Today we publish a selection of extracts from Friedrich von Schiller’s free version of Book 2 of Virgil’s Aeneid, in which Aeneas tells the story of the fall of Troy, and Book 4, in which Aeneas’s ill-fated affair with Queen Dido of Carthage ends in tragedy. See the selection here, hear Schiller’s German read by Tatjana Pisarski, and use the links to compare his version with Virgil’s original.
The English poet John Westbrook turns his attention from classical subjects to more contemporary issues: world population and the environment. See his “7,000,000,001” here.
The illustration by Emil Keyser is entitled “Expulsion from the Garden of Eden”.
Many Roman writers, including Propertius, were all but forgotten for much of the two thousand years that separates them from the present day. Westbrook wrote a sonnet about the process, part labour-of-love by a few dedicated scholars, part pure luck, through which Propertius’s work has survived: read it here.
Horace’s beautiful poem advises Dellius to make the best of life while it lasts.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
See how Mount Soracte stands white with the deep snow … this is perhaps Horace’s most benign and attractive version of the carpe diem theme, with the stress on wine, warmth and love, rather than the inexorable journey to the grave. See and hear the poem here.