Hello everyone,
I really enjoy reading Richmond Lattimore’s translation of the Iliad. At the same time, I lament that there is nothing like this for the Aeneid (to my knowledge…?).
So I decided to start translating the Aeneid myself into a Lattimore-like edition. I would love to get your thoughts on it. I made my lines directly correspond with the Latin and tried to translate the text as literally as I could. I know a thing or two about the scansion of English poetry, and I tried to turn the poem into something like English hexameter. Note that I am not trying to turn the Aeneid into beautiful English poetry–other poets have done that already. I’m trying to translate the Latin itself and convey a sense of what the Latin sounds like, like Lattimore did for the Iliad.
Here is a sample of Book 1, ll. 1-33:
Arms and a man I sing, who first from the coasts of Troy
came to Italy, exiled by fate, and to the Lavinian
shores. He much was tossed in land and the deep by force
of the gods above, on account of the mindful rage of savage
Juno; and much also he suffered in war 'till he found 5
the city, and bring in his gods to Latium, from which arose
the Latin race and the Alban fathers and the walls of high Rome.Muse, remind me the causes, what will divine was injured,
or hurting from what did the queen of the gods impel a man
of outstanding devotion to face so many hardships, to undergo 10
so many labors. Is there such anger in hearts celestial?There was an ancient city (Tyrian settlers held it),
Karthage, long across from Italy and the Tiberian mouths,
rich in wealth and most harsh in the studies of war, which Juno
of all the lands is said to have cultivated (Samo 15
put aside); here were her arms, here was her chariot—this
the goddess now designs, now cherishes (if only the Fates
allow) to be the kingdom among the peoples. But indeed
she had heard that a race would be descended from Trojan blood,
which would one day overthrow the Tyrian citadels; from this 20
would come a king-people wide in dominion and proud in war,
out of Libya’s demolition: thus decreed the Parcae.
Saturnia, afraid of this, and remembering the war of old,
which first she had waged at Troy for her precious Argives
(nor even yet had fallen in her heart her angers’ causes 25
and the savage pains: there remains put back in the depths of her mind
the judgment of Paris, and the injury of her disdained beauty, and the hated
race, and the honors of stolen Ganymede). Furious over
these things, she kept Latium far-off from the Trojans, whom
she tossed about the entire sea, the remnants of the Danai 30
and ruthless Achilles, and through the many years they wandered
all around the whole of the seas, driven on by the Fates.
So great a toil it was to found the Roman people!