![]() ![]() I kept getting caught up in the rhymes, and wondering ten minutes later what had just happened. However, it was very hard for me to listen to the reading and focus on the story. Virgil wrote the poem in rhyming couplets, which Dryden's translation mirrors. This was probably a mistake, and I probably would have been better off with a prose translation. Virgil, however, seems much more focused on showing that Aeneas is awesome (which, given that the poem was produced for Augustus Caesar, who claimed decent from Aeneas, makes sense), and instead it just falls flat.Īs mentioned, I listened to John Dryden's 1697 translation. In The Odyssey, Homer manages to make you care about Odysseus, Telemachus, Penelope, and others. None of the characters are anyone I can really care about. It should be a good story, but it just doesn't click with me. ![]() The basic plot is that Trojan hero Aeneas sails the Mediterranean, stops off in Carthage where he hooks up with Queen Dido, then he dumps her, sails to Italy, kills a bunch of people, and becomes founder of Rome. Part of it was the book itself, and part of it was likely the translation I listened to, John Dryden's 1697 verse translation. While The Odyssey is a huge favorite of mine, I just couldn't get into The Aeneid. Alas, Virgil's 19 BC epic poem just doesn't work for me as well. The Aeneid is a classic of Western literature, so after re-reading The Odyssey again a few months ago, I decided to tackle The Aeneid, which I had read in college and had thought was okay at the time, again. ![]()
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