[thinking out loud] I don't know whether I'd even say it's worth reading the Aeneid--there's a lot about the ending that's interesting for scholars of Roman history, but the best book of the whole poem is Book 2, when Aeneas tells Dido the story of the fall of Troy, and you can get a pretty good digest of the problem of the ending by reading the chapter on the book in David Denby's book on the Columbia great books course. Virgil subjugating his art to destiny, and Aeneas along with it, in the latter half of the poem is much less interesting than the Homeric epics, imo. I'm also not wild about the Fitzgerald translation; I would definitely recommend Fagles.
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[thinking out loud] I don't know whether I'd even say it's worth reading the Aeneid--there's a lot about the ending that's interesting for scholars of Roman history, but the best book of the whole poem is Book 2, when Aeneas tells Dido the story of the fall of Troy, and you can get a pretty good digest of the problem of the ending by reading the chapter on the book in David Denby's book on the Columbia great books course. Virgil subjugating his art to destiny, and Aeneas along with it, in the latter half of the poem is much less interesting than the Homeric epics, imo. I'm also not wild about the Fitzgerald translation; I would definitely recommend Fagles.