Skip to content

Read more about Virgil, Aeneid, 4.1-299. Latin Text, Study Questions, Commentary and Interpretative Essays

Virgil, Aeneid, 4.1-299. Latin Text, Study Questions, Commentary and Interpretative Essays

(3 reviews)

Ingo Gildenhard, Cambridge University

Copyright Year: 2012

ISBN 13: 9781909254176

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Language: English

Formats Available

Conditions of Use

Attribution Attribution
CC BY

Reviews

Learn more about reviews.

Reviewed by Rosina Catalan, Adjunct Professor, Butler University on 12/17/19

Gildenhard's choice of lines in Book IV are comprehensive. The supporting study questions and bibliography offer the student/reader ways to set a context for Book IV in Virgil's epic as a whole. read more

Reviewed by Quinn Griffin, Assistant Professor, Grand Valley State University on 12/3/19

A very comprehensive edition of a selection from Book IV, with attention to many aspects of that selection and the epic as a whole. The text would work best when assigned with a translation of the full epic and alongside a dictionary. In... read more

Reviewed by Tina-Marie Ranalli, Instructor of Modern Languages, Rhode Island College on 5/21/18

Professor Gildenhard's edition is exceptionally comprehensive. It features a wide range of ancillary materials for her core student audience. Moreover, she " [has] also cited other commentators and scholars more extensively than is common... read more

Table of Contents

  • Acknowledgements
  • 1. Preface
  • 2. Latin Text
  • 3. Study Questions
  • 4. Commentary
  • 5. Interpretative Essays
  • 5.1. Content and Form
  • 5.2. Historiographical Dido
  • 5.3. Allusion
  • 5.4. Religion
  • 6. Bibliography

Ancillary Material

Submit ancillary resource

About the Book

Love and tragedy dominate book four of Virgil's most powerful work, building on the violent emotions invoked by the storms, battles, warring gods, and monster-plagued wanderings of the epic's opening.

Destined to be the founder of Roman culture, Aeneas, nudged by the gods, decides to leave his beloved Dido, causing her suicide in pursuit of his historical destiny. A dark plot, in which erotic passion culminates in sex, and sex leads to tragedy and death in the human realm, unfolds within the larger horizon of a supernatural sphere, dominated by power-conscious divinities. Dido is Aeneas' most significant other, and in their encounter Virgil explores timeless themes of love and loyalty, fate and fortune, the justice of the gods, imperial ambition and its victims, and ethnic differences.

This course book offers a portion of the original Latin text, study questions, a commentary, and interpretative essays. Designed to stretch and stimulate readers, Ingo Gildenhard's incisive commentary will be of particular interest to students of Latin at both A2 and undergraduate level. It extends beyond detailed linguistic analysis to encourage critical engagement with Virgil's poetry and discussion of the most recent scholarly thought.

About the Contributors

Author

Ingo Gildenhard is Reader in Classics and the Classical Tradition at Cambridge University, and a Fellow of King’s College Cambridge. His previous publications include the monographs Paideia Romana: Cicero's Tusculan Disputations (Cambridge, 2007) and Creative Eloquence: The Construction of Reality in Cicero's Speeches (Oxford, 2011). He has also published three textbooks with Open Book Publishers: Cicero, Against Verres, 2.1.53-86. Latin Text with Introduction, Study Questions, Commentary and English Translation, (with Mathew Owen) Tacitus, Annals, 15.20-23, 33-45. Latin Text, Study Aids with Vocabulary, and Commentary, and more recently Cicero, On Pompey’s Command (De Imperio), 27–49. Latin Text, Study Aids with Vocabulary, Commentary, and Translation.

Contribute to this Page

Suggest an edit to this book record