This is John Batchelor. A very happy conversation with two classicists, Scott McGill and Susanna Wright of Rice University, their new translation of the Aeneid.

This is Rome's origins, according to a man named Virgil, born 80 BCE, who befriended the man who would become Augustus,

the beginning of the Roman Empire, the end of the Republic.

However, the wail of a story, Hollywood worthy, actually,

Hollywood's may be worthy of this story of Aeneas

and how he wound up founding Rome.

Here Scott tells it very succinctly.

There's much more to say about the translation, about the language, about the meaning of the poem at the time.

It was written and 2,000 years later were still getting to dispute over aspects of it, over words of it,

over phrases of it.

Wonderful.

Scott McGill, the backstory, the front story, the thrills, two-hour epic on Hollywood screens,

but 2,000-year epic on paper and in those who can recite it. The Aeneid,

Aeneas, Troy is destroyed, is the beginning. Much more of this later tonight. Yes. Well, as you said, John,

it's a rip-roaring story, to be sure. Virgil doesn't tell it

in totally chronological order, but I'll summarize it in chronological order very, very quickly.

The Trojan War, we're at the very end of the Trojan War. The Greeks are able to breach Troy

via the Trojan horse, which we find in book two of the

Aeneid. They raise the city. They utterly destroy it. They burn it. But there's a band of survivors,

a band of refugees led by Aeneas, and they are able to find a ship, and they begin to make

their way westward. The idea is that they have a destined new homeland,

and that destined new homeland is Italy. They say that their ancestor Dardanists came from Italy,

...