Aeneid
The New Translation by Gerald J. Davis
Engaging, swift, and immersive, Gerald J. Davis’s translation of Aeneid keeps the poetry alive inside the vessel of prose.
Gerald J. Davis’s new translation of Virgil’s classic poem Aeneid is both inventive and traditional. This two thousand–year–old Roman epic tells the tale of Aeneas, a hero from the fallen city of Troy, who wanders the Mediterranean in search of a new home for his people.
Davis makes a bold choice setting the poem not in a lineated, metrical form but rather in prose. Purists may take issue with this, but the transition to a novelistic format works well. Stripped of the need to cram Virgil’s language inside a limited meter, Davis renders the poem in beautiful detail and with a refreshing clarity: “Battered and buffeted by the Gods, both by sea and by land, because of brutal Juno’s baleful wrath, it was his unfortunate lot to bear the bitter blows of battle.” Unique to this translation as well is Davis’s commitment to replicating Virgil’s alliteration. The result is engaging, swift, and highly readable, keeping the poetry alive inside the vessel of prose.
Both emulating Virgil’s high diction and providing clarity with modern vocabulary and phrasing, Davis’s translation includes sections of exposition and narrative flow that are clear and precise, with the stilted quality of ancient storytelling kept to a minimum. Its sections of high drama and action ramp into alliteration and moving metaphors. Scenes as of the Trojan horse are its clear highlights: A rare moment of pathos in the often stoic genre, Troy’s downfall is made heartbreaking in Davis’s hands. The death of the city’s leader, Priam, and his wife, Hecuba, is emotive: “They were like unto a flock of Doves driven by a dark storm to seek the safety of shelter. In desperation, they clung to the statues of their Gods.”
Still, despite a brief love affair with the Carthaginian queen, Dido, and a visit to the underworld to commune with his dead father, Aeneas himself is a hero who lacks much emotional richness. The poem, replicating the pattern and flow of Greek epics (part weary journey, part war ode), works toward an unsatisfying ending point that lacks the logical resolution that most modern storytelling employs. Its lasting impact comes through its inclusion of key moments in ancient mythology: the fall of Troy, Aeneas’s visit to his father in Elysium and description of the underworld, and the heartache and pain of Queen Dido. Davis preserves the imaginative, emotionally complex, and stunning aspects of these scenes well, though the book is without the historical and mythological context that a more academically minded translation might demand.
Gerald J. Davis’s skilled linguistic work renders Aeneid more accessible and engaging than most previous translations, gifting this lasting work to another generation of contemporary readers.
Reviewed by
Sébastien Luc Butler
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