United States or Russia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The second in the Georgics: "Si non tanta quies iret frigusque caloremque Inter:" Georg. And shortly after, "Pagos et compita circum:" Ib. 382; And the third in the Aeneid: "Duros mille labores Rege sub Eurystheo, fatis Junonis iniquae, Pertulerit:" Aen.
In the great body of literature and legend that it has left to humanity, history’s hand can be seen at work shaping much of the course of civilization—in the legends that have inspired the ideals of every people since the dawn of recorded time, as well as in the epics of the Ramayana, in the exploits celebrated in the Odyssey and the Aeneid, in the Nordic sagas, in the Shahnameh, and in much of the Bible and the Qur’án.
Virgil, called also by his surname, Maro, from whose poem of the "Aeneid" we have taken the story of Aeneas, was one of the great poets who made the reign of the Roman emperor Augustus so celebrated, under the name of the Augustan age. Virgil was born in Mantua in the year 70 B.C. His great poem is ranked next to those of Homer, in the highest class of poetical composition, the Epic.
I read a book of the Aeneid every night, so it was done in twelve nights, and I had great delight in it. The Georgicks did not give me so much pleasure, except the fourth book. The Eclogues I have almost all by heart. I do not think the story of the Aeneid interesting.
The poet of the Ciris, the Copa, the Dirae, and the Bucolics is never far to seek in the Aeneid. It would be a long story to trace the flowering in the Aeneid of the seedling sown in Vergil's boyhood garden-plot.
Virgil, who in the Eclogues and Georgics seems to sigh with regret after the doctrines he fears to accept, comes forward in the Aeneid as the staunch adherent of the national creed, and where he acts the philosopher at all, assumes the garb of a Stoic, not an Epicurean.
He first introduced the sonnet, and the refined and sentimental turn of thought borrowed from Petrarch and the other Italian masters. In his Aeneid he introduced blank verse, a form of versification in which the noblest English poetry has since been couched. This was also taken from Italy, where it had appeared only in the century.
If after this the ladies will stand out, let them remember that the jury is not all agreed; for Octavia was of his party, and was of the first quality in Rome: she was also present at the reading of the sixth AEneid, and we know not that she condemned AEneas, but we are sure she presented the poet for his admirable elegy on her son Marcellus.
"But none who came thereto might avail to pull it out, for in nowise would it come away howsoever they tugged at it, but now up comes Sigmund, King Volsung's son, and sets hand to the sword, and pulls it from the stock, even as if it lay loose before him." The incident in the Arthurian as in the Volsunga legend is on a par with the Golden Bough, in the sixth book of the AEneid.
But this was enough to make me neglect the other lessons that were prescribed me; and here it was infinitely to my advantage, to have to do with an understanding tutor, who very well knew discreetly to connive at this and other truantries of the same nature; for by this means I ran through Virgil's AEneid, and then Terence, and then Plautus, and then some Italian comedies, allured by the sweetness of the subject; whereas had he been so foolish as to have taken me off this diversion, I do really believe, I had brought away nothing from the college but a hatred of books, as almost all our young gentlemen do.
Word Of The Day