Customer Reviews

Virgil's Aeneid (Harvard Classics, Part 13) REPRODUCTION

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The book has a lot of great issue and you can't beat it for the price. Before each chapter it has comments by professors, ect about opinions of the work. This edition is worth it for that alone. I read the hardback version (Fagels) but at the begining of each book read the comments in this. This book has the actual work of Virgil, that follows each comment but is is formatted, as all poetry that I have come across on Kindle, with odd page line breaks and large gaps in between words in seemily random places. This doesn't affect meaning in reading, but since I had another edition, I usually read the commentary in this, then the books in Fagles, if I didn't have the hardback with me, I read it on kindle without difficulty. It is just a preference. This book, on Kindle can stand on it's own as a good read (if the white space doesn't bother you) and for a dollar is a great investment just for the commentary.

Having never read the Aeneid before, I wasn't sure what I was in for. The 13th volume of the Harvard Classics features the John Dryden translation of the Aeneid, and it's nothing short of wonderful.

When compared to the free version of The Aeneid of Virgil, the two are immediately distinct. The Dryden translation keeps the poem and the rhythmic scheme intact, whereas the free version is a translation by MacKail, and forms it into a narrative vs a proper poem.

The poem itself involves Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy and became the ancestor of the Romans. The poem is all about conflict, whether it's Aeneas and his sense of duty or Dido's own conflicts with Aeneas' pietas, this is a meaty story.

It's hard to add something new to the thousands of reviews of this book, but I feel better for having read it, and it makes for a great companion to The Iliad and The Odyssey. If you're not using the book for academic purposes, the free MacKail version of the book might be good enough for casual readers.