I was tempted to cheat a put "The Pines of Rome" here.
FINALLY, ONE WITH THE ACTUAL TRANSLATOR CLEARLY LISTED! The version used here, by John Dryden, appears to still be reasonably respected, even if it's not the most popular.
Summary: Aeneas tells the story of the end of the Trojan war, and his origin story as he fleas Troy to eventually start Rome.
Comments: I love epic poetry, so when I saw this one coming up tomorrow I was excited. I appreciate Dryden keeping it in verse. While I do generally prefer prose to poetry, I think epics usually work better in the original form. I read The Iliad and The Odyssey in school, but not The Aeneid, so appreciate the chance to catch up. It's fun to see all the Greeks' names and think about how they've been referenced in pop culture since.
We get plenty of good epic poetry dialogue. It's always so over the top. No one is ever just "sad" they're always tearing their clothes and stuff. The narration is dramatic too, of course, but the dialogue just sells it.
The gods make people blind/death/stupid a lot (same as The Iliad).
I like Sinod telling his story (wish this version had line numbers), because you can just imagine Ulysses coaching him through it, making sure he gets mentioned enough times. He's probably listening in from the horse, angry that he forgot to say his name for the 17th time.
Not a ton of comments, relative to the length of the piece. This was a fun one, but I think I'd have to read more (possibly a different translation) to really dig in and critique it.
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