The Aeneid by Virgil Page A

Press, 1997)
BACK GROUND
    K. Galinsky,
Augustan Culture
(Princeton University Press, 1996)
    P. Zanker,
The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus
, tr. A. Shapiro (Michigan University Press, 1988)
COLLECTIONS
    S. Commager (ed.),
Virgil: A Collection of Critical Essays
(from studies published 1945–64) (Prentice-Hall, 1966)
    P. Hardie (ed.),
Virgil: Critical Assessments of Classical Authors
(1901–95), 4 vols. (Routledge, 1999)
    S. J. Harrison (ed.),
Oxford Readings in Vergil’s
Aeneid (1933–87) (Oxford University Press, 1990)
    I. McAuslan and P. Walcot (eds.),
Virgil
(1972–86) (Oxford University Press for the Classical Association, 1990)
    H.-P. Stahl (ed.),
Vergil’s
Aeneid:
Augustan Epic and Political Context
(Conference Proceedings) (Duckworth, 1998)
CRITICISM
    D. L. Drew,
The Allegory of the
Aeneid (Blackwell, 1927)
    R. Heinze,
Virgil’s Epic Technique
, tr. H. and D. Harvey and F. Robertson (Bristol Classical Press, 1993)
    E. Henry,
The Vigour of Prophecy
(Southern Illinois University Press, 1989)
    R. O. A. M. Lyne,
Words and the Poet
(Oxford University Press, 1989)
    K. Quinn,
Virgil’s
Aeneid: A
Critical Description
(Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968)
    G. Williams,
Technique and Ideas in the
Aeneid (Yale University Press, 1983)
Note on the Translation
    The text used, with very few exceptions, is the Oxford Classical Text by Sir Roger Mynors. The numbers in the margin refer to the line numbers of the Latin. Latin being a very compact language, ten lines of Virgil (given in the margin) have often required more than ten in the translation.
    Received wisdom, as represented by
The Proceedings of the Virgil Society
19(1988), 14, states that ‘to translate poetry into prose is always a folly’. I believe that this view does less than justice to the range, power and music of contemporary English prose. As written by our best novelists and journalists and even sometimes by ordinary letter-writers, it daily moves us towards pity, terror or laughter, and does so more than the voices of contemporary poets. Further – this is ungentle but the argument requires that it be said – the English poets who have translated the
Aeneid
since Dryden have not done well. We may accept that poetic translation need not be true to the tone or detail of the original. A poet’s first concern is with his own poem. But if we grant this freedom, we must then judge their works as poems, and as such the poetic translations of the
Aeneid
are low in interest and inspiration.
    The ruling prose version is Jackson Knight’s Penguin Classic of 1956. This is lovingly faithful to the author’s vision of Virgil but the language is dated. It would be difficult to disagree with Sandbach’s judgement in
The Proceedings of the Virgil Society
10(1970–71), 35 (reprinted in
Meminisse Iuvabit
(1989), ed. F. Robertson): ‘…too often the attempt to grasp and represent each of Virgil’s words has pushed aside the need to give thesentence rhythm and cohesion and the emphasis that goes with form’.
    The object of this translation has been to write readable English which does honour to the richness and sublimity of Virgil’s language – ebullient, for example in the utterances of Aeneas at the games in Book 5, charged with grief for the death of Marcellus at the end of Book 6 and ringing with the courage and cruelty of war in the four great last books. Another impossible task. But if it is to be attempted, the translator must be ready to jettison the idiom of Latin and search for the English words that will carry as much as possible of the spirit of the Latin.

THE AENEID
BOOK 1
STORM AND BANQUET
                    I sing of arms and of the man, fated to be an exile, who long
                since left the land of Troy and came to Italy to the shores of
                Lavinium; and a great pounding he took by land and sea at the
                hands of the heavenly gods because of the fierce