One of the most resonant sentences of the poem- forsan et hГ¦c olim meminisse iuvabit (I, 203)-Dryden renders in two lines:ДЄn hour will come, with pleasure to relate

Dryden made the couplet his unit, which gave him a lot more room to work in. He is one persona of a gens, the embodiment of a line.ДЄnd speaking of lines, other translators, including Fitzgerald, as Ruden notes in her introduction, have used iambic pentameter, tightly or loosely, but with different strategies from hers, which is to maintain a line-for-line equivalent with the original Latin.

These lines also introduce a theme of heredity and the relationship of fathers and sons that will carry through to the final desperate, unavailing plea of Turnus at the end of Book Twelve for his own life to be spared for the sake of вЂњan anguished parent / (As Anchises was, who gave you life).вЂќ (XII, 932вЂ“3) No man is an island. The very first words Aeneas speaks are a lament that the dead are far better off than he is:ДЄre those who perished in their fathersвЂ™ sight It is neither his half-mortal birth nor his dynastic destiny, but JunoвЂ™s singling him out as the object of her divine wrath, that makes him the man he becomes in the epic narrative. From the very beginning, as the next ninety lines make clear, he is nothing more than a toy soldier of the gods. Aeneas is reduced in the scheme of things. a man I sing.вЂќ The absence of a grammatical article in the Latin makes this interpretation perfectly legitimate-and the English indefinite signals a particular way we read the role of the founder of the Roman state. The first question a translator of the Aeneid needs to ask is: who gets sung when arma virumque cano? John Dryden began modern English-language convention by singing вЂњArms, and the man.вЂќ But late twentieth-century translations of the Aeneid, Robert FitzgeraldвЂ™s, Robert FaglesвЂ™ and now Sarah RudenвЂ™s, put our hero in his place by starting off вЂњ. But too often the Aeneid is read as a reflection of the Odyssey and the Iliad, when it really does shine with its own Roman light. In truth, outside the conventions of the medium, VergilвЂ™s work is no more like HomerвЂ™s than Law & Order is like Dragnet. Familiarity with Homer enhances our appreciation of Vergil, and comparison of various translations of a single classical text puts the icing on the cake, but they are neither necessary to our pleasure nor are they impediments. вЂњI started it, and itвЂ™s just like the Odyssey.вЂќ In fact, we derive much of our pleasure in reading the classics the same way we do from watching familiar television shows-not from absolute novelty, but from variation within frames. вЂњWhy should I read the Aeneid?вЂќ my teenaged daughter asked me, turning back to the umpteenth episode of Law & Order. The Aeneid by Vergil, translated by Sarah Ruden

Aeneid fitzgerald serpent use lines