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The Aeneid

Virgil · Translated by John Dryden, 1697

Virgil

The Aeneid

Translated by John Dryden, 1697

What this is

A Trojan survivor is driven across the Mediterranean to found the city that will become Rome, losing almost everyone he loves on the way. Virgil worked on it for eleven years, left it unfinished, and asked on his deathbed that it be burned; Augustus overruled him.

How it is set

One leaf per book, set as verse: a line wraps with a hanging indent rather than reflowing into the next, because a line is a unit the poet chose. The verse paragraphs keep the gaps the translator gave them.

What is not here

Notes, and a map. The text and the translator’s own matter, and nothing else; an empty heading is better than invented filler.

The 12 books

  1. I The Trojans, after a seven years’ voyage, set sail for Italy, but are overtaken by a… 1,066 lines
  2. II Aeneas relates how the city of Troy was taken, after a ten years’ siege, by the treachery… 1,094 lines
  3. III Aeneas proceeds in his relation: he gives an account of the fleet with which he sailed, and… 945 lines
  4. IV Dido discovers to her sister her passion for Aeneas, and her thoughts of marrying him. She… 1,010 lines
  5. V Aeneas, setting sail from Afric, is driven by a storm on the coast of Sicily, where he is… 1,136 lines
  6. VI The Sibyl foretells Aeneas the adventures he should meet with in Italy. She attends him to… 1,247 lines
  7. VII King Latinus entertains Aeneas, and promises him his only daughter, Lavinia, the heiress of… 1,113 lines
  8. VIII The war being now begun, both the generals make all possible preparations. Turnus sends to… 977 lines
  9. IX Turnus takes advantage of Aeneas’s absence, fires some of his ships (which are transformed… 1,106 lines
  10. X Jupiter, calling a council of the gods, forbids them to engage in either party. At Aeneas’… 1,313 lines
  11. XI Aeneas erects a trophy of the spoils of Mezentius, grants a truce for burying the dead, and… 1,318 lines
  12. XII Turnus challenges Aeneas to a single combat: articles are agreed on, but broken by the… 1,377 lines
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Text: Virgil, The Aeneid — John Dryden’s translation of 1697, public domain, from Project Gutenberg ebook 228, set unaltered. Dryden heads each book with a prose argument of his own, which is printed at the head of the book and labelled as his. Dryden put it into rhyming couplets, which Virgil did not use and English readers expected; the line breaks and the couplets are as he set them.