The Aeneid (Fagles Translation)

10 CDs, 121/2 hours

The New Yorker

Fagles’s new version of Virgil’s epic delicately melds the stately rhythms of the original to a contemporary cadence. Having previously produced well-received translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey, he illuminates the poem’s Homeric echoes while remaining faithful to Virgil’s distinctive voice. Pious Aeneas, passionate Dido, and raging Turnus are driven by the desires and rivalries of the gods—but even the gods recognize their obeisance to fate, and to the foretold Roman Empire that will produce Augustus, Virgil’s patron. The excellent introduction, by Bernard Knox, gives historical and literary context, and both Knox and Fagles convincingly argue the epic’s continuing relevance. Fagles, writing of Virgil’s sense of “the price of empire,” notes that “it seems to be a price we keep on paying, in the loss of blood and treasure, time-worn faith and hard-won hope, down to the present day.”

Robert Fagles is Arthur W. Marks '19 Professor of Comparative Literature, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He is the recipient of the 1997 PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and was awarded a National Humanities Medal in 2006.
Bernard Knox is Director Emeritus of Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C.