Sarah Ruden is an award-winning classics scholar, a poet, and a widely published writer on religion and culture. Her many translations of Greek and Roman works include Vergil’s Aeneid and Apuleius’s The Golden Ass.

“Ms. Ruden has converted the writer of the Aeneid from a noble and stodgy ‘ancient’ into our contemporary . . . persuasively re-imagined [as] a sympathetic, three-dimensional figure. . . . The existence of the Aeneid is cause for gratitude. So is Ms. Ruden’s sensitive, celebratory portrait of its maker.”—Willard Spiegelman, Wall Street Journal“[Ruden] writes with true sympathy and understanding of the way no translation can ever do justice to the richness of Vergil’s language, to its psychological complexity and the brilliant, often witty use, of literary antecedents.”—Bronwen Riley, Country Life“A detailed biography of Vergil should be impossible; but Sarah Ruden displays such subtlety, such imagination, such love for her subject as to render the impossible possible.”—Tom Holland, author of Dominion“An enlightening and thoroughly modern introduction to Rome’s premier poet. This book should be required reading for every student and reader of Vergil’s immortal verse.”—Daisy Dunn, author of The Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny“In this engaging account, Sarah Ruden brings Vergil back as a living, breathing person, navigating issues of politics, sexuality, class, and culture that we still confront today.”—Randall Ganiban, Middlebury College

Sarah Ruden is an award-winning classics scholar, a poet, and a widely published writer on religion and culture. Her many translations of Greek and Roman works include Vergil’s Aeneid and Apuleius’s The Golden Ass.

“Ms. Ruden has converted the writer of the Aeneid from a noble and stodgy ‘ancient’ into our contemporary . . . persuasively re-imagined [as] a sympathetic, three-dimensional figure. . . . The existence of the Aeneid is cause for gratitude. So is Ms. Ruden’s sensitive, celebratory portrait of its maker.”—Willard Spiegelman, Wall Street Journal“[Ruden] writes with true sympathy and understanding of the way no translation can ever do justice to the richness of Vergil’s language, to its psychological complexity and the brilliant, often witty use, of literary antecedents.”—Bronwen Riley, Country Life“A detailed biography of Vergil should be impossible; but Sarah Ruden displays such subtlety, such imagination, such love for her subject as to render the impossible possible.”—Tom Holland, author of Dominion“An enlightening and thoroughly modern introduction to Rome’s premier poet. This book should be required reading for every student and reader of Vergil’s immortal verse.”—Daisy Dunn, author of The Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny“In this engaging account, Sarah Ruden brings Vergil back as a living, breathing person, navigating issues of politics, sexuality, class, and culture that we still confront today.”—Randall Ganiban, Middlebury College