Edition note
Theodore C. Williams is the default English translation; John Dryden and James Rhoades are available from the translation selector. Williams offers the strongest combination of fidelity, readability, and verse form for the principal reading text. Dryden and Rhoades are retained as historically important alternatives.
Rhoades — Preface to the first edition
To write a verse-translation of the Aeneid, though the labour be one of love, must in the nature of things be a somewhat thankless undertaking: for in the first place, if it is impossible to reach perfection in the ren- dering of any poem from one language to another, it is past impossible, when the two languages are so remotely akin as Latin and English, and when the style of the author was, even in his own tongue, unapproachable for subtle delicacy and artistic finish: and secondly, even should he attain to a high degree of excellence, the qualified approval of a few scholars, and the thanks of an infinitesimal fraction of the reading public, are hkely to be the translator's sole reward.
And yet it has seemed to me that, if one could produce a version of the Aeneid that should be in itself an EngUsh poem, and at the same time a faithful reflection of the original, neither adding to the text nor diminishing from it, such an achievement would be worth the time and labour required for the task. Admitting to the fuU the high standard that has been reached by some of my predecessors, though with the details of their work I have purposely kept myself imacquainted, I do not think that the prime virtue of a translator, namely absolute fidelity to the original — eschewing paraphrase where possible, and resisting all
temptation to be brilliant on his own account — has hitherto been kept sufficiently in sight. I am far from supposing that in the present volume I have done more, myself, than honestly attempt it; but it cannot be said to have been seriously attempted by those, how- ever able and felicitous, who have hampered themselves at starting with the exigencies of a rhyming metre.
Notwithstanding the argument of Sir Charles Bowen in the Preface to his Virgil in English Verse, I hold that lineal conformity is not a matter of the first importance, and that verbal closeness, or, at any rate, identity of meaning, is. For this reason I should in any case have chosen Blank Verse as the vehicle best adapted to my purpose: but, besides this, it is the metre of the English Epic, and therefore, in my opinion, the metre most fitted for reproducing the Epic of another nation. Further, as a matter of personal taste, I feel that the deep seriousness, the pensive majesty, the underlying pathos of Virgil's poetry, are funda- mentally incompatible with any measure more rapid than the English Iambic; I can conceive nothing less like the Virgilian cadence than what Milton terms ' the jingling sound of like endings '; nor, on the other hand, do I know of anything that savours so much of Virgil as parts of the Blank Verse of Milton and of Cowper.
Such is the substance of my defence against possible assailants of the metre which I have selected, and also my apology to critics and readers for venturing to add my 'sum of "more to that which ' already perhaps in their opinion ' hath too much '.
It seems almost superfluous to state that in the
present work, as in my translation of the Georgics, the debt I owe to the late Professor Conington's writings is incalculable. And I would also here express my sense of obligation to Mr. Arthur Sidgwick, from whom, in the way of warm encouragement and friendly criticism, I have received more help than any book could give. The Old Garth, Reading, 10th January 1893.
Rhoades — Note to the second edition
To this I would now merely add that, in revising these books for a new edition, I have been more forcibly reminded than hitherto of the amount of my indebted- ness to others. It goes without saying that a transla- tion of the Aeneid in these days cannot well be the work of a single mind. The cells in the brain of any one, equipped to attempt it, must already have been enriched with the nectar of other men's thoughts, culled from the flowers of many climes. One cannot even converse with some men, without assimilating turns of thought or speech which from that time forth are apt to figure as one's own. In this sense I am, perhaps more than most, * a debtor unto many,' both men and books. I cannot enumerate them all, or specify to whom I owe this or that. But, in view of the generous reception that has been accorded to my work, I wish to record here unequivocally that I am deeply conscious of the debt.
5 Fitz-James Avenue, Kensington, 12th November 1906.
Rhoades — Prefatory note to the third edition
In preparing my translation of the Aeneid and Georgics for the Oxford University Press, after being piloted through two editions by Messrs, Longmans, Green & Co. and Messrs. Kegan Paul respectively, I have, with a view to the removal of certain abbrevi- ated forms, that seem hardly at home in their surround- ings, made slight revisions of the text where these occurred, and in some other passages besides.
Further, while roaming through that treasury of Virgilian lore, Aeneas at the site of Rome, by my friend, Mr. Warde Fowler — our great seer into the heart and mind of Virgil, and dispeller of the mists that cling to the dark places where history and legend blend — I have in three passages of much-disputed meaning, viz. Aeneid viii, 65, 75, and 108, been led, as by an unerring hand, to exchange my former interpretations for those so irresistibly advocated there.
There is yet one more departure from my previous versions, about which I ought perhaps to say a word, namely, the substitution of ' Prince ' for ' Sire ', as an equivalent for ' Pater ', when applied as a title to Aeneas and to Anchises before him. This is the render- ing adopted by John O'Gilby in his rhymed version of the poem in 1685; and being convinced that the word ' Pater ' in this connexion denoted a more compre-
hensive relationship than that of simple fatherhood, amounting in fact to that of ' Pater patriae ' — cp. Aeneid xii, 166, where it is expanded into * Romanae stirpis origo ' — it seemed to me, and to Mr. Warde Fowler also, as he allows me to say, that the above- named writer was justified in his rendering; and I have accordingly followed him in this respect.