Rolfe, J. C., ed. and trans., Suetonius, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1913,1914). See vol. 2, 464-83, for “The Life of Vergil” contained in The Lives of Illustrious Men.
Servius, Commentarii, eds. G. Thilo and H. Hagen, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1878-87; repr. Hildesheim, 1961).
Williams, R. D., ed., P. Vergil Maronis Aeneidos Liber Quintus (Oxford, 1960).
———, ed., P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber Tertius (Oxford, 1962).
———, ed., The Aeneid of Virgil, 2 vols. (London, 1972, 1973).
II. Critical Works
Anderson, W. S., The Art of the Aeneid (Englewood Cliffs, 1969; repr. Wauconda, 1989).
———and L. N. Quartarone, eds., Approaches to Teaching Vergil’s Aeneid (Publications of the Modern Language Association of America: New York, 2002).
Barchiesi, A., La Traccia del Modello: Effetti Omerici nella Narrazione Virgiliana (Pisa, 1984).
Bernard, J., ed., Vergil at 2000: Commemorative Essays on the Poet and His Influence (New York, l986).
Benjamin, W., Illuminations, trans. W. Zohn; ed. and intro. H. Arendt (New York, 1969). See “The Task of the Translator,” 69-82.
Beye, C. R., The Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Epic Tradition (New York, 1966); rev. and repr. as Ancient Epic Poetry: Homer, Apollonius, Virgil (Ithaca, 1993); expanded 2nd ed., with a chapter on the Gilgamesh poems (Wauconda, 2006).
Bloom, H., ed., Virgil: Modern Critical Views (New York, 1986).
———, ed., Modern Critical Interpretations: Virgil’s Aeneid (New York, 1987).
Bowra, C. M., From Virgil to Milton (London, 1945).
Boyle, A. J., The Chaonian Dove: Studies in the Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid of Virgil (Leiden, 1986).
Broch, H., Der Tod des Vergil (New York, 1945); trans. by J. S. Untermeyer as The Death of Virgil (New York, 1945).
Cairns, F., Virgil’s Augustan Epic (Cambridge, 1989).
Camps, W., Introduction to Virgil’s Aeneid (Oxford, 1969).
Clausen, W. V., Virgil’s Aeneid and the Tradition of Hellenistic Poetry (Berkeley, 1987.)
Commager, S., ed., Virgil: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, 1966). See B. M. W. Knox “The Serpent and the Flame: The Imagery of the Second Book of the Aeneid,” 124-42 (from American Journal of Philology 71 [1950], 379-400); R. A. Brooks “Discolor Aura: Reflections on the Golden Bough,” 143-63 (from American Journal of Philology 74 [1953], 160-80); W. V. Clausen “An Interpretation of the Aeneid,” 75-88 (from Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 68 [1964], 139-47).
Conte, G. B., The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and Other Latin Poets (Cornell Studies in Classical Philology #44: Ithaca, 1986).
Di Cesare, M., The Altar and the City: A Reading of Vergil’s Aeneid (New York, 1974).
Duckworth, G., Structural Patterns and Proportions in Vergil’s Aeneid (Ann Arbor, 1962).
Eliot, T. S., What Is a Classic? (London, 1945), repr. in On Poetry and Poets (London, 1957).
Farron, S., Vergil’s Aeneid: A Poem of Grief and Love (Leiden, 1993).
Feeney, D., The Gods in Epic: Poets and Critics of the Classical Tradition (Oxford, 1991).
Ford, A., Homer: The Poetry of the Past (Ithaca, 1992).
Frank, T., Vergil: A Biography (New York, 1922).
Galinsky, G. K., Aeneas, Sicily and Rome (Princeton, 1969).
Gillis, D., Eros and Death in the Aeneid (Rome, 1983).
Gransden, K. W., Virgil’s Iliad: An Essay on Epic Narrative (London, 1984).
———, Virgil: The Aeneid (New York, 1990).
———, Virgil in English (Penguin Poets in Translation: London, 1996).
Greene, T., The Descent from Heaven: A Study in Epic Continuity (New Haven, 1963).
Griffin, J., Virgil (Oxford, 1986).
Hardie, P., Virgil’s Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford, 1986).
———, The Epic Successors of Virgil: A Study in the Dynamics of a Tradition (Cambridge, 1993).
———,Virgil (New Surveys in the Classics #28: Oxford, 1998).
———, ed., Virgil: Critical Assessments of Classical Authors, 4 vols., (London, 1999).
Harrison, S. J., ed., Oxford Readings in Vergil’s Aeneid (Oxford, 1990).
Heinze, R., Vergils epische Technik (Leipzig, 1915); trans. as Virgil’s Epic Technique, by H. Harvey, D. Harvey, and F. Robertson (Berkeley, 1993).
Highet, G., The Speeches in Vergil’s Aeneid ( Princeton, 1972).
Hollander, R., Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” (Firenze, 1983).
Horsfall, N., A Companion to the Study of Virgil (Leiden, 1995).
Hunt, J., Forms of Glory: Structure and Sense in Virgil’s Aeneid (Carbondale, 1973).
Jenkyns, R., Classical Epic: Homer and Virgil (London, 1992).
———, Virgil’s Experience: Nature and History: Times, Names, Places (Oxford, 1998).
Johnson, W. R., Darkness Visible: A Study of Vergil’s Aeneid (Berkeley, 1976).
Klingner, F., Virgil: Bucolica, Georgica, Aeneis (Zurich, 1967).
Knauer, G. N., Die Aeneis und Homer: Studien zur poetischen Technik Vergils mit der Homerzitate in der Aeneis (Hypomnemata #7: Göttingen, 1964; repr. 1979).
Knight, W. F. J. Jackson, Roman Vergil (Harmondsworth, 1966).
Levi, P., Virgil: His Life and Times (London, 1998).
Lewis, C. S., A Preface to Paradise Lost (London, 1952).
Luce, T. J., ed., Ancient Writers: Greece and Rome (2 vols., New York, 1982). See J. A. Hanson “Vergil” (vol. 2, 669-701).
Lyne, R. O. A. M., Further Voices in Vergil’s Aeneid (Oxford, 1987).
———, Words and the Poet: Characteristic Techniques of Style in Vergil’s Aeneid (Oxford, 1989).
Mack, S., Patterns of Time in Vergil (Hamden, 1978).
Martindale, C., ed., Virgil and His Influence (London, 1984).
———, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Virgil (Cambridge, 1997).
McAuslan, I., and P. Walcot, eds., Virgil (Greece and Rome Studies #1: Oxford, 1990).
Moskalew, W., Formular Language and Poetic Design in the Aeneid (Mnemosyne Supplement #73: Leiden, 1982).
Most, G., and S. Spence, eds., Re-Presenting Virgil (Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici #52: Pisa, 2004).
O’Hara, J. J., Death and the Optimistic Prophecy in Vergil’s Aeneid (Princeton, 1990).
Otis, B., Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry (Oxford, 1964).
Parry, A., The Language of Achilles and Other Papers (Oxford, 1989). See “The Two Voices of Virgil’s Aeneid,” 78-96 (from Arion 2.4 [1963], 66-80).
Perkell, C., ed., Reading Vergil’s Aeneid: An Interpretive Guide (Norman, 1999).
Pöschl, V., Die Dichtkunst Vergils: Bild und Symbol in der Aeneis (Wiesbaden, 1950); trans. as The Art of Vergil: Image and Symbol in the Aeneid, by G. Seligson (Ann Arbor, 1962).
Pound, E., ABC of Reading (New York, 1960).
Putnam, M. C. J., The Poetry of the Aeneid (Cambridge, 1965; repr. Ithaca, 1988).
———, Virgil’s Aeneid: Interpretation and Influence (Chapel Hill, 1995).
———, Virgil’s Epic Designs: Ekphrasis in the Aeneid (New Haven, 1998).
———(with J. Hankins), ed. and trans., Maffeo Vegio: Short Epics (Cambridge, 2004).
———, “Virgil’s Aeneid,” in J. M. Foley, ed., A Companion to Ancient Epic (Malden/ Oxford, 2005), 452-75.
———and J. Ziolkowski, The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years (New Haven, 2006).
Quinn, K., Virgil’s Aeneid: A Critical Description (London, 1968).
Quinn, S., ed., Why Vergil? A Collection of Interpretations (Wauconda, 2000).
Quint, D., Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton (Princeton, 1993).
Rossi, A., Contexts of War: Manipulation of Genre in Virgilian Battle Narrative (Ann Arbor, 2004).
Schulte, R., and J. Biguenet, eds., Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derri
da (Chicago, 1992). See Yves Bonnefoy “Translating Poetry,” 186-92.
Sparrow, J., Half-lines and Repetitions in Virgil (Oxford, 1931; repr. New York, 1977).
Spence, S., ed., Poets and Critics Read Vergil (New Haven, 2001). See M. C. J. Putnam “Vergil’s Aeneid: The Final Lines,” 86-104.
Stahl, H.-P, ed., Vergil’s Aeneid: Augustan Epic and Political Context (London, 1998).
Thibodeau, P., and H. Haskell, eds., Being There Together: Essays in Honor of Michael C. J. Putnam (Afton, 2003). See S. Scully “Eros and Warfare in Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’ and Homer’s ‘Iliad,’ ” 181-97.
Thomas, R., Virgil and the Augustan Reception (Cambridge, 2001).
Van Nortwick, T., Somewhere I Have Never Travelled (Oxford, 1992).
West, D., and T. Woodman, eds., Creative Imitation and Latin Literature (Cambridge, 1979).
Williams, G., Technique and Ideas in the Aeneid (New Haven, 1983).
Williams, R. D., The Aeneid (London, 1987).
Wiltshire, S., Public and Private in Vergil’s Aeneid (Amherst, 1989).
Woodman, T., and J. Powell, eds., Author and Audience in Latin Literature (Cambridge, 1992). See G. P. Goold “The Voice of Virgil: The Pageant of Rome in Aeneid 6,” 110-23.
Zetzel, J., “Romane Memento: Justice and Judgment in Aeneid 6,” TAPA 119 (1989), 263-84.
Ziolkowski, T., Virgil and the Moderns (Princeton, 1993).
VARIANTS FROM THE OXFORD CLASSICAL TEXT
The Oxford Classical Text of Virgil’s Opera, edited by R. A. B. Mynors and published in 1969, has been followed throughout the translation, except for the textual variants cited below:
Bracketed as questionable by Mynors, lines 6.242, 8.46, and 10.278 are omitted from the translation; 3.230 and 4.273 are included. For a discussion of the inclusion of 2.567-88, see Introduction, pp. 11-12.
NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION
Names in small capitals refer to entries in the Pronouncing Glossary, pp. 426-486.
1.49-55 Minerva could burn the fleet to ash: Minerva (Athena in the Greek pantheon), though she favored the Greeks, was angry over the Greek chieftain Little Ajax, son of Oileus. He had violated Cassandra, King Priam’s daughter, in the Trojan temple of Minerva, where she had taken refuge (see AJAX). Little Ajax, son of Oileus, is to be distinguished from Great Ajax, son of Telamon, the hero of Sophocles’ play who committed suicide before Troy fell and, questioned by Ulysses (Odysseus) in the Underworld, refused to speak (Odyssey 11.617-49). Oilean Ajax is mentioned by Virgil as fighting against Aeneas (2.516).
1.236-237 Scylla’s howling rabid dogs, / . . . the Cyclops’ boulders: The stories of the Trojans’ encounter with (or their avoidance of) Scylla and Charybdis and their contact with the Cyclops are told through Aeneas in 3.496-508 and 3.711-86.
1.287-97 Antenor could slip out . . . : Antenor was a Trojan elder who at one point advised the Trojans to give Helen back to the Greeks. He somehow escaped from Troy with his people, sailed west through the Aegean, north up the Adriatic, passed the Timavus River (adjacent to Aquileia), and founded the city of Padua, some seventy miles farther west.
1.320-21 For Ascanius . . . Iulus . . . Ilus, see Glossary, especially ILUS (1), and Introduction, pp. 11-17.
1.322-25 thirty sovereign years . . . : As Austin says (1971, Note 1.269), “a grand periphrasis.”
1.351 Gates of War: This reference would recall to readers of the Aeneid the temple of the god Janus at Rome. He was the god of doors and gates and his temple was closed, twice in the Republic’s history but on three occasions under Augustus, in times of peace. See 7.705-15.
1.352-55 The Frenzy / of civil strife . . . : for the historical background of recent Italian civil war, see Introduction, pp. 1-3.
1.379-80 Suddenly . . . his mother / crossed his path: Though the reader now knows that the huntress is Venus (Aphrodite) in disguise, Aeneas is not allowed to make the identification until she begins to disappear, and then it comes as a surprise to him, 1.488-97.
1.446 Byrsa, the Hide: The legend was that the Africans sold the Tyrians as much land as they could cover with a bull’s-hide, but the Tyrians cut it into thin strips and so encircled a much larger area than intended. See BYRSA.
1.534-37 the Tyrians . . . first unearthed that sign . . . : Digging after their first landfall, they unearthed the head of a fiery stallion, which was afterward to be seen on Carthaginian coinage.
1.561-95 The “empty, lifeless pictures” that Aeneas sees on the walls of Juno’s temple in Carthage all portray people and events from the Trojan War. The mention of RHESUS (567-73) alludes to the events narrated in Iliad 10. Diomedes and Ulysses raid the Trojan camp at night and kill the recently arrived Rhesus, a Thracian ally of Troy. They then drive his magnificent horses back to the Greek camp, because an oracle had said that if the horses could crop the grass of Troy or drink from the river Xanthus, the city would not fall. TROILUS (573-79), a very young warrior, is killed by Achilles (not in the Iliad; his story comes from later epic work). The Trojan women (579-83) are seen as unsuccessful suppliants of Athena, who refuses, as in the Iliad (6.338-66), to divert the battle fury of Diomedes from the Trojans. In the Iliad (Books 22-25), Achilles drags the body of Hector (Aeneid 1.583-89) not around the walls of Troy but around the tomb of Patroclus, and gives his body back to Priam, his father. The Trojan ally MEMNON (591), from the East, and the Amazon PENTHESILEA (592-95) are all from post-Iliadic epics that exist now only in fragments.
1.571-73 high-strung teams . . . : for the prophecy attached to these fine horses, see Note 1.561-95.
1.699 Just one is lost: Orontes. See LEUCASPIS, LYCUS, and ORONTES.
1.746-47 Teucer, your enemy . . . / claiming his own descent from Teucer’s ancient stock: See TEUCER (2) and (1).
2.56 Ulysses: According to a later epic poem, when Ulysses tried to escape service in the war at Troy by pretending madness, Palamedes proved him sane by placing Ulysses’ infant son Telemachus in the path of the oncoming plow. Later, at Troy, Ulysses avenged himself by forging a letter from Priam that exposed Palamedes as a Trojan agent. Palamedes was stoned to death by the Greeks.
2.149-52 With blood you appeased the winds . . . : The oracle refers to the prewar sacrifice of Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon, and the future sacrifice (i.e., of Sinon) which the oracle foresees.
2.211 the fateful image of Pallas: The Palladium; a small, sacred statue of Pallas Athena in full armor, and a talisman that safeguarded Troy, but was carried away from its shrine on the city heights by Diomedes and Ulysses, leaving the city vulnerable and the goddess outraged, 9.180.
2.259 Laocoön, the priest of Neptune picked by lot: Laocoön and his sons are the subject of a famous statue, probably copied from a Hellenistic original, discovered in Rome in 1506, now housed in the Vatican Museum.
2.551 under a tortoise-shell of shields: The “tortoise” formation was a screen formed when soldiers held their interlocked shields over their heads as they advanced.
2.686-92 Such was the fate of Priam . . . : For the historical resonance of these lines, see Introduction, pp. 24-25.
2.702-28 For a discussion of the Helen passage, the debate it has prompted, and its authenticity and effectivness in context, see Introduction, pp. 11-12.
2.795-96 I have seen / one sack of my city: Anchises refers to an earlier sack of Troy at the hands of Hercules, in payment for Laomedon’s reneging on his offer of famous horses as a gift to Hercules. See 3.558-59 and Note ad loc.
2.804-5 the Father . . . scorched me with its fire: As Williams relates it (1972, note 2.649), “the story was that Anchises boasted of Venus’ love for him, for which Jupiter resolved to punish him with a thunderbolt; Venus however diverted it so that he was scorched but not killed.” See Austin, 1964, Note 2.649.
2.862 thunder crashes on the left: In Roman augury, signs appearing on the left were generally regarded as favorable. The opposite is true for Greek divination. See 9.717-20.
2.888 an old shrine of forsaken Ceres stands: “For
saken” here probably means solitary. In other words the temple would be a safe spot for the refugees to meet.
2.983-86 Three times I tried to fling my arms around her neck . . . : These lines echo the lines that, beginning with Homer, describe the grief of the living who try but cannot seize a cherished ghost, of Achilles to seize Patroclus (Iliad 23.111- 19), then of Ulysses to seize his mother (Odyssey 11.233-39), here of Aeneas to seize his wife, Creusa, and later (6.808-11) his father’s spirit in the Underworld. Each encounter demonstrates that, between the living and the dead, “there yawns a gulf,” as Auden might express it, “embraces cannot bridge.”
3.20-21 here I sail / and begin to build our first walls: Aeneas has been told by Creusa (2.967-72) that he would travel very far and found a city in Hesperia, through which the Tiber runs, so his building of a city in Thrace at this point is one of the details that Virgil might have corrected if he had had the opportunity to revise the poem later.
3.102 Grant us our own home, god of Thymbra: THYMBRA was the site of a famous shrine to APOLLO. It was there, according to some ancient sources, that Achilles killed Troilus. See Note 1.561-95.
3.123 the land of our return: For Aeneas’ arrival in Italy as a kind of nostos or return, see DARDANUS.
3.126 Crete, great Jove’s own land: Jupiter was born on the island of Crete, where, according to legend, he was watched over by the nymphs of Mount Dicte and fed by bees, as described by Virgil in Book 4 of his Georgics (4.152).
3.159 the old Curetes’ harbor: See CURETES. The noise made by the clashing cymbals of the Curetes hid the wailing of the baby Jupiter from his father, who would otherwise have devoured him.
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