Aeneid

Books

• 1
  Book 1

  Seven years after the fall of Troy, Aeneas and his fleet are within sight of Italy when Juno unleashes a storm that scatters them across the Mediterranean. The survivors wash up on the shore of Carthage. Its queen is Dido.

  756 lines
• 2
  Book 2

  Dido asks Aeneas to tell his story. The Wooden Horse. Greeks in the streets. A king murdered at his own altar. A city burning in a single night. And a man running through the flames with his father on his back and his son's hand in his.

  804 lines
• 3
  Book 3

  Seven years of wandering compressed into a single night's telling. Every landing is wrong, every oracle misunderstood. The Trojans sail from failure to failure across the Mediterranean, and then Anchises dies in his sleep.

  718 lines
• 4
  Book 4

  She swore she would never love again. He was supposed to be passing through. A storm drives them into a cave together and what happens next destroys a queen and haunts a hero. Book IV is the reason people still read the Aeneid.

  705 lines
• 5
  Book 5

  Funeral games for Anchises in Sicily — ship races, boxing, archery. But the Trojan women are exhausted. When Juno's agent whispers that they should burn the ships, four go up in flames before anyone can stop them.

  871 lines
• 6
  Book 6

  Aeneas descends to the underworld. He sees the unburied dead, the fields of mourning where Dido turns away from him in silence, the warriors of Troy. His father shows him the future — every Roman hero waiting to be born.

  901 lines
• 7
  Book 7

  The Trojans reach Latium at last. King Latinus offers his daughter Lavinia, but Juno intervenes. Turnus rallies the Italian peoples against the foreigners. The war that will found Rome begins.

  817 lines
• 8
  Book 8

  Aeneas sails up the Tiber to seek allies. Evander shows him the future site of Rome. Venus brings armour forged by Vulcan, and on the shield Aeneas sees the history of a city that does not yet exist.

  731 lines
• 9
  Book 9

  While Aeneas is away, Turnus attacks the Trojan camp. Nisus and Euryalus attempt a night raid through enemy lines — a mission of reckless courage that ends in the poem's most devastating scene of young death.

  818 lines
• 10
  Book 10

  The war escalates. Aeneas returns with his Arcadian allies. The battle reaches the Trojan walls. Turnus is trapped inside the camp and fights his way out alone — magnificent, doomed, and already abandoned by Juno.

  909 lines
• 11
  Book 11

  A council of war. Turnus challenges Aeneas to single combat, but the battle breaks out before they can meet. The young warrior Camilla fights and dies. Turnus is drawn back toward his fate.

  915 lines
• 12
  Book 12

  The final combat. Aeneas and Turnus meet face to face. Jupiter weighs their fates on the scales. Turnus falls, begs for mercy, and Aeneas sees the belt of the boy Turnus killed — and drives his sword home.

  952 lines