The Aeneid and the Translator

Extract

To every man his own Aeneid. Having spent the last six summers translating it as a Penguin Classic, I was delighted when the editors of Greece & Rome and Vergilius asked me to write a piece for them about this experience. The translator takes millions of decisions on points of detail. It must be useful, for him at least, to look back and ask what he has learned about the poem during this special relationship. I think of four points, the first of which I shall not discuss in this article:

(i) the political purpose of the Aeneid;

(ii) Virgil's gift for characterization, particularly of minor characters and particularly by means of their utterances;

(iii) the intensely rhetorical tone of the poem;

(iv) its passion.