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!
Friedrich von Schiller, the great contemporary of Goethe, was a gifted translator of Virgil. You can find his version of the death of Laocoon recited and translated here.
An affair with Cynthia is too hard work for you, Propertius tells Gallus, and he has some pretty persuasive-sounding arguments.
Hear Propertius’s Latin and follow in English here.