omg i hated this

Häftig men knappast exceptionell.

Books 1, 2 & 4 read in Latin.

I think I like Homer better...although I can still recite the first few lines of the Aeneid in Latin.

Arma virumque cano!!!

I'm a boring uncultured swine

The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of 9,896 lines in dactylic hexameter.

The Augustus meat riding is crazy

not virgil’s biggest fan but was ok

Come on - a huge horse parked outside your battlements and you're not in the least suspicious? This is supposed to be the cradle of Western civilization?

The Romans attempt to be Greek for a million pages.

I used this text as an undergraduate in an intermediate Latin class 35 years ago. I fondly recall how reading the Aeneid in Latin for the first time was a completely transformative experience. Before my encounter with Vergil, I had no idea that literature could possibly be so incredibly beautiful and moving. His diction, rhythm, narrative genius and virtuoso command of the language struck me like a bolt of lightning. Suddenly, I emerged from an abyss of darkness and entered a new world illuminated by the dazzling brilliance of Vergil's immortal poetry.

Even more satisfying to me now is to witness my own students responding to Vergil in the same way, decades after my own first reading of the poem. I see in them the same wonder and admiration for his extraordinary artistry, their delight in discovering the remarkable poetic techniques that lie at the heart of his inimitable style.

To read Vergil in Latin is one of the most serious undertakings a young student can hope to achieve. It is a literary training of the first rank. Unlike in English classes, where students blow through several "great works" in the course of a year, in an upper level Latin class students will read Vergil, and only Vergil, over the entire year. And this means close reading: parsing each word in each line, admiring complex sentence structures, unusual word choices, richly figurative and rhetorical language. Through his unforgettable characters and their actions, Vergil never fails to provoke in his readers a means of contemplating the deepest mysteries of human existence. Honor, duty, sacrifice, the ties that bind human beings within their families and a larger political community -- all this and so much more is what Vergil has to offer. He is, in short, a serious writer for serious readers.

How many students, perhaps many years later, have recalled the famous bee simile as Aeneas gazes down upon Carthage when he sees it with Achates for the first time? Or summoned up a recollection of Laocoon and his two sons devoured by the fearsome snakes coiling over the sea and heading straight to them with deadly ferocity? Or called to mind the shocking violence of Pyrrhus (Neoptolemus) as he smashes his way into the innermost sanctuary of Priam's palace to slaughter Polites before his father's eyes, a moment before butchering Priam himself as he cowers helplessly at an altar with Hecuba and their daughters and daughters in law? Then there is Dido, the descent to Avernus, the encampment in Italy, and the inevitable death of Turnus.

Nowadays the word "epic" is used to describe just about anything that is big, or perhaps anything that is big and spans several generations. In its true sense, however, "epic" means much, much more. It is a word that describes a work of art that is universal, that narrates a story which fully embodies all of the most cherished values of an entire civilization. This is the Aeneid.