The Aeneid of Virgil

“Allen Mandelbaum has produced a living Aeneid, a version that is unmistakably poetry.” – Erich Segal, The New York Times Book Review

“A brilliant translation; the only one since Dryden which reads like English verse and conveys some of the majesty and pathos of the original.” – Bernard M. W. Knox

“Mandelbaum has… given us a contemporary experience of the masterpiece, at last.” – David Ignatow

Virgil was a poet born Publius Vergilius Maro in 70 BC near Mantua, in what is now northern Italy. His parents, farm owners of substance, provided him with a first-rate education. Upon completing his education, he returned home and may have begun work on the Eclogues, published between 42 and 37 BC.

In 41 BC, Emperor Octavian (later Augustus) confiscated Virgil’s family’s property. Virgil traveled to Rome to negotiate its return. Fortunately, an introduction to the emperor led not only to the return of his land but also to a meeting with Octavian’s confidant, Maecenas, who became Virgil’s lifelong patron.

An industrious and meticulous writer, Virgil was not prolific. In addition to the ten Eclogues, he wrote the four Georgics (taking seven years) and his masterwork, the Aeneid. Virgil worked on the Aeneid for eleven years until his death in 19 BC. Believing the epic unfinished, he directed in his will that the manuscript be destroyed. However, the emperor, a friend and admirer, intervened, ordering the manuscript be edited by Virgil’s friends Varius and Tucca for obvious errors and repetitions only, resulting in the Aeneid known today.

Allen Mandelbaum’s verse volumes include: Chelmaxions, The Savantasse of Montparnasse, Journeyman, Leaves of Absence, and A Lied of Letterpress.

His verse translations include:

• The Aeneid of Virgil (winner of a National Book Award)
• Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso from the California Dante
• The Odyssey of Homer
• The Metamorphoses of Ovid (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry)
• Ovid in Sicily
• Selected Poems of Giuseppe Ungaretti
• Selected Writings of Salvatore Quasimodo
• David Maria Turoldo

Mandelbaum is co-editor with Robert Richardson Jr. of Three Centuries of American Poetry, and with Yehuda Amichai, of the eight volumes of the JPS Jewish Poetry Series.

After receiving his Ph.D. from Columbia, he was a Fellow at Harvard. While chairman of the Ph.D. program in English at the Graduate Center of CUNY, he was a visiting professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and at the universities of Houston, Denver, Colorado, and Purdue.

His honorary degrees are from the University of Notre Dame, Purdue University, the University of Assino, and the University of Torino. He received the Gold Medal of Honor from the city of Florence in 2000 and the President of Italy’s award for translation in 2003.

He is currently Professor of the History of Literary Criticism at the University of Turin and the W.R. Kenan Professor of Humanities at Wake Forest University.

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