Reading Notes

I'm liking it. I didn't much care for the rhyming in previous Homeric-style stuff. I found myself enjoying things in spite of the rhymes. But the translator here has done rather a good job in making things feel natural. No idea what all might be lost in the translation, but I don't much care. I'm on Book V at this point and it's all felt pretty natural. As though it had been written in English. Can't say the same for the likes of The Iliad or The Odyssey.

"Stygian Jove" - Fuck entirely off. Fuck off so far and so hard that I never see you again. Epithets upon epithets upon epithets... They're taking the piss now.

The bit where Aeneas is shown the future in the Underworld by his father is very funny. I'm totally aware of what the Aeneid is, its purpose. But you can't help but laugh when the propaganda really gets going and we're told how awesome these contemporary (to Virgil) Romans are. How hot, how honorable, how huge their prostates are. Just funny to me.

Review

Overall I enjoyed the Aeneid. Not as much as the Homeric Epic Cycle stuff. But still enjoyable. The most notable thing to me definitely was that translation. It felt very natural. You could have told me it was natively in English and I would've believed you. There was a number of times in Homer's stuff where the desire to keep the rhyming scheme resulted in some rather strained word choice. Not so here! So good on that translator.

The Gods are still little meddling bastards here, but I liked the focus put on Jove, Juno, and Venus. I do miss some of the more fantastical elements of earlier tales. We were much more grounded here. Lots of work being done by Virgil to connect the Trojans and the various Latin peoples who had to deal with their arrival.