I will discuss the translation and introduction (both of which are excellent) in due course, but I would first like to address my principal problem with the book. A Glossary of Names and an admirable 3-page bibliography of Suggested Further Reading append the translation.

Johnson, itself an abridged version of that in the complete translation. The translation is prefaced by an introduction by W.R. This rather hampers a reader unfamiliar with the poem who may want to supplement the omissions from elsewhere.

Brief but helpful synopses are provided to fill in the gaps in the narrative, although line references are rather frustratingly provided to L’s translation, and not to the Latin text (L has used Mynors’ OCT 3). The ‘Essential’ Aeneid, as the abridgement is described, consists of approximately half of the work: Books 1, 2, 4, and 6 are included in their entirety, along with sections of Books 7 (omitting the catalogue of Italian forces), 8 (omitting the tale of Hercules and Cacus), 9 (the Nisus and Euryalus episode only), 10 (omitting the phantom Aeneas wild-goose chase), 11 (Camilla) and 12 (from Aeneas’ return to battle to the end). 2 The recently published Aeneid represented his first foray into Latin epic, and he has translated Virgil with the same combination of austerity and accessibility that marked his Homers. 1 L has proved himself a poet-translator and performer of exceptional ability and innovation by publishing in written and audio media, he has contributed to the awareness in the readership of translations of the centrality of performance to Homeric epic. This attractive volume, an abridgement of Stanley Lombardo’s (henceforth L) complete translation of Virgil’s Aeneid (Hackett, 2005), adds a Latin epic to the author’s burgeoning set of translations of mainly Greek poetry.

The essential aeneid