Which translation of The Aeneid should you read?

Virgil · Latin · verse

Rome’s national epic, written by a poet who asked on his deathbed that it be burned. A Trojan survivor is driven by fate towards a country he has never seen, and the poem keeps asking what that costs the people in his way. Translation matters here more than almost anywhere: Virgil’s Latin is famously compressed and musical, so a translator must choose between the music and the sense, and English versions land anywhere from rhymed couplets to plain prose.

Our verdict

Of the versions compared here in full, Dryden (1697) is the one to read for the sound of it: rhymed couplets that move, and the version most English poetry was written against. Mackail (1885) is the one to read beside it when you want to know exactly what the Latin says, without verse getting a vote. Both are public domain and reproduced here in full. The modern verse translations most readers are choosing between today are listed below but are NOT yet excerpted on this page.

The great English Virgil

John Dryden

Heroic couplets with real momentum; free, complete, and the version later poets answered.

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Plainest sense

J. W. Mackail

Careful Victorian prose that does not let metre bend the meaning. Free and complete.

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The same passage, side by side

Pick a passage and set two or three translations against each other. An answer can tell you which is “more faithful”; only this lets you hear them.

Passage

Arms and the man

Book I, ll. 1–11 · Seven lines of Latin that every English translator has had to answer. Watch how much longer rhymed verse has to run to say the same thing, and where prose simply stops.

Showpick up to 3

John Dryden

1697 · verse · public domain

Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc’d by fate, And haughty Juno’s unrelenting hate, Expell’d and exil’d, left the Trojan shore. Long labours, both by sea and land, he bore, And in the doubtful war, before he won The Latian realm, and built the destin’d town; His banish’d gods restor’d to rites divine, And settled sure succession in his line, From whence the race of Alban fathers come, And the long glories of majestic Rome.

tr. John Dryden, 1697Buy this edition →or borrow it from your library

J. W. Mackail

1885 · prose · public domain

I sing of arms and the man who of old from the coasts of Troy came, an exile of fate, to Italy and the shore of Lavinium; hard driven on land and on the deep by the violence of heaven, for cruel Juno's unforgetful anger, and hard bestead in war also, ere he might found a city and carry his gods into Latium; from whom is the Latin race, the lords of Alba, and the stately city Rome. Muse, tell me why, for what attaint of her deity, or in what vexation, did the Queen of heaven drive one so excellent in goodness to circle through so many afflictions, to face so many toils? Is anger so fierce in celestial

tr. J. W. Mackail, 1885Buy this edition →or borrow it from your library

The field at a glance

Translation	Year	Voice	Approach	Notes	In a word	Buy
John Dryden Verse · public domain	1697	Period	Fluid	Clean	The English Aeneid that mattered most for two hundred years, and still the one that sounds like an epic.	Buy →
J. W. Mackail Prose · public domain	1885	Period	Faithful	Clean	Prose, deliberately, by a Virgil scholar who wanted readers without Latin to know what the poem actually says.	Buy →
Robert Fagles Verse	2006	Mixed	Balanced	Some notes	⚠ Listed for completeness, NOT yet compared on this page.	Buy →
Robert Fitzgerald Verse	1983	Mixed	Balanced	Some notes	⚠ Listed for completeness, NOT yet compared on this page.	Buy →
Allen Mandelbaum Verse	1971	Mixed	Balanced	Some notes	⚠ Listed for completeness, NOT yet compared on this page.	Buy →
Sarah Ruden Verse	2008	Mixed	Balanced	Some notes	⚠ Listed for completeness, NOT yet compared on this page.	Buy →
Shadi Bartsch Verse	2021	Mixed	Balanced	Some notes	⚠ Listed for completeness, NOT yet compared on this page.	Buy →

Not sure? Find my translation →

Every translation in depth

John Dryden

1697 · public domain

VersePeriodFluidOrnateClean

The English Aeneid that mattered most for two hundred years, and still the one that sounds like an epic. Dryden works in rhymed heroic couplets, which forces him to expand and rearrange constantly, so this is Virgil at one remove: grander, louder, and more end-stopped than the Latin. The compensation is momentum. Read the opening beside Mackail and you can see the trade exactly, ten lines of rhyme where the Latin has seven of hexameter. Free, complete, and the version Pope, Johnson and Wordsworth all had in their ears.

Dryden’s last major work and long the standard English Virgil.

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J. W. Mackail

1885 · public domain

ProsePeriodFaithfulMiddleClean

Prose, deliberately, by a Virgil scholar who wanted readers without Latin to know what the poem actually says. Nothing is padded to fill a line and nothing is cut to fit one, so where Dryden gives you the sound, Mackail gives you the sense and the order of the sense. The register is still Victorian and can feel stately, but it is the version to keep open beside a verse translation when you want to check what a phrase is doing. Free and complete.

Long used as a crib alongside the Latin.

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