Virgil: Aeneid Book XII

Description

Book XII brings Virgil's Aeneid to a close, as the long-delayed single combat between Aeneas and Turnus ends with Turnus' death - a finale that many readers find more unsettling than triumphant. In this, the first detailed single-volume commentary on the book in any language, Professor Tarrant explores Virgil's complex portrayal of the opposing champions, his use and transformation of earlier poetry (Homer's in particular) and his shaping of the narrative in its final phases. In addition to the linguistic and thematic commentary, the volume contains a substantial introduction that discusses the larger literary and historical issues raised by the poem's conclusion; other sections include accounts of Virgil's metre, later treatments of the book's events in art and music, and the transmission of the text. The edition is designed for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students and will also be of interest to scholars of Latin literature.

Richard Tarrant is Pope Professor of Latin in the Department of Classics at Harvard University. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and a Visiting Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. At Harvard he has been honored with the Levenson Prize for undergraduate teaching, a Harvard College Professorship and a Phi Beta Kappa Prize for excellence in teaching.

'Cambridge University Press's splendid Greek and Latin Classics series, known in the trade as the 'Green and Yellows', is now in its fifth decade. The series adds to its lustre with these two very different but equally outstanding commentaries ... each of which shows remarkable standards of scholarship and criticism. Publications such as this are real events in the world of Classics.' The Times Literary Supplement