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Robert Fitzgerald’s magnificent translation of Virgil’s epic poem was a major literary event at its release in 1983; today it is an acknowledged masterpiece. Profoundly poetic yet gloriously accessible, this is the best way to experience a work that has remained a centerpiece of Western civilization for 2,000 years. Fitzgerald’s rendering speaks directly to the modern listener, inviting us to share the excitement, adventure, and human tears as Aeneas, the warrior hero, escapes from the burning city of Troy, embarks on a long and perilous journey, and eventually, triumphantly establishes a new nation: Rome.

Aeneas flees the ashes of Troy to found the city of Rome and change forever the course of the Western world–and literature as well. Virgil’s Aeneid is as eternal as Rome itself, a sweeping epic of arms and heroism–the searching portrait of a man caught between love and duty, human feeling and the force of fate–that has influenced writers for over 2,000 years. Filled with drama, passion, and the universal pathos that only a masterpiece can express, the Aeneid is a book for all time and all people.

Rome’s epic origin story, brilliantly rendered in a vivid, rhythmic idiom. Crafted during the reign of Augustus Caesar at the outset of the Roman Empire, Virgil’s Aeneid is a tale of thrilling adventure, extreme adversity, doomed romance, fateful battles, and profound loss. Through its stirring account of human struggle, meddling gods, and conflicting destinies, the poem brings to life the triumphs and trials that led to one of the most powerful societies the world has ever known. Unlike its Homeric predecessors, which arose from a long oral tradition, the Aeneid was composed by a singular poetic genius, and it has ever since been celebrated as one of the greatest literary achievements of antiquity. This exciting new edition of the Aeneid, the first collaborative translation of the poem in English, is rendered in unrhymed iambic pentameter, the English meter that corresponds best, in its history and cultural standing, to Virgil’s dactylic hexameter. Scott McGill and Susannah Wright achieve an ideal middle ground between readability and elevation, engaging modern readers with fresh, contemporary language in a heart-pounding, propulsive rhythm, while also preserving the epic dignity of the original. The result is a brisk, eminently approachable translation that captures Virgil’s sensitive balance between celebrating the Roman Empire and dramatizing its human costs, for victors and vanquished alike. This Aeneid is a poem in English every bit as complex, inviting, and affecting as the Latin original. With a rich and informative introduction from Emily Wilson, maps drawn especially for this volume, a pronunciation glossary, genealogies, extensive notes, and helpful summaries of each book, this gorgeous edition of Rome’s founding poem will capture the imaginations and stir the souls of a new generation of readers. 1 map

After a century of civil strife in Rome and Italy, the poet Virgil wrote The Aeneid to honor the emperor Augustus by praising Aeneas, Augustus’s legendary ancestor. 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 fell tragically in love with Queen Dido; to the underworld, in the company of the Sibyl of Cumae; and, finally, to Italy, where he founded Rome. It is a story of defeat and exile, and of love and war. Virgil’s Aeneid is as eternal as Rome itself, a sweeping epic of arms and heroism-the searching portrait of a man caught between love and duty, human feeling, and the force of fate. Filled with drama, passion, and the universal pathos that only a masterpiece can express. The Aeneid is a book for all the time and all people. This version of The Aeneid is the classic translation by John Dryden.

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A fresh and faithful translation of Vergil’s Aeneid restores the epic’s spare language and fast pace and sheds new light on one of the cornerstone narratives of Western culture. “Vivid and haunting . . . a model of how to render Latin poetry in English.”–Tom Holland, New Statesman For two thousand years, the epic tale of Aeneas’s dramatic flight from Troy, his doomed love affair with Dido, his descent into the underworld, and the bloody story behind the establishment of Rome has electrified audiences around the world. In Vergil’s telling, Aeneas’s heroic journey not only gave Romans and Italians a thrilling origin story, it established many of the fundamental themes of Western life and literature–the role of duty and self-sacrifice, the place of love and passion in human life, the relationship between art and violence, the tension between immigrant and indigenous people, and the way new foundations are so often built upon the wreckage of those who came before. Throughout the course of Western history, the Aeneid has affirmed our best and worst intentions and forced us to confront our deepest contradictions. Shadi Bartsch, Guggenheim Laureate, award-winning translator, and chaired professor at the University of Chicago, confronts the contradictions inherent in the text itself, illuminating the epic’s subversive approach to storytelling. Even as Vergil writes the foundation myth for Rome, he seems to comment on this tendency to mythologize our heroes and societies, and to gesture to the stories that get lost in the mythmaking. Bartsch’s groundbreaking translation, brilliantly maintaining the brisk pace of Vergil’s Latin even as it offers readers a metrical line-by-line translation, provides a literary and historical context to make the Aeneid resonant for a new generation of readers.

A major new blank verse translation of Vergil’s epic masterpiece This extraordinary new translation of Vergil’s Aeneid stands alone among modern translations for its accuracy and poetic appeal. Sarah Ruden, a lyric poet in her own right, renders the classic poem in the same number of lines as the original work–a very rare feat that maintains technical fidelity to the original without diminishing its emotional power. Ruden’s translation follows Vergil’s content faithfully, and the economy and fast pace she achieves are true to his own unflagging narrative force. With its central theme of national destiny versus. the destiny of individuals, the poem has great resonance in our own times, and Ruden adheres closely to the poet’s message. Her rendering of Vergil’s words gives immediacy to his struggling faith that history has beauty and purpose in spite of its pain. With this distinguished translation, modern readers can experience for themselves the timeless power of Vergil’s masterpiece.

This volume represents the most ambitious project of distinguished poet David Ferry’s life: a complete translation of Virgil’s Aeneid. Ferry has long been known as the foremost contemporary translator of Latin poetry, and his translations of Virgil’s Eclogues and Georgics have become standards. He brings to the Aeneid the same genius, rendering Virgil’s formal, metrical lines into an English that is familiar, all while surrendering none of the poem’s original feel of the ancient world. In Ferry’s hands, the Aeneid becomes once more a lively, dramatic poem of daring and adventure, of love and loss, devotion and death. The paperback and e-book editions include a new introduction by Richard F. Thomas, along with a new glossary of names that makes the book even more accessible for students and for general readers coming to the Aeneid for the first time who may need help acclimating to Virgil’s world.

This volume represents the most ambitious project of distinguished poet David Ferry’s life: a complete translation of Virgil’s Aeneid. Ferry has long been known as the foremost contemporary translator of Latin poetry, and his translations of Virgil’s Eclogues and Georgics have become standards. He brings to the Aeneid the same genius, rendering Virgil’s formal, metrical lines into an English that is familiar, all while surrendering none of the poem’s original feel of the ancient world. In Ferry’s hands, the Aeneid becomes once more a lively, dramatic poem of daring and adventure, of love and loss, devotion and death. The paperback and e-book editions include a new introduction by Richard F. Thomas, along with a new glossary of names that makes the book even more accessible for students and for general readers coming to the Aeneid for the first time who may need help acclimating to Virgil’s world.

Barry Powell, acclaimed translator of the Iliad (OUP, 2013) and the Odyssey (OUP, 2014) now delivers a graceful, lucid, free-verse translation of the Aeneid in a pleasant modern idiom. On-page notes explain obscure literary and historical references, while the rich visual program lightens the text and educates students in the history of Western art by presenting a single topic as represented over 2,000 years. The Aeneid’s first sentence charts the poem’s historical plot, taking us in one sweep of seven lines from Homer’s Troy to Augustus’ Rome. These two layers of time are felt all the way through the poem, from the distant past of Aeneas’ heroic and quasi-mythological time, over 1100 years before Vergil, down to the “now” of Augustus’ Rome, when Vergil was writing the poem between 30 and 19 BC, a period of ongoing political experimentation. The story of Aeneas–moving from one continent to another, undergoing and enforcing great transformations in the process–transplants contemporary Augustan preoccupations with transition, continuity, and change into the remote time of the poem’s action. In the course of the poem we move from the East to the West, from Troy to Italy, as Aeneas moves from being a Trojan towards being something else, a kind of Roman in embryo. The poem’s migratory movement, together with its wholescale assimilation of Homer, acts out another great transition, the transition of Greek culture to Italy: just as the people of ancient Italy become the inheritors of Troy, so the people of Vergil’s Italy become the inheritors of Greece. The very location of the poem in time is transitional, at the pivot between myth and history: the poem’s characters are moving out of the era of Homer into the era of what Vergil would have considered non-fabulous history. In all these ways the Aeneid is a great poem of history, both as lived experience and as something constructed by people responding to the needs of society. Featuring a stellar, up-to-date introduction, on-page notes, embedded illustrations, five maps, a timeline of Roman history, and a genealogical chart, Powell’s Aeneid offers a full immersion into the mythological and political workings of the poem. It is a book both good to think with, and good to teach with.