The Aeneid of Virgil

Chapter One

Book I

I sing of arms and of a man: his fate had made him fugitive; he was the first

to journey from the coasts of Troy as far

as Italy and the Lavinian shores.

Across the lands and waters he was battered     5

beneath the violence of High Ones, for

the savage Juno's unforgetting anger;

and many sufferings were his in war-

until he brought a city into being

and carried in his gods to Latium;      10

from this have come the Latin race, the lords

of Alba, and the ramparts of high Rome.



Tell me the reason, Muse: what was the wound

to her divinity, so hurting her

that she, the queen of gods, compelled a man    15

remarkable for goodness to endure

so many crises, meet so many trials?

Can such resentment hold the minds of gods?



There was an ancient city they called Carthage-

a colony of refugees from Tyre- 20

a city facing Italy, but far

away from Tiber's mouth: extremely rich

and, when it came to waging war, most fierce.

This land was Juno's favorite-it is sa ... read full excerpt from The Aeneid of Virgil ebook