and love for his fallen men come to a violent collision, is the most startling and human moment for Aeneas. It took a while but I am glad because it cracked (slightly) the troubling sheen of propanganda around Aeneas and made him join the more human supporting cast of Dido, Turnus, and Pallas and others.

Though I cannot compare it with the Latin, Fagles’ English is refreshing in its usage of expressions not often in modern literature as well as a modern vernacular that does not seem forced but natural. The writing in battle is sizzling; the pastoral metaphors are deliberate; and much is left pleasingly strange. Though long introductions of soldiers and their fathers and other descriptions lessen the pace for this modern reader, it was definitely worth plowing through to the moving and riveting parts. If you are interested in epic stories or ancient history, you should read this translation.

Translated this from Latin. Destiny is a key component of this book, and the length characters go to fulfill destiny is what makes this a worthwhile read. ( )

The Roman equivalent to The Odyssey and a classic. Unlike The Odyssey, this drags a little, especially in the middle. ( )

I read this in Latin and survived the experience only because I was young and stubborn. In truth, the Odyssey is a much better written tale. ( )

An obvious rip-off of The Odyssey with the added bonus of blatant Roman propaganda. ( )

A bit of a slog. Much harder to get through than Odyssey, less poignant than Illiad. Still, the section on Dido was moving and the bit in Book 6 (?) about the Queen of the Latins was worth the price of admission. ( )

The Penguin Classics edition provides a 42-page preface, an extensive glossary, and some maps. This material contributed greatly to my immense enjoyment of Dryden's luxurious translation, most in rhymed iambic pentameter couplets, like much of the verse of the eighteenth century. ( )

Unlike Homer, to whome I can lose long nights bound by his captivating cadence, Virgil's Aeneid took me a full season--nearly six months--to finish. The tricks of the trade that were novel when I saw them in Homer lost some of their luster in Virgil's derived forms, though there were some passages and stories here that provide almost universal archetypes to the lineage of western literature.

The first remarkable thing is how little has changed in Mediterranean cultures' sense of heroicism in the many hundreds of years that elapsed between the Homeric epics and Virgil's lifetime in the first century CE. Without an academic familiarity with Imperial Roman culture, it's hard to determine how much of the poem's epic content is supposed to reflect ideals that are still relevant to its contemporary audience versus how much--and knowing Romans' captivation with the-good-old-days-had-real-heroes, we-are-only-sad-imitations, I sense that this might be closer to the mark--the glories of the past and the founding of Rome are a legacy of god-like men and endeavors that cannot or even should not be emulated.

If one were to prune out the portions of the poem that are weak echoes of Homer's mastery, those pieces that are hackneyed homages to Caesar Augustus, and perhaps pare down some of the martial descriptiveness, one would have something very close to perfect. When Virgil allows himself to be narrative--maybe at slight expense to the propagandistic tack--wonderful things happen.

Pious, predictable Aeneas is no crafty Odysseus, and besides performing the prescribed role of establishing Roman history, seems to be less dimensional than some of the epic's other notable characters. Where Homer's women are mostly reduced to submissive pale sketches unless deities (Athena, for example, is always inspirational no matter who writes about her), Virgil gives us a couple of plausible inspirations. Dido pulls of tragic without simpering, and even in the underworld refuses to be a doormat. Camilla is nothing short of fantastic.

But in the end, there is a lot of poring over gory and repetitive battle scenes. Important to the epic genre and the symbolic completeness of the story? Likey. But to the modern reader or at least one disinterested in military history, not terrifically impactful.

A required read in the Western Canon. But a touch too much work to be enjoyable. ( )

My favorite of the Big Three, The Aeneid scans beautifully in this translation by the great Robert Fagles. I thought Bernard Knox's introduction was a little less interesting, however, than those he wrote for Fagles' translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey. ( )

In my opinion, the greatest of the Classical epics. The Aeneid does not merely praise the glory of Rome and Augustus by exhalting Aeneas; it conveys a melancholy for everything that Aeneas, the Trojans, and even their enemies underwent in order to bring about fate. Rome's enemy Carthage, and even Hannibal who lead the invading army, is here depicted as the eventual avengers of a woman abandoned by her lover not for any fault of her own, but merely because the gods required him to be elsewhere. The Italians are shown as glorious warriors, whose necessary deaths in battle may not be worth it. Finally there is the end, not with the joy of triumph, but with the death moan of the Italian leader. The translation by David West perfectly captures the tone of the original. ( )

I read this in high school, in Latin. I remember carrying it around and translating it into English between the lines of text. It's a great story, and even a high school kid can be a classical scholar with this work -the Latin is not so difficult. I wonder whatever happened to that copy...

Blasted imposter, grumble grumble. Virgil is too damn pious for his own good and not worth his salt. ( )

This is a classic of course. This translation in particular is quite well done. It has excellent notes and references. I love this work particularly because of the context in which it was written which gives depth to many of the events and/or the way in which they are portrayed. ( )

I found this easier to get through than [book: The Iliad], I think because at least for the first half there was stuff going on besides warfare. But I think I'm kind of epiced out after those two and [book: Paradise Lost] all this semester. ( )

The Aeneid, translated by Robert Fagles

After reading Black Ships by Jo Graham (which was based on The Aeneid), I was inspired to find a copy and read it myself. Robert Fagles is an award-winning translator and is especially recognized for his work on Homer's The Illiad and The Oddessy. He more recently turned his attention to The Aeneid by Virgil. While I've never read The Aeneid before, and can't compare Fagles translation to others, I did find it to be very approachable, enjoyable, and immensley readable. In fact, he won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from The Academy of American Poets because of it.

Also included in this edition is a wonderful introduction by Bernard Knox explaining the background, history, and context of The Aeneid. Additional useful elements include a genealogy, notes on the translation, and a fairly comprehensive pronunciation glossary. Apparently, Virgil died before he could finish the epic poem and requested that it be destroyed. Fortunately, for us anyway, his wish was not fulfilled.

The Aeneid consists of twelve books following Aeneas, a Trojan commander, and what remains of the free people of Troy after it's final destruction. Destined by the gods to settle in Italy and become the ancestors of the Romans, their path is not an easy one. (The establishment of this ancestry was one of the primary reasons Virgil set about writing this work.) The Trojans must face storms, wars, monsters, and even the gods themselves in their struggle to survive and to found a new homeland. Even unfinished, the poem is quite an achievement. It is filled with fantastic imagery and is packed with action while addressing the humanity of the people involved.

While in high school, I was intensely interested in classical studies. Reading this terrific translation of The Aeneid was a wonderful way to revisit that one-time obsession. Though it did end rather suddenly, right at one of the climaxes actually, it was very much worth reading and I very much enjoyed it.

Experiments in Reading ( )

The fact that this is unfinished makes me want to gnaw on my own liver - because it ends right when things start (finally) getting interesting. Still an interesting read, however, if only to get glimpses into the way the ancient Greeks thought. ( )

A lot of comparisons are being made between the Aeneid and Homer's Odyssey, but I personally find the Aeneid to surpass the former. Aeneas is portrayed with more compassion, I think, than Odysseus and a comparison isn't really very useful as Aeneas is a Trojan sailing with nowhere to go and Odysseus is a Greek victor who is just cursed to take ten years to get to his homeland.

As far as the Aeneid on its own is concerned, you really get a feel for all of the characters involved (except, oddly enough, Zeus/Jove), and all of their points of view are justifiable, more or less. The personal drama and the battles are gripping, and you really sympathize with all of the characters.

This translation in particular is a very easy one to read and I think true to the simplicity of the Latin original; Latin isn't a stuffy language and this is not a stuffy translation. ( )