There are many excellent translations of the AEneid into English. In this book we make numerous quotations from the translation by the English poet Dryden, and from the later work by the eminent Latin scholar Conington.
SPELLING OF THE POET'S NAME.
The spelling of the poet's name adopted in this book is now believed to be preferable to the form V_i_rgil which has for a long time been in common use. Many of the best Latin scholars are of opinion that the proper spelling is V_e_rgil from the Latin V_e_rgilius, as the poet himself wrote it. "As to the fact," says Professor Frieze, "that the poet called himself Vergilius, scholars are now universally agreed. It is the form found in all the earliest manuscripts and inscriptions. In England and America the corrected Latin form is used by all the best authorities."
II. THE GODS AND GODDESSES.
It is said that Vergil wrote the AEneid at the request of the Emperor Augustus, whose family—the Ju'li-i—claimed the honor of being descended from AEneas, through his son I-u'lus or Ju'lus. All the Romans, indeed, were fond of claiming descent from the heroes whom tradition told of as having landed in Italy with AEneas after escaping from the ruins of Troy. The city of Troy, or Il'i-um, so celebrated in ancient song and story, was situated on the coast of Asia Minor, not far from the entrance to what is now the Sea of Mar'mo-ra. It was besieged for ten years by a vast army of the Greeks (natives of Greece or Hel'las) under one of their kings called Ag-a-mem'non. Homer, the greatest of the ancient poets, tells about this siege in his famous poem, the Il'i-ad. We shall see later on how the siege was brought to an end by the capture and destruction of the city, as well as how AEneas escaped, and what afterwards happened to him and his companions.
Meanwhile we must learn something about the gods and goddesses who play so important a part in the story. At almost every stage of the adventures of AEneas, as of the adventures of all ancient heroes, we find a god or a goddess controlling or directing affairs, or in some way mixed up with the course of events.
According to the religion of the ancient Greeks and Romans there were a great many gods. They believed that all parts of the universe—the heavens and the earth, the sun and the moon, the seas and rivers, and storms—were ruled by different gods. Those beings it was supposed, were in some respects like men and women. They needed food and drink and sleep; they married and had children; and like poor mortals they often had quarrels among themselves. Their food was am-bro'si-a, which gave them immortality and perpetual youth, and their drink was a delicious wine called nectar.
The gods often visited men and even accepted their hospitality. Sometimes they married human beings, and the sons of such marriages were the demigods or heroes of antiquity. AEneas was one of those heroes, his mother being the goddess Ve'nus, of whom we shall hear much in the course of our Story.
Though the gods never died, being immortal, they might be wounded and suffer bodily pain like men. They often took part in the quarrels and wars of people on earth, and they had weapons and armor, after the manner of earthly warriors. But they were vastly superior to men in strength and power. They could travel through the skies, or upon land or ocean, with the speed of lightning, and they could change themselves into any form, or make themselves visible or invisible at pleasure.
The usual residence of the principal gods was on the top of Mount O-lym'pus, in Greece. Here they had golden palaces and a chamber where they held grand banquets at which celestial music was rendered by A-pol'lo, the god of minstrelsy, and the Muses, who were the divinities of poetry and song.