Description

A fascinating and almost fantastic chapter in the history of Virgil's reception concerns the 'Thirteenth Book of the Aeneid' written at Pavia in 1428 by Maphaeus Vegius, then a mere lad of twenty-two. For a century and a half after the invention of printing, this book was invariably placed alongside the Aeneid as though an integral part of it, but much more rarely thereafter and now it is seldom available in print. In it the Rutulians surrender to Aeneas; Latinus returns Turnus' body to his father, who performs the burial with due ceremony; Aeneas marries Lavinia and founds a city named after her; he succeeds eventually to Latinus' kingdom; and in the end receives from his mother Venus the gift of apotheosis among the stars. This edition, originally published in 1930, has a substantial introduction, Latin text faced by the English translation of Thomas Twyne (1584), Sebastian Brant's six illustrative woodcuts (1502) and Gavin Hamilton's translation into Scots dialect (1553). Bibliography is provided and succinct annotation, mostly devoted to Vegius' echoes of Virgil's own poetry.