Word: aeneid
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...country are offering core curriculums in the best liberal arts tradition. At Manhattan College in Riverdale, N.Y., I attended Dr. Thomas J. Smith's required course "Classic Origins of Western Culture" in 1993. The topic of the day was the Tale of the Trojan Horse from Virgil's Aeneid...
...Virgil's Aeneid. Homer's Odyssey. We go to Harvard. We took Literature & Arts C-14. We know the Classics...
Tuchman seizes on the legend as evidence that such folly "is an old and inherent human habit." But her purpose seems deeper. The tale, told most memorably by Vergil in the Aeneid, portrays the Trojans as victims of fate. Despite the urgings of citizens that the Greek gift be destroyed or at least broken open, Troy's leaders take it in, hidden Greeks and all, because the gods have so ordained. That excuse will not do for Tuchman. "The gods (or God, for that matter) are a concept of the human mind," she writes. "The gods' interference...
This explanatory impulse pervades Fitzgerald's Aeneid and brings both the story and its main character back to life...
...Victorian era, Aeneas emerged in the English of William Morris and other writers as a Romantic brooder well versed in Wordsworth's Ode to Duty. Fitzgerald's version, a century hence, may seem equally dated. But if translations capture the essence of their culture, then this Aeneid, in its supple beauty and clarity, is the best news this age has had in a long time...