The Aeneid

by Virgil; Fitzgerald, Robert (Translator)

• ISBN13: 9780679729525
• ISBN10: 0679729526
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1990-06-16
• Publisher: VINTAGE BOOKS

Summary

Virgil's great epic transforms the Homeric tradition into a triumphal statement of the Roman civilizing mission. Translated by Robert Fitzgerald.

Author Biography

Virgil (70 B.C-19 B.C) is regarded as the greatest Roman poet, known for his epic, The Aeneid (written about 29 B.C. unfinished). Virgil was born on October 15, 70 B.C., in a small village near Mantua in Northern Italy. He attended school at Cremona and Milan, and then went to Rome, where he studied mathematics, medicine and rhetoric, and completed his studies in Naples. Between 42 and 37 B.C. Virgil composed pastoral poems known as Ecologues, and spent years on the Georgics.

At the urging of Augustus Caesar, Virgil began to write The Aeneid, a poem of the glory of Rome under Caesars rule. Virgil devoted the remaining time of his life, from 30 to 19 B.C., to the composition of The Aeneid, the national epic of Rome and to glory of the Empire. The poet died in 19 B.C of a fever he contracted on his visit to Greece with the Emperor. It is said that the poet had instructed his executor Varius to destroy The Aeneid, but Augustus ordered Varius to ignore this request, and the poem was published.


From the Hardcover edition.

Table of Contents

BOOK I A Fateful Haven	1	(30)
BOOK II How They Took the City	31	(32)
BOOK III Sea Wanderings and Strange Meetings	63	(30)
BOOK IV The Passion of the Queen	93	(30)
BOOK V Games and a Conflagration	123	(34)
BOOK VI The World Below	157	(36)
BOOK VII Juno Served by a Fury	193	(34)
BOOK VIII Arcadian Allies	227	(30)
BOOK IX A Night Sortie, a Day Assault	257	(34)
BOOK X The Death of Princes	291	(38)
BOOK XI Debaters and a Warrior Girl	329	(36)
BOOK XII The Fortunes of War	365	(38)
Postscript	403	(16)
Glossary	419