Jupiter has saved Aeneas’s fleet from burning and his father Anchises appears with an invitation to visit him in the Elysian fields. The illustration, by William Blake Richmond, shows Anchises in his younger days when he first met Aeneas’s mother, the Goddess Venus. Hear the poem 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.
Callimachus, the great Greek elegist, remembers his friend Heraclitus, a poet over the seas, and his nightingales (his poetry): hear the Greek and follow in English here. On one of his very best days the Victorian, William Johnson Cory, wrote the verse translation below.
They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead;
They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed;
I wept as I remembered how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking, and sent him down the sky.
And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,
Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;
For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.
Today’s poem is W B Yeats’s powerful sonnet on Leda and the swan, showing that he could be inspired by classical, as well as celtic, myth. Read the poem here.
Today’s new poem is a sonnet on this famous Florentine church with a plain exterior but a beautiful interior. Read it here.
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Saturnalia on 17 December was the Roman’s midwinter party festival. It had a definite topsy-turvy element, with masters waiting on their slaves, as shown in the illustration, and a generally indulgent attitude towards high jinks.
Today’s poem was written for a different occasion: it is an extract from one of Virgil’s pastoral poems, or Eclogues, written in 40 BCE and looking forward to a birth which will herald the start of a new golden age. It is appropriate to the run-up to Christmas because, though few if any would agree today, a strong current of opinion among early Christians and in the middle ages interpreted it as a prophesy of the birth of Christ. Hear the Latin and follow in English here.
In his poem, the Metamorphoses, Ovid is telling the story of King Midas, who should have been more careful what he wished for. In today’s blog illustration, Midas is shown demonstrating that his poor judgement in asking for the golden touch was not a one-off: he is awarding Pan the victory in a musical competition against the God Apollo. See and listen to the poem here.
After stabbing herself, Dido lingers on in pain until Juno, Queen of the Gods, takes pity and sends Iris, the Goddess of the rainbow to set her finally free. See and hear the passage here.
Today’s new poem is by Horace, celebrating a feast day with wine in an uncloudedly happy mood, and thinking ahead to the evening. You can hear it here.
