In Book 1 of the Aeneid, Jupiter promises Venus that her son, Aeneas, will not be prevented by the enmity of Juno, Queen of the Gods, from founding a dynasty that will produce the city of Rome and the great Augustus.
In the illustration, Augustus cuts a figure that is no less imposing than Virgil’s descriptions of his mighty ancestor.
Hear Virgil’s original Latin and follow in a new English translation here.
As Aeneas’s journey through the underworld continues, the shade of his father, Anchises, shows him the future Emperor Augustus and foretells his glorious conquests as they talk in the Elysian Fields. Hear the Latin and follow in English here.
As the Aeneid slowly approaches its climax, a new combatant enters the strife between Aeneas’s Trojans and the Latins, led by Turnus. She is Camilla, a powerful huntress and warrior beloved of Diana, the Goddess of the chase: sadly, she is foredoomed to die in the battle. Today’s extract tells of the strange circumstances under which her father dedicated her to the Goddess as a baby. Hear Virgil’s Latin and follow in English here.
On the fringes of Hades Aeneas and the Sibyl skirt the haunts of human cares, false dreams and phantom monsters before coming to the infernal river and Charon, the ferryman of the dead. Hear the Latin and follow in English here.
Turnus follows a phantom Aeneas away from danger, while the real Aeneas, roused by the death of his friend Pallas, is seeking him on the battlefield.
Hear Virgil’s Latin and follow in English here.
In the illustration by Franςois Boucher, Venus spirits Paris away in a mist to save him from Helen’s husband, King Menelaus.