Aeneas arrives back in time to turn the tide of battle against his enemies, the Rutulians, led by their chief, Turnus. Hear the passage in the original Latin 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.
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.
The plan for a duel between Aeneas and Turnus has been foiled yet again – worse, Aeneas has been wounded by a stray arrow, and, as he leaves the field, Turnus goes on yet another rampage, breaking the oaths that King Latinus has sworn. Hear Virgil’s vivid Latin and follow in English here.