Virgil, Aeneid 2

This is Nicholas Horsfall's fourth commentary on a book of the Aeneid and in scale and approach follows closely the earlier volumes.It is aimed at the scholarly public and is not intended as a replacement for Austin's admirable school and undergraduate commentary of 1964. But so splendid an ancient text requires fresh scholarly instruments and this commentary discusses fully the acutely controversial Helen-episode (spurious), matters of linguistic and textual interpretation,, metre, prosody, grammar, lexicon and idiom, as well as Virgil's sources and the literary tradition in which he writes. Full attention is given to matters military and historiographical. New critical approaches and recent developments have been taken into account, with more attention to their spirit than to their language. A text, with translation, and three indices are included.

Nicholas Horsfall (DPhil. Oxon. 1971) taught for sixteen years at University College London and has been a private scholar for rather longer. He lives in Wester Ross and this is his sixth book on Virgil.

"... awesome learning, massively detailed coverage, strong opinions and lively debate. [...] All in all, it is totally impossible to do justice to H.’s labours in a short review. One can only say that, as with all his earlier work on the Aeneid, this book must be on the desk of all Vergilians and indeed of all those who work on Latin poetry." – Damien Nelis, in: Museum Helveticum, 2011

On Nicholas Horsfall’s other three commentaries:
"Les trois ouvrages...marqueront profondément et durablement les études virgiliennes" – J. Poucet, in: Antiquité Classique, 2009

On Nicholas Horsfall’s commentaries on Aeneid 2 and 3:
"Dieses neue [...] Duett beschließt Horsfalls große Tetralogie definitiver Vergilkommentare. [...] die vier vorgelegten Bände gehören zu den Monumenten moderner Philologiegeschichte und sind – wie La Cerda, Heyne (undWagner) oder Norden – aus der Exegese des größten aller römischen Dichter schlechterdings nicht mehr wegzudenken." – Peter Habermehl, in: Das Altertum 1/2012