The Aeneid

Starred review from September 18, 2006
Princeton scholar Fagles follows up his celebrated Iliad
and Odyssey
with a new, fast-moving, readable rendition of the national epic of ancient Rome. Virgil's long-renowned narrative follows the Trojan warrior Aeneas as he carries his family from his besieged, fallen home, stops in Carthage for a doomed love affair, visits the underworld and founds in Italy, through difficult combat, the settlements that will become, first the Roman republic, and then the empire Virgil knew. Recent translators (such as Allen Mandelbaum) put Virgil's meters into English blank verse. Fagles chooses to forgo meter entirely, which lets him stay literal when he wishes, and grow eloquent when he wants: "Aeneas flies ahead, spurring his dark ranks on and storming/ over the open fields like a cloudburst wiping out the sun." A substantial preface from the eminent classicist Bernard Knox discusses Virgil's place in history, while Fagles himself appends a postscript and notes. Scholars still debate whether Virgil supported or critiqued the empire's expansion; Aeneas' story might prompt new reflection now, when Americans are already thinking about international conflict and the unexpected costs of war.

July 1, 2017

More than the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, The Aeneid of the Roman poet Virgil shapes Western literature and cultural identity, our idea of the hero and the nation. National Book Award-winning poet and translator Ferry (emeritus English, Wellesley Univ.; Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations), takes up the Aeneid with engaging results. His previous translations include Horace's Odes and Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics. Virgil's stately but vigorous dactylic hexameter is difficult to render in natural English. Ferry prefers iambic pentameter blank verse to achieve the heroic effects. This translation holds its own with the verse renditions of John Dryden, C. Day Lewis, Allen Mandelbaum, and Robert Fagles. Ferry's diction is accurate in tone and pitch, if not always literal. For closer, word-for-word translations, one should consult those of Elaine Fantham, or the prose versions of H. Rushton Fairclough and David West. The chief criticism is the lack of a glossary of names and places, making it challenging at times for those not familiar with the material to keep up with the array of characters. VERDICT An elegant and fluent version highly recommended for serious general readers.--Thomas L. Cooksey, formerly with Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2017
Virgil (7019 BCE) died without having polished his epic consolidation of the myth of the Trojan founding of Rome. Some lines are incomplete, and the dense Latin is legendarily a rack for the student's understanding. Though elegant, The Aeneid is also rough, then, and elegance and roughness abound in Ferry's completion of his work with Virgil (he published a version of the Eclogues in 1999, of the Georgics in 2005). If elegance suits the personae of gods, heroes, and monarchs, roughness answers the brutal fighting that bulks larger in The Aeneid than in its primary artistic model, The Iliad. The early books recall The Odyssey, too, when Aeneas recounts his party's journey from Troy to Carthage, while the romance of Aeneas and Carthage's queen, Dido, is a much more substantial episode than Odysseus' engagement with Calypso. The Aeneid is entirely distinctive, of personal and literary rather than popular and oral origins, a cornerstone of not just culture but also of calculated art. Ferry conveys its power even more than its majesty.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)