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The Same Passage

J. W. Mackail

1859–1945

Oxford Professor of Poetry and a Virgil scholar; his 1885 prose Aeneid was written to carry the sense plainly for readers without Latin, and is public domain.

Translations here

The Aeneid1885 · public domain

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.