Another war against the Parthians looks in the offing and the outcome of the last one does not reflect well on Roman military pride and moral fibre. An inspiring example is needed. Step forward Regulus, who long ago persuaded the Senate to reject a deal with the Carthaginians which would have saved his own life. Hear the Regulus Ode here.
In one of the most famous moments of European history, Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon.
Hear Lucan’s Latin and follow in English here.
Like everyone else, Queen Dido of Carthage, giving a lavish banquet in honour of Aeneas and his band of exiled Trojans, is unaware that she is entertaining a god unawares. It is Cupid, Aeneas’s half-brother, whom their mother Venus has sent in disguise to make Dido fall in love. The idea is to make it hard for Juno, Queen of the Gods and Aeneas’s enemy, to turn the Carthaginian hosts against their Trojan guests, but Venus has miscalculated. The consequences of Dido’s passion will include tragedy and death for her, and the beginnings of an enmity between Rome and Carthage that will leave a deep mark on centuries to come. The illustration, photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen, shows Cupid at and and a Maenad in a fresco from Pompeii.
Hear Virgil’s Latin and follow in English here.
In a banqueting hall on Carthage, Cupid has been sent by his mother Venus to make Queen Dido fall in love with Aeneas, the heroic Trojan prince whose descendants will found Rome.
Hear Virgil’s Latin and follow in English here.
See the illustrated blog post here.
Cynthia wakes as Propertius returns from his night out – what reception will he get? Hear the poem in Latin and follow in English here as crockery is about to fly.
Cynthia is no more, but as Propertius lies in bed, her ghost appears to give him a trademark dressing-down. But is all as it seems? Perhaps we will find out in Propertius’s next poem…
Hear an extract in the original Latin and follow the poem in English with a parallel text here.
Cynthia is back from the grave, on an excursion with someone who looks like a rival for Propertius to visit a festival where a fearsome snake is to be fed by maidens in honour of Juno – and when she returns and catches Propertius up to no good, she gives him good reason to regret it. But in the preceding poem she was dead and buried: what is going on?
Find a suggestion, hear an extract from the original Latin and follow the whole poem in parallel text here.
Snake photo by Holger Krisp: see the photo credits page for licensing details.
Today’s new poem is the story as told by Ovid in the Metamorphoses of Daedalus the legendary craftsman and his son Icarus, who flew too close to the Sun