Dear Colleagues,

I agree with Christine Perkell: The Loeb would be deadly for such a course. There are several fine modern translations available, none of which of course "is" Vergil. Personally, I find Dryden's unattractive and difficult to read -- the end-stopped couplets seem to me the antithesis of epic style.

Cheers,

Mario A. Di Cesare





In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Christine Perkell
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes

why not order two different paperbacks--one Aeneid, one Eclogues/
Georgics. I should think the Loeb would be deadly.


I admit to knowing nothing about what students want, even in Britain
let alone in America, nor have I ever looked at the Loeb in question
beyond seeing what Goold had to say about some difficulty, but what is
being sought in an English translation: something that gives a
reasonable approximation to the surface sense, or something that has
literary life? I can imagine that the former, if in workaday prose,
would be deadly, and the latter convey too much of the wrong life;
personally I find (for instance) Dryden a lot easier to take than Day
Lewis, but that is because I appreciate seventeenth-century poets more
than twentieth, not because in either case I feel I am reading Vergil.

Leofranc Holford-Strevens
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