Category: Biographies
The Æneid, like the Iliad and Odyssey, is a Tale of Troy. The fascination of that remarkable cycle of legend had not weakened after the lapse of ten centuries. Virgil not only set himself deliberately to imitate Homer in his method of poetical treatment, but he goes to him for...
The Æneid has two drawbacks to its popularity as an epic poem amongst modern readers. One defect is common to all classical fiction--that there is no love-romance, properly so c...
6. CHAPTER VI.The Sea-god, at Venus’s intercession for her son, sends Æneas and his crews calm seas and prosperous gales. One victim only the Fates demand; Palinurus, the pilot of Æneas’s shi...
5. CHAPTER V.“What cause has lit so fierce a flame They know not; but the pangs of shame From great love wronged, and what despair Will make a baffled woman dare,-- All this they know; and k...
1. CHAPTER I.The Æneid, like the Iliad and Odyssey, is a Tale of Troy. The fascination of that remarkable cycle of legend had not weakened after the lapse of ten centuries. Virgil not only s...
4. CHAPTER IV.The Carthaginian queen has been an eager listener to Æneas’s story. She is love-stricken--suddenly, and irremediably. The poet has thought it necessary to explain the fact by th...
2. CHAPTER II.It has been said that this poem is a kind of supplement to the Iliad. Æneas tells us what was not there told by Homer, but what is presupposed in his Odyssey,--the later history...
13. CHAPTER XIII.The spirit of the Latins is wellnigh broken--they feel that their cause is a failing one. And Turnus sees angry eyes bent upon him, as the cause of this ill-fated war. He will t...
7. CHAPTER VII.It has been said that this poem combines in some degree the characters both of the Iliad and of the Odyssey. Up to this point we have had the wanderings and adventures of the Tr...
10. CHAPTER X.Æneas had been right in his forebodings of danger. Turnus has heard of the chief’s absence, and takes advantage of it to lead his force at once against the new-built fortificati...
9. CHAPTER IX.The turn of events gives the Trojan chief much natural disquiet. All Latium is in arms against his little force of adventurers. He lies down within his lines to a disturbed and...
8. CHAPTER VIII.Turnus arrives amongst them from Ardea at this critical moment, and shouts fiercely for instant battle. In vain does King Latinus quote the oracle, and refuse to fight against t...
3. CHAPTER III.So, with his father and his infant son, and carrying with him the national gods and sacred fire of Troy, Æneas and the remnant of the Trojans had set forth upon their voyage for...
11. CHAPTER XI.The scene changes to Olympus, where Jupiter holds a council of the gods. He is as much troubled as in the Iliad with the dissensions in his own court, and holds the balance with...
12. CHAPTER XII.Æneas’s first care, after raising a trophy crowned with the arms of the slain Mezentius, is to send home to Evander the body of his son. A picked detachment escort it to Laurent...