Product Description

Describes the legendary origin of the Roman nation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #433734 in Books
• Published on: 1997-10-01
• Original language: Latin
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Language Notes
Text: English, Latin (translation)

About the Author
FREDERICK M. KEENER is Professor of English at Hofstra University. His publications include English Dialogues of the Dead, An Essay on Pope and The Chain of Becoming.

Customer Reviews

"Behold a Nation in a Man compris'd"
John Dryden's 1697 translation of Virgil's Ancient Roman epic "The Aeneid" is, after 300 years, still entertaining and edifying. For students of Restoration/18th Century literature, it is a shining example of the major poetic tradition of the age, Neoclassicism. Dryden, trying with his measured heroic couplets to recapture the high forms of the age of Augustus in Rome, appropriately translates the famous epic of Aeneas, founder of Rome.

"The Aeneid" takes up the Homeric tradition, beginning in the aftermath of "The Iliad" and the Trojan War. Aeneas, protected by his mother, the goddess Venus, is advised to flee Troy with the remaining Trojans. He has been fated to found a greater empire in Italy. Juno, queen of the gods, who supported Greece in the Trojan War, has recently heard that the descendants of Troy will destroy her new favourites in Carthage. All of this raises Juno's ire, and she manipulates men and nature in an effort to end the Trojan line. Through Juno's efforts, and in a manner similar to Homer's "Odyssey," the three day journey from Troy to Rome ends up taking many years.

Aeneas as a hero is a problematic figure. Though he is a skilled warrior and committed leader, his relationships with women are thoroughly troubled in "The Aeneid." In particular, his treatment of Carthage's Queen Dido and later the Trojan women is questionable. In addition, Aeneas has a tendency to let his introspection and attachment to ceremony draw him away from his people when they need his leadership the most. Often, though, these desperate situations allow the next generation, represented by Aeneas's son Ascanius, to shine in action scenes.

Aeneas's foes throughout the poem (Juno, Turnus) offer intense opposition to the wandering Trojans, emphasizing the amount of toil and suffering the Trojans had to endure to establish themselves in a new home and found a new empire. The great thing about Dryden's translation specifically is the way that Dryden dramatizes and references recent problems in England in the context of a Roman epic. In this context, look for references to fires, which are usually described as spreading like "contagion" or "plague." Dryden's personal knowledge of the plague and fire that tore London apart in 1665-6 are important subtexts in the translation. Aeneas and his "exiled" court also fit in with Dryden's concern as a Catholic with the Protestant Succession in the years after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. That Dryden's own historical period finds its way in these and other ways into his translation of the Roman epic are impressive and interesting.

Though the heroic couplet/triplet poetic style Dryden uses throughout his translation of "The Aeneid" can be initially difficult, it gradually becomes easier to read and follow. However, in the books dealing with battles, you will want to read slowly, to figure out just who is killing who. Frederick Keener's introduction to this Penguin Classics edition is very helpful, providing detailed explanations of Dryden's style and context. This edition also includes a glossary of names and a map of Aeneas's voyage, so that names that are introduced only briefly can be better understood. Overall, an excellent edition for reading or study.

If Virgil were British...
If Virgil were British, this is what he would have sounded like. Much praise must be give to John Dryden for this accomplishment. For our translator has managed to tune to the Latin lyre to the beat of English metre. These fine and artful heroic rhyming couplets are without a doubt a manifestation of the aesthetic potential of the English language. This edition is preferred above all others, with the exception of Allen Mandelbaum's rendering, which is without rhyme and without rival in the arena of Virgilian translation.

A Masterpiece
A Masterpiece in every sense of the word. I have also read John Conington's translation, done in about 1870, but find that Dryden's much earlier one wins out. Even though it has a very outmoded rhyme scheme, so despised in today's world, it is that very rhyme scheme that literally carries you along in the reading, making it much easier. Everything is here, war, unrequited love, violence to the max, blood, gore, horrific battle scenes, slaughter unending, the human condition. Which encompasses the gods, who succumb to using mankind as chess pieces to play out their very human emotions. And how Virgil must have clearly understood the futility of war, as well as its horror - and something else - how it catches hold of man and chases away his reason. The poetry is truly soaring; many scenes are as vivid as any movie screen could make them. The pathos and poignancy are not soon forgotton. Scenes of parents behind city walls seeing their sons shut out and killed when the gates are shut are heartwrenching. Here is an example of the power in Virgil's storytelling:
There is this king, who was evil and a very bad ruler,(one of the things he does as punishment to citizens is to tie a living man to a dead man, face to face, and leave them together while the dead man decays) and his people manage to throw him out. In his escape he takes with him his infant daughter, Camilla, whom he loves very much. (It is one of the poet's strengths that no one is either all good or all bad.) They come to a raging river, and the king quickly realizes that, although he is a very strong swimmer, he cannot possibly cross with Camilla, a babe in arms. What to do? He has with him a stout lance or spear, and lashes Camilla to this. Then, using all his considerable strength, he throws the lance across the river, where it lands, quivering, with Camilla still tied safely to it. Then he swims across, retrieves his daughter, and raises her to be Camilla, the virgin warrior, who will bring a corps of other like women to the last battle. Is this the stuff of movies or what? Don't be put off by the fact that it was written over 2000 years ago. It is exciting, absorbing stuff. And I must disagree with the majority of critics who constantly harp on the fact that Aeneas left Dido in the lurch. Dryden's translation makes perfectly clear that he did so only at the instigation of the gods, and that inwardly his heart was breaking. He was above all else an obedient man to his forefathers and his fate, containing that very Roman virtue, "pietas". Vergil captures "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" to a tee. A caveat - be very familiar with the story and characters of "The Iliad", from which Virgil builds "The Aeneid".