On a mission to find Aeneas, the lovers Euryalus and Nisus pause to take the enemy unawares in their camp. Success will be short-lived: hear their tragic end in Latin and follow in English here. the 16th century enamelled illustration is by the Master of the Aeneid Legend.
Our last post was the poem that some commentators think was the first that Catullus wrote to Lesbia. Now we present the poem that may mark the end of the affair in bitterness and insult, written in a metre (Sapphics, developed on Lesbos more than five hundred years earlier by the poetess Sappho) that Catullus uses nowhere except in these two pieces. Perhaps as a final insult, perhaps because they are good and very tolerant friends, his messengers are two men who are used to some pretty gross treatment at his hands.
Hear Catullus’s Latin and follow in English here.
The fulfilment of a prophecy shows Aeneas and his Trojan companions the site of their future city in Italy. Jupiter thunders three times and brandishes a fiery cloud to confirm the omen.
Hear the Latin and follow in English here.
Aeneas’s enemy Juno has duped his tired and travel-worn Trojan women into setting fire to his ships while he holds rich funeral games in Sicily for the anniversary of the death of his father Anchises. Juno and the women hope that he will give up his destiny in Italy and settle where he is. In today’s extract here, Aeneas calls on Jupiter to save the ships in the nick of time. Help is granted: only the old, tired and timid will stay and Aeneas will go on to Italy with a smaller but more select band composed solely of the young, brave and battle-ready. In the illustration, Claude Lorrain (1600 – 1682) uses the incident as an excuse for a charmingly mysterious seascape.
Shakespeare on a classical scene – Ulysses tries to persuade Achilles to think of his reputation and re-engage in the Trojan War. Read the extract from his “Troilus and Cressida” here.
A very happy 467th, immortal Will!