I just finished reading the second book of the Aeneid as presented in Clyde Pharr’s excellent annotated edition of Vergil’s Aeneid. I had high expectations for this volume, having already gone through his outstanding and popular text on Homeric Greek, and I am not disappointed.
Each page presents the text of the poem accompanied by separate sections for vocabulary and notes. This separation is quite practical, minimizing confusion and saving time. Pharr’s guiding principle here has been to get the student into reading Vergil as quickly as possible. Depending on the reader’s abilities this reading may pass very quickly indeed: I completed the 1st book of the Aeneid in a single day, using the annotations less often than I thought I’d need them. I took a more casual course through the 2nd book, finishing it in three days. This speed has less to do with my abilities than it has to do with Pharr’s outstanding pedagogical approach.
Of course I must emphasize that the reader’s abilities with Latin will determine his or her real rate of progress, but I imagine that an industrious 3rd or 4th year student could get through a hundred or so lines per diem with Pharr’s assistance.
Reading Vergil’s epic is a treat for me. For one thing, the experience corrects Pound’s terrific misapprehension of and relatively low esteem for Vergil. As a story-teller Vergil is at least equal to Ovid, I find myself carried along swiftly by his narrative. Aeneas’s descriptions of the fall of Troy are unforgettable, and in some cases definitely not for the squeamish (vide when Pyrrhus kills Priam and his son). The action is fast and vivid, and Vergil’s use of language is anything but ponderous. Pound’s Vergilian hobby-horse was the great old Scots translation by Gavin Douglas, but even that fine work pales in comparison to its original source.
As a devoted lover of Dante I also wanted to know better why he held Vergil in such regard. Dante transposed certain passages almost without change, such as the sad scene when Aeneas attempts to embrace the shade of Creusa (echoed when Dante attempts to embrace the shade of an old friend), or the amazing meeting with Polydorus (see the bramble thicket of the suicides in the Inferno). Vergil also has a somewhat fatalistic and romantic attitude towards his heros and heroines, a frame of mind that must have influenced Dante’s view of persons in his own world. Thus we read of Dante’s sadness towards Francesca and Paolo and Vergil’s subsequent dismissal of Dante’s pity and sympathy. Indeed, it is Vergil the pagan who reminds Dante the Christian that hell hath no place for loving kindness and forgiveness.
I don’t think I’d classify Pharr’s Aeneid as a beginner’s text. It is emphatically not designed according to the same plan that guided his Homeric Greek, i.e. it is not a language tutorial based on the text of the epic. However, as might be expected from such a scholar, the grammatical notes are direct and helpful, and the per-page vocabulary was an excellent idea. For the advanced student of Latin who wants a substantial introduction to the Aeneid, this volume is the one to have. Beginners may still profit from owning it, and teachers can of course excerpt whatever passages they need for classroom work.
Btw, the book is based on only the first six books of the epic. Alas, Clyde Pharr did not complete the work, but I have read that Barbara Boyd has prepared an edition of books 10 and 12 “a la Pharr”. I have not yet acquired that volume.
