Okay, so about 2000 years ago there was this totally sweet poet named Vergil, and he wrote this awesome poetry that basically said “What’s up?” to all the poetry before him. He mostly wrote in dactylic hexameters, which is a rhythm that goes like “dum da-da” a few times—it’s kind of like iambic pentameters, you guys, like in Tudor England. Except! this was originally a Greek meter, but the Romans had been using it a while. It’s the same meter that the Iliad and Odyssey are in, and you know what! Vergil totally made those poems his own in the Aeneid. Oh yeah! We’re totes going to read the crap out of that poem this summer.

So we have some other stuff that Vergil wrote too, and it was before the Aeneid, which he never finished (check it: he was so unhappy with it that he wanted it burned, but Augustus was like “no way!” and everybody loved it), like the Eclogues and the Georgics. I frickin’ love the Georgics, maybe even more than the Aeneid, but their kinda devious, because they seem like they’re teaching you how to farm but they’re actually extra deep, reflective social commentary! But you know, the Aeneid probably is, too.

ANYWAY: The Aeneid is half as long as the Iliad and Odyssey, but it packs in all the drama and action of both, and it takes place around the same time as the Odyssey even though Vergil wrote it a long time after Homer.

It starts with this wicked cool storm that ruins all of Aeneas‘ ships (he’s the guy the poem was named after), and Aeneas ends up at Carthage where he meets the queen, Dido, who totally falls for him (alright Aeneas!). So as they’re getting to know each other, Aeneas tells her all about the stuff the Greeks pulled at Troy and what it was like sailing around looking for a place to live. But Aeneas is kind of a jerk, and leaves Dido, who gets really sad. Then after a while he goes into the underworld (and that’s the part we’re going to read!), and then he finds a place to live! But he has to fight for it, and that goes on for a long time, but I won’t tell you how it ends!