Vergil's Aeneid: Selections from Books 1,2,4,6,10&12

by Barbara Weiden Boyd

This edition is designed for high school Advanced Placement and college level a newly updated and revised version of selected passages from Vergil's Aeneid, Books I-VI, by Clyde Pharr (whose user-friendly format revolutionized Latin textbooks), plus additional passages from Books 10 and 12, not found in Pharr. Passages included 1.1-519; 2.1-56; 199-297, 469-566, 735-804; 4.1-448, 642-705; 6.1-211, 450-476, 847-901; 10.420-509; 12.791-842, 887-952.-- General introduction and introduction to each section-- Latin text with selected vocabulary and notes on the same page-- Six new full-color illustrations by Thom Kapheim-- Ancient illustrations-- Grammatical appendix, including newly revised "Vergil's Meter" and "Rhetorical Terms, Figures of Speech, and Metrical Devices"-- Index to Grammatical Appendix-- New, updated, selected bibliography-- New, full vocabulary at the back of the book-- Pull-out General Word List

Genres: Classics, Poetry, Textbooks, History, Literature

403 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2001

About the author

Barbara Weiden Boyd, Henry Winkley Professor of Latin and Greek, holds a B.A. from Manhattanville College, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Classical Studies from the University of Michigan. In addition to offerings in Greek and Latin languages and literatures, Boyd teaches courses on ancient epic, Rome in the age of Augustus, Rome as a site of cultural memory and identity, and the Ovidian tradition. She has chaired the Classics Department repeatedly and has served as a co-director of the Mellon Initiative in Mediterranean Studies at Bowdoin.
Her scholarly specialization is Latin poetry, especially the works of Virgil and Ovid. She has published widely on a variety of Roman writers, including Virgil, Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid, and Sallust. In addition to continuing work on a commentary on Ovid's Remedia amoris, she has recently published a book on Ovid's reception of Homer: Ovid’s Homer: Authority, Repetition, and Reception (Oxford University Press, 2017). She has a lively interest in contemporary receptions of classical themes and has published articles on the BBC-HBO series Rome and on the Odyssey theme in the AMC series Mad Men. She is currently developing a project on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Rome.
Boyd has travelled and studied extensively in Italy, where she lived for two years while teaching classical studies at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome. She is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Society for Classical Studies (formerly the American Philological Association) and the Goodwin Award Committee of the SCS/APA, and currently serves on its Program Committee. She will assume the presidency of the Vergilian Society in 2020, and is a charter member of the newly established International Ovidian Society. A past member of the executive committee of the Discussion Group on Classics and Modern Literature in the Modern Language Association, Boyd is committed to supporting and sustaining dialogue between and among the disciplines of the humanities, especially on literary and cultural topics.

Reviews

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I met Aeneas not in a Latin class (thankfully) but in the middle of a thunderstorm, curled up in my JNU University hostel with a paperback that smelled like the past — that old-paper scent that makes you feel like you’re holding time itself. I flipped past the preface, landed in Carthage, and before I knew it, was ankle-deep in the ruins of Troy, watching a man walk not just through battles and burning cities — but through the expectations of gods, ghosts, and history.

Virgil’s Aeneid is many things at once: a national myth, a grief-soaked survival saga, a manifesto of destiny. But in these selected books — the love and loss of Dido (Book 4), the descent into the underworld (Book 6), the final clash of empires (Book 12) — you don’t just follow Aeneas. You become him. Hesitating. Haunted. Heroic but heartbroken.

Reading it, I couldn’t help but feel the weight of carrying worlds on one’s back. Especially as someone who once moved cities, left behind loves and languages, trying to be “dutiful” when all I wanted was rest. Aeneas’s journey made me realise: sometimes, the real war is not what lies ahead, but what we carry inside.

[Rebe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved translating Cicero's 1st Catilinarian Oration, so I hoped I'd like the Aeneid, too. I didn't like it so much as love it. Vergil packs these lines with all sorts of figures of speech, and most lines are fairly metrically interesting as well. I also love all the possible interpretation of the text. Boyd (well, mostly Clyde Pharr, whom she borrows heavily from) makes the text very clear. For instance, she often changes a weird i-stem accusative ending to an e-stem ending, making it much more apparent that the word is accusative, whereas other versions of the Aeneid leave it as an i-stem. And she goes in-depth on notes, even though it's still necessary to read scholarly articles for other interpretations on certain key lines (for instance, Vergil's use of "parvulus Aeneas" in Book 4--she does point out that it's the only use of a diminutive in the Aeneid, but I think she should have brought in the potential parallel with Caesarion since keeping in mind Vergil's political motivations is so essential to interpreting the text).
Overall, this is a great book, and having the appendices and vocab in the back is a great bonus. Even though I'm not in AP anymore, I'm still getting a lot of use out of this as I continue to study the Aeneid, and the grammatical notes are even helpful for translating other Latin writers, like Ovid.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This update to Pharr's classic edition of the Aeneid is a truly worthy successor. I use it to teach AP Latin (Vergil) and truly could not ask a better text.

[Kameron Packard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this in its original Latin. Spoiler: Aeneas cries. A lot. Still fun to look back in time at ancient propaganda. Pretty good unofficial sequel.

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

The set up of this book is nice, with detailed notes and a very handy fold out vocabulary in the back. I just wish Boyd had done all twelve books this way. The selections do hit the major plot points, but some of my favorite details were left out.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have learned the beauties of Virgil's skill from this book.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

in latin...after I got past wanting to kill myself, I really started appreciating it

[Faith B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, that was fun. :)

[Drianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best edition of Vergil for the AP syllabus!

[Christina]

Langua latina!