Virgil, Aeneid 4

The fourth book of Virgil’s Aeneid is the shortest of his epic, and yet it has had an inestimable influence. The tragedy of Dido is replete with allusions to the Medeas of Euripides, Apollonius, and Ennius, as well as to Catullus’ Ariadne and the historical Cleopatra of Virgil’s Augustan Age. The book has intratextual connections to the poet’s own fourth Georgic (as he revisits the topic of apian regeneration and the loss of Eurydice), even as it confronts the reality of Rome’s bloody history with Carthage. The present volume offers the first full-scale commentary on the book in over eighty years, together with a new critical text that reflects recent scholarship on significant difficulties.

Lee M. Fratantuono is Adjunct Professor of Ancient Classics at the National University of Ireland-Maynooth. He works especially on Latin epic, lyric, and elegiac poetry, and on imperial Greek epic. He is the co-editor of the Brill Aeneid 5 and 8.

R. Alden Smith is Professor of Classics at Baylor University. He has published extensively on Latin epic (especially Virgil and Ovid), and is the co-editor of the Brill Aeneid 5 and 8.