In Book 9 of Virgil’s Aeneid, Turnus, Aeneas’s enemy and the leader of the Rutuli, is shut inside his enemy’s camp. At first, the battle goes his way – but then the Trojan leaders begin to rally their forces. Hear Virgil’s original Latin and follow in English here.
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.
The Great Goddess, Cybele, rescues Aeneas’s ships from being burnt by his enemy, Turnus, and transforms them into goddesses of the sea. Hear the Latin and follow in English here.
Aeneas’s enemy and rival, King Turnus, rages like a desperate wolf as he looks for a way into the Trojans’ camp. Hear Virgil’s story in Latin and follow in English here.
As many nineteenth century European writers automatically would, the Swiss poet Keller turns to classical mythology to make a point about human nature. Hear his fine forest poem in the original German and follow in English here.
On the new shield that Venus has just given to Aeneas, her husband Vulcan has depicted many scenes from the future of Rome. They go from Romulus and Remus to Virgil’s present day, so it is a big shield! At the political level, the whole purpose of the Aeneid is to suggest that Augustus’s ascendancy is divinely sanctioned and the culmination of the history of Rome so far. No wonder, then, that Virgil does not hold back when he comes to describe how the shield shows his defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at the battle of Actium, and his triumphant reception by the City.
The illustration is a Roman cameo of the first century showing Augustus in triumph.
Hear the Latin and follow in English here.
Catullus thought that Suffenus was a dud as a poet but – against form – was prepared to make allowances for the inability that we all have, as humans, to see ourselves as we are. The illustration shows that even real talent may get carried away by its own publicity …
Hear the Latin and follow in English here. The photograph of Oscar Wilde is by Sarony.
There aren’t any ancient Romans around to show us how they recited poetry, so we can’t be certain just how they did it. So what is the best approach to take, and why? Today’s post at Pantheon Poets is about the approach that we take and what it is based on. Read about it here.
The illustration shows a Choregos and actors in a mosaic from Pompeii.
King Evander of the Arcadians offers Aeneas 400 cavalrymen and the support of his valiant son, Pallas, and suggests in addition where even stronger reinforcements may be available.
The illustration is Alexander the Great at the Battle of Issus, from a mosaic in the House of the Faun at Pompeii.
Hear the Latin and follow in John Dryden’s English translation here.