Virgil, Aeneid 11: A Commentary

by Nicholas Horsfall

This is the first comprehensive commentary on Aeneid 11. The commentary treats fully matters of linguistic and textual intepretation, metre and prosody, grammar, lexicon and idiom, of Roman behaviour, social and ritual, as well as Virgil's sources and the literary tradition. New critical approaches and developments on Virgilian studies have been taken into account with economy and fairness. The Latin text is presented with a facing English translation. The commentary is followed by an appendix on Penthesilea and the Epic Cycle and a second appendix which discusses the weaknesses of Aeneid 11. The book concludes with English and Latin indices.
In approach and learning, this commentary continues Nicholas Horsfall's impressive work as a commentator and will advance our understanding of the Aeneid and the poet Virgil.

Genres: Poetry

536 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 20

About the author

Dr Nicholas Horsfall was neminent philologist, commentator, and Vergil scholar. He was an Honorary Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University.

Nicholas Horsfall went to Westminster School, Peterhouse, Cambridge and Corpus, Oxford.. He taught at University College London from 1971 to 1987 and then went to live in Italy, 1987-2000, where, as he put it ‘he taught on an irregular basis, and wrote a good deal’. He returned to the United Kingdom and in 2003 he moved from near Oxford to the northern Highlands of Scotland where he continued to write and publish extensively. Although his life was very rich in Scotland, he did still venture South of the Border now and then to attend conferences and give papers. In Hilary Term 2006, he was a visiting fellow at All Souls Oxford, and then, a few years later, he was made an Honorary Professor here at Durham.

Nicholas Horsfall wrote widely and wonderfully on Roman literature and culture but it will be for his work on Vergil that he will be best remembered and most missed. He was internationally renowned for his acuity and wit as a scholar and in particular for his commentaries on various books of the ‘Aeneid’, including Book 7 (1995), Book 11 (2003), Book 3 (2006), Book 2 (2008) and Book 6 (2013).

Reviews

[Ahenobarbus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Notes:
Used Horsfall's exhaustive commentary -- a smattering of new textual depths & delights. Man is fond of the enlivening exclamation point, adding a punch of genuine enthusiasm to his commentary.
Re-reading the /Aeneid/ in concentric pairs (ie 1 & 12, 2 & 11, and-so-on), has revealed the strength & excellence of the poem's second half. This is not to diminish 1-6, mind you -- I bow before il miglior fabbro regardless of my current leanings.

Addendum: reading the poem in this particular way has offered me new evidence of Vergil's techniques & structures, the scaffolding. Beyond matters of composition, however, the narrative experience is at once progressive & retrograde: one watches the fitful though inevitable paths to Aeneas' destiny, to empire & alternately watches the finality of the war (with Turnus' death) grow distant, the tracks of empire sliding backward. As for the fruit of this tension, let us wait & watch!