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Latin Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2018

Christopher Whitton
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Extract

The dullest book of the Aeneid? Certainly not, insist Stephen Heyworth and James Morwood in their commentary on Aeneid 3. There can't be many students at school or university level who cut their teeth on epic Virgil with his third book, but Wadham College, Oxford, where H&M were colleagues, has been the glorious exception for a quarter of a century, and the rest of us now have good reason to follow suit. I don't just mean the ‘thrilling traveller's tale’ (so the dust-jacket) that carries us from Polydorus to Polyphemus by way of such episodes as the Cretan plague, the Harpy attack, and a pointed stop-off at Actium, nor the ktistic and prophetic themes that give this book such weight in Virgil's grand narrative. There's also the simple matter of accessibility. Doctissimi lectores of Aeneid 3 can consult Nicholas Horsfall's densely erudite and wickedly overpriced Brill commentary, but others have had to make do with one of R. D. Williams’ more apologetic efforts. (True, there is an efficient student edition by C. Perkell, but that seems to have made little headway in the UK, at least.) Now Aeneas’ odyssey takes a place among the few books of the Aeneid for which undergraduates and others can draw on commentaries which are at once accessible, sophisticated, and affordable.

Type
Subject Reviews
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 65 , Issue 1 , April 2018 , pp. 108 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2018 

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