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Synopsis

‘I sing of arms and of the man’

After a century of civil strife in Rome and Italy, Virgil wrote The Aeneid to honour the emperor Augustus by praising Aeneas – Augustus’ legendary ancestor. As a patriotic epic imitating Homer, The Aeneid also provided Rome with a literature equal to the Greek. It tells of Aeneas, survivor of the sack of Troy, and of his seven year journey – to Carthage, falling tragically in love with Queen Dido; then 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, of love and war, hailed by Tennyson as ‘the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man’.

David West’s acclaimed prose translation is accompanied by his revised introduction and individual prefaces to the twelve books of The Aeneid.

Reviews

Critic Review:

‘The most truthful translation ever, conveying as many nuances and whispers as are possible from the original’  
Times

‘Sweet prose, clear and clean and dancing like a mountain stream, as here … West opens the window and the winds bring life into Virgil’s body’ 
Wall Street Journal

Critic Review:

"The most truthful translation ever, conveying as many nuances and whispers as are possible from the original"
—Times

"Sweet prose, clear and clean and dancing like a mountain stream, as here … West opens the window and the winds bring life into Virgil’s body"
—Wall Street Journal

"Silvio Berlusconi makes Conrad Black look like a choirboy...one of the best studies written in English of post-Cold War Italian politics."
—Winnipeg Free Press

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