The Aeneid

Barry Powell, acclaimed translator of the Iliad (OUP, 2013) and the Odyssey (OUP, 2014) now delivers a graceful, lucid, free-verse translation of the Aeneid in a pleasant modern idiom. On-page notes explain obscure literary and historical references, while the rich visual program lightens the text and educates students in the history of Western art by presenting a single topic as represented over 2,000 years.The Aeneid''s first sentence charts the poem''s historical plot, taking us in one sweep of seven lines from Homer''s Troy to Augustus'' Rome. These two layers of time are felt all the way through the poem, from the distant past of Aeneas'' heroic and quasi-mythological time, over 1100 years before Vergil, down to the "now" of Augustus'' Rome, when Vergil was writing the poem between 30 and 19 BC, a period of ongoing political experimentation.The story of Aeneas--moving from one continent to another, undergoing and enforcing great transformations in the process--transplants contempo