The Aeneid

About the book

After Troy's destruction, Aeneas leads survivors across the Mediterranean towards the land promised as their destination. Storms, divine hostility, memories of loss, and the possibility of a different life repeatedly complicate that task. His encounter with Dido in Carthage brings personal attachment into painful tension with the demands of destiny. Arrival in Italy opens another struggle, as the search for a home encounters existing peoples, loyalties, and rival claims. Virgil makes the future greatness associated with Rome inseparable from the suffering required to prepare its way. This edition presents Dryden's verse translation across twelve books. The epic asks readers to consider the cost of duty as well as its grandeur, keeping individual grief visible within a story whose promised significance extends far beyond any one life.

• Duty and desire
• Exile and belonging
• The cost of destiny

Why read it

For an epic that gives the founding of a future people both public grandeur and a persistent awareness of private loss.

Epic poem · translated into verse by John Dryden