Can epic poetry really be made comprehensible?

This tiered reader of Aeneid book 4 presents several versions of each passage rewritten in Latin of gradually increasing difficulty, so that Vergil’s beautiful original poetry can be read with much greater ease. At 30,000 words, it is about six times longer than the original text, with over 400 illustrations to help explain Vergil’s more specialised vocabulary while maximising time spent in Latin.

Struggling to break free of the intermediate plateau? You can enjoy reading Vergil with me through this book! By explaining complex Latin through simpler Latin (without sacrificing natural expression), we can turn what would have been intensive reading for typical intermediate learners into a delightful extensive reading experience.

Where can I get it?

You can buy a paperback on Amazon.com for USD $16.99 or a hardcover for $29.99. It is also available on other book retailers such as Barnes & Noble in the same formats and the same prices. International versions of Amazon.com might have some variation in pricing due to currency conversions or availability of print-on-demand copies. If cost is an issue, you should be able to request your local library to buy a hardcover copy of the book, as I’ve made it available in expanded distribution via IngramSpark.

The complete digital version is offered free in both .pdf and .epub formats to anyone who signs up to my email newsletter. Yes, the complete book, not selections, not previews, not teaser content! All of it! Free!

So what are you waiting for? Sign up now and get your free digital copy to start reading and enjoying!

For those in school…

Vergil’s Aeneid takes pride of place in high school curricula worldwide. Selections are read in the International Baccalaureate (IB) Latin, the US-based Advanced Placement (AP) Latin as well as the UK-based GSCE and A-Level Latin curricula. While the official selections of the Aeneid vary year on year, book 4 in particular is often studied before the final year as an engaging introduction to the epic genre for students starting to encounter real Latin poetry. And for good reason – this train-wreck of a love affair is a crowd favourite, especially for a young adult audience. It’s the worst break-up in mythology!

…And out of school!

This tiered reader also opens up Aeneid book 4 for independent readers of intermediate proficiency who do not have the benefit of a teacher explaining poetry to them. How do you break into poetry after completing an introductory course? Reading tiers of plainly expressed prose narrative before the original poetry helps you not only understand and enjoy what you are reading but also see how poetic language differs from prose and get a ear for Vergil’s style.

The story

Because of the cruel influence of the gods, Dido, the powerful queen of Carthage, has fallen in love with Aeneas. Who’s Aeneas? Why, he’s the Trojan hero destined to become a founding figure for Rome: Carthage’s future enemy! What will Dido and Aeneas do when their ill-fated love affair starts falling apart? How do the figureheads of two world-spanning empires go from being literally in bed with one another to being sworn mortal enemies?

Launch party activities

On 23 September 2023, we celebrated the launch of The Lover’s Curse: A Tiered Reader of Aeneid 4 with fun Latin and English activities such as playing a guessing game with character descriptions and doing a read-along (in Latin) and singing an Aeneid themed song (in English), along with news for upcoming projects and Q&A. Click here or the thumbnail below to watch our interactive activities.

We will have plans in the near future to make supplementary resources for this book, so don’t miss seeing these things drop! I’ll be emailing my newsletter subscribers updates on related Latin projects as we continue to make awesome things in Latin.

The vocabulary

Vergil is a master of words and stylistic variation. Sometimes his language is plain, at other times it is elaborate; sometimes it is vague and enigmatic, at other times exactingly specific.

The Aeneid as a whole contains a unique vocabulary of 5,864 words. This tiered reader of book 4 alone contains 2,197 unique words. In the lower tiers Jessica and I have endeavoured to use plain but natural Latin expression. In-language explanations along with 400 illustrations help to introduce Vergil’s more elaborate and domain-specific words.

The book also features a full glossary, with succinct, hand-picked contextually appropriate definitions of every word used in the text. Proper nouns such as place names, characters, or cult titles of gods are not simply transliterated, but given a brief explanation of who, what, or where they are (as needed).

If you are interested in making a custom flashcard deck with these words, you can download an excel spreadsheet by clicking the button below.

I have created Quizlet vocabulary flashcard decks in which the words are ordered according to the Dickinson College Commentaries’ frequency ranking for the top 1000 most common Latin words.

Errata

The Lover’s Curse has been professionally edited and professionally proof-read in order to ensure that it is comparable in quality to a traditionally published textbook. This means that this text has very few printing errors, and it abides by the industry standards expected of published books. Nevertheless, a small number of printing errors have been found and corrected in the manuscript. You can view the errata and their date of correction here. New orders of the books will not contain these errors, as the print-on-demand model prints from updated files.

What’s with the deer on the cover?

Early in the book, Vergil describes Dido’s tragic love with a famous simile, comparing her to a deer who has been struck with an arrow sent by a shepherd who doesn’t know he has hit the deer. She is mortally wounded with love, but not yet dead, and the imagery of her wound will continue to build up throughout the book. The deer simile paints her as a victim of love, and thus worthy of our pity. But also perhaps she could be seen as a sacrificial animal about to be slain. Ultimately she takes the fatal blade to herself, cursing Aeneas in a ritual devotio, sealing the promise of vengeance by her own blood. The deer simile is a multi-faceted symbol of Dido’s tragic story, and is open to a rich variety of interpretations. This is why I chose to draw a fleeing, wounded deer as the focus of the cover art.