World of Tears
Virgil: The Aeneid
translated by Robert Fagles, introduction by Bernard Knox
Viking, 2006
(486 pages, $40.00, hardcover)
reviewed by Franklin Freeman
In Homer’s world, wrote C. S. Lewis in A Preface to Paradise Lost, quoted by both Bernard Knox in his introduction and Robert Fagles in his postscript, “you were unhappy, or you were happy, and that was all. Aeneas lives in a different world; he is compelled to see something more important than happiness.”
The something more is a vocation. As Lewis wrote, “To follow the vocation does not mean happiness: but once it has been heard, there is no happiness for those who do not follow.” Or . . .
