3 - Reading the Aeneid

Summary

The text

The modern reader of the Aeneid, whether he reads it in Latin or in translation, will be reading a text which, in its physical appearance, seems no different from, say, a text of Paradise Lost. Nevertheless, it is worth reflecting briefly on the differences between an ancient and a modern text. Ancient texts were written on scrolls or rolls: long ‘books’ like the twelve into which the Aeneid is divided, each of between 700 and 1,000 lines, would take up one roll each: the number of the ‘book’ would be inscribed on the end of the roll, such divisions facilitating the location of particular works or passages in large public or private collections. The Alexandrian age (third to second centuries bc) was the age of the first great public libraries, and by Virgil's time wealthy and cultivated men possessed their own libraries. Augustus founded two public libraries in Rome, to which later emperors added.

The modern form of the book, with sewn gatherings (the ‘codex’), came in with the Christian era, and all surviving complete manuscripts of classical authors are ‘codices’, since none is earlier than the fourth century ad; we need not consider here the large number of papyrus fragments of Greek writers which survive from the second and third centuries bc. The earliest surviving manuscripts of the Aeneid date from the fourth century ad and are magnificently inscribed in capital letters, often with ornamentation: the ancient equivalent of deluxe editions.