Virgil's epic vividly recounts Aeneas's tortuous journey after the Trojan War and the struggles he faced as he lay the foundations for the greatest continental empire. Rendered into a vigorous and refined English by the most important man of letters of the seventeenth century, this translation of the Aeneid "set a new, august standard so influential as to be epochal." For his version, John Dryden drew on the deep understanding of political unrest he had acquired during the Civil Wars of 1642-51 and the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
“A new and noble standard bearer . . . There’s a capriciousness to Fagles’s line well suited to this vast story’s ebb and flow.” —The New York Times Book Review (front page review)
“Fagles’s new version of Virgil’s epic delicately melds the stately rhythms of the original to a contemporary cadence. . . . He illuminates the poem’s Homeric echoes while remaining faithful to Virgil’s distinctive voice.” —The New Yorker
“Robert Fagles gives the full range of Virgil’s drama, grandeur, and pathos in vigorous, supple modern English. It is fitting that one of the great translators of The Iliad and The Odyssey in our times should also emerge as a surpassing translator of The Aeneid.” —J. M. Coetzee
