See and hear passages from Schiller’s fine German version of Books 2 and 4 of the Aeneid, follow in English and compare with Virgil’s Latin original.
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.
On a pyre she has built to burn all that Aeneas has left her, Dido dies by her own hand on his sword. It is one of the great moments of the Aeneid, and augurs enmity and war for the future between Dido’s and Aeneas’s descendants. Hear the climax of the story here.
As Aeneas tells Dido of the fall of Troy, there could not be a sadder contrast between the joyful celebration that Aeneas describes and the dark events that are to come. Follow the extract in English and hear it in Latin here.
Dido, bereft, watches in despair as Aeneas and the Trojans ready their ships to sail away and leave her. Hear the poetry here.
In North Africa, fearing that fourteen of his ships may be lost, Aeneas is exploring the country. His mother Venus, disguised as a Phoenician girl, has told him the story of Queen Dido and now delivers good news about his missing ships and men by interpreting a sighting of swans as an oracle.
Hear the Latin and follow in English here.