This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchelor. It is a great pleasure to welcome two

classicists from Rice University, Scott McGill and Susanna Wright, who have achieved a new

translation of the Aeneid by the Roman poet Virgil,

with an introduction by Professor Emily Wilson, the University of Pennsylvania.

It is transformative for me, not having the Latin or the Greek, because they've rendered in English an Iamic pentameter,

a story that's a whopper.

And the story derives in many instances not only from the needs of Rome in the first century BC.

That's where all the trouble was, the end of the republic and the beginning of the empire.

But also touches on the tradition that Rome was always chip on the shoulder about.

That's the Greeks, especially Homer.

So congratulations to both of you, professors.

I begin with you, Susanna, because where Virgil was born turns out to be a factor.

Where was he born?

What did it mean at the time of his birth?

I believe that was 70 BCE.

Good evening to you, Professor. Good evening, and thank you so much for having us. We're delighted to be

here. So in terms of the location of Virgil's birth, he's born near Mantua in northern Italy. He has

essentially a rural upbringing there, though he does ultimately also get an education

in rhetoric, philosophy, literature, subjects that all become really vital, obviously, to his later

literary production. Importantly, though, I think the upbringing in a rural area is something

that really rings through so much of Virgil's poetry.

So he lives in a time of tumult and civil war in the first century, BC.

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