The Essential Aeneid (Hackett Classics) - Softcover

Stanley Lombardo is Professor of Classics, University of Kansas. His previous translations include Homer's Iliad (1997, Hackett) and Odyssey (2000, Hackett), Hesiod's Works & Days and Theogony (1993, Hackett), and Sappho, Poems and Fragments (2002, Hackett), a PEN Center USA 2003 Literary Award Finalist.

W. R. Johnson is Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature, Emeritus, University of Chicago. His previously published works include Darkness Visible: A Study of Vergil's Aeneid (1976, University of California Press), Horace and the Dialectic of Freedom (1993, Cornell University Press), The Idea of Lyric (1982, University of California Press), Lucretius and the Modern World (2000, Duckworth), and Momentary Monsters: Lucan and His Heroes (1987, Cornell University Press).

"In 2005, Lombardo published his full Aeneid, and in doing so offered an elegant modern verse translation of Virgil. This has now been abridged, but nevertheless the essence of the original is maintained. . . . Lombardo gives us a realistic Aeneas, whose frail humanity and thoughtful heroism are manifested subtly, in unpretentious, yet dignified language. . . . This would prove a worthy (and cheap!) addition to a bookshelf lacking the full translation by Lombardo. He manages to give a real sense of Virgil through a style that is elegant and solemn, yet never overbearing."
--Philip Harrison, The Journal of Classics Teaching

"This attractive volume, an abridgment of Stanley Lombardo's complete translation of Virgil's Aeneid (Hackett, 2005), adds a Latin epic to the author's burgeoning set of translations of mainly Greek poetry. Lombardo has proved himself a poet-translator and performer of exceptional ability and innovation; by publishing in written and audio media, he has contributed to the awareness in the readership of translations the centrality of performance to Homeric epic. The recently published Aeneid represented his first foray into Latin epic, and he has translated Virgil with the same combination of austerity and accessibility that marked his Homers. . . . The translation is excellent, on the whole, and perfectly captures the pace and character of the original."
--Joanne McNamara, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

"Stanley Lombardo shows in the strength of his verse the talent that marks him as the most Greek and Roman of the modern translators of ancient epic."
--Douglas Domingo-Forasté, Professor of Classics, California State University, Long Beach