6/7/2023 0 Comments The aeneid david west![]() ![]() Letting Virgil do most of the work of distinguishing the characters, Collins brings the drama to life. This is no small achievement, considering how remarkably passive Aeneas is for an epic hero. The late poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis’s translation of this Roman epic is idiosyncratic, but David Collins’s narration is consistently gripping. Cecil Day-Lewis’s euphonious hexameters were meant to be easy on the ear, being written for broadcast on the BBC, and are given added force by colloquialisms such as Jupiter’s ‘storm troops’, the golden bough as a ‘passport’ to the underworld, the sneering description of Aeneas as a ‘Phrygian pansy’ and Pyrrhus as a ‘milksop’. All manner of gods and mythic characters are knitted into it and we find out why the Trojans were stupid enough to haul that wooden horse inside Troy, why poor Laocoön and his sons got strangled by serpents, why Aeneas ratted on Dido and so on and so on. ![]() I hadn’t read any Virgil before listening to this engaging 1952 version of the classic tale of Aeneas escaping from Troy and eventually laying the foundations of Rome. ![]() Titles by Virgil Titles by Virgil The Aeneid (abridged) The Aeneid (unabridged) Reviews ![]()
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