The story of Aristaeus and his bees from Book 4 completes Pantheon Poets’ selection of extracts from the Georgics, Virgil’s epic poem about farming and the countryside: hear it in the original Latin and follow in English here. See the key to the selection with links to individual extracts here.
See the opening of the greatest English epic poem here, with links so you can compare it with its classical models, the Aeneid, Iliad and Odyssey. In the illustration by William Blake, an Archangel warns Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. In the background, beyond the Tree of Knowledge, an elephant “wreathes his lithe proboscis” (Paradise Lost Book 4, line 347).
Ovid vividly tells the tragic story of Phaethon, the son of the Sun God, Phoebus Apollo, who unwisely dared to try to drive his father’s fiery chariot across the sky.
Hear Ovid’s Latin and follow in English here, as Phaethon sets out on his doomed adventure.
To be continued …
Hear Ovid’s Latin and follow in English here.
In the illustration by Karl Bryullov, Apollo himself demonstrates how it should be done.
