Let us finally read Virgil's Aeneid in our language

The Aeneid of Virgil (70-19 B.C.E.) narrates the journey of the refugees from Troy to Italy, where Aeneas lays the foundations of historical Rome. The epic poem is built out of materials from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. At the same time, however, it conveys the 'national' and dominating ideology of a poet who celebrates the historical prospect of the imperium without overlooking "collateral damage." The ideological enrichment of the homeric form left Aeneid open to successive appropriations by Christians, imperialists, colonialists, fascists and humanists. Hardly discernible in Greek culture, Virgil is, in the words of T.S. Eliot, is “our classic, the classic of all Europe.”

Speaker: Theodore Papanghelis, Aristotle University of Salonica and The Academy of Athens
Reading: Dimitris Lignadis, Actor