Her understanding of the poem, of its authorʼs intentions, and of why it continues to captivate readers two millennia after its writing also make meaningful departures from past scholarship. But, as a leading scholar and teacher of ancient Rome and its literature, she felt the absence of a translation that was closely faithful to Vergil. Thereʼs no shortage of excellent English translations of the poem, Bartsch-Zimmer acknowledged.

Before it was released in the United States this February by Random House, it was already warmly embraced by readers in the United Kingdom, where it was first published last fall and named a best book of 2020 by the Guardian. Regenstein Distinguished Service Professor of Classics and the Program in Gender Studies, Bartsch-Zimmer-who publishes as Shadi Bartsch-spent four years working on her translation of the epic. “Heʼs not out for personal glory” like an Odysseus or Achilles, said Bartsch-Zimmer, and the Aeneidʼs newest translator.

Linked with the not-so-exciting virtue of piety, the hero is set up as an excellent ancestor for the emperor Augustus, who wanted to be seen as having similar virtues. Many readers have seen Aeneas as a positive figure and one who would please Romeʼs leaders. Finally, the Trojans land in Italy and found a city where Rome will later stand. Along the way, the gods-especially Juno and Aeneasʼs mother, Venus-throw both obstacles and aids in his path. In the poem, Aeneas leads his followers west from Troy, which the Greeks have sacked, in search of somewhere to start a new city. Itʼs also a national origin story, said Prof. Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer-“and that makes it a different kind of poem.”

Unlike the Odyssey and the Iliad, Vergilʼs response to the Homeric epics is not just that of an individual hero. It was 29 B.C., two years into the reign of the emperor Augustus, when the Roman poet Vergil began writing his great epic, the Aeneid.

The odyssey translations