Shadi Bartsch
Classics, translator
The Aeneid
Written by Vergil
Random House, 2021
ABOUT THE BOOK
Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer presents a new translation of Virgil’s epic tale of Aeneus’ flight from Troy and the bloody emergence of Rome as a world power. As our faculty affiliate Ada Palmer notes, Bartsch-Zimmer presents “[a] tight, readable translation with a welcome feminist outlook and savvy engagement with the poem’s political and imperial themes and imperialist legacy. Its natural iambic voice, clear language, and faithfulness to the tight, fast-moving pace of Virgil’s original make it a refreshing way for modern audiences to access the Aeneid’s power.” A 5-star Amazon review adds, “Better than Homer!”
Read "Why I won’t surrender the classics to the far right," a recent op-ed by Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer.
“The best version of the Aeneid in modern English: concise, readable and beautiful, but also as accurate and faithful to Vergil’s Latin as possible.”
— James J. O’Hara,
George L. Paddison Professor of Latin, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shadi Bartsch is a Guggenheim Laureate, the Helen A. Regenstein Distinguished Service Professor in Classics at the University of Chicago, and the inaugural director of the Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge. She has been a professor of classics for nearly three decades, has published twelve books (monographs and edited volumes), and translated three of Seneca’s tragedies: Thyestes, Medea, and Phaedra.