The Aeneid (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Virgil

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140449329 ISBN 13: 9780140449327

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2003

Synopsis

'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

About this title

Review:

"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

Synopsis:

Virgil's Aeneid, inspired by Homer and inspiration for Dante and Milton, is an immortal poem at the heart of Western life and culture. Virgil took as his hero Aeneas, legendary survivor of the fall of Troy and father of the Roman race, and in telling a story of dispossession and defeat, love and war, he portrayed human life in all its nobility and suffering.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0140449329
• ISBN 13: 9780140449327
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368