Virgil''s AEneid is a eternalas Rome itself,a sweeping epci of arms and heroism-the searching portrait of a man caught between love and duty,human feeling and the forche of fate-that has influenced writers for over 2000 years.It is filled with drama,passion,and the universal pathos that only a masterpiece can express.The AEeid is a book for all the time and all people.The modern apprctiation of the Elliad and the Odyssey tends to carry with it a deperciation of the AEneid,the spirit of which appeals less forcibly to the taste of our time.But it is foolish to lose sight of the splendor of a poet who,for nearly two thousand years,has been one of the most powerful factors in European cultrure.The subtler elements of the exquisite style of Virgil no translator can ever hope to reproduce;but Dryden was a master of English versification,and the content of Virgil''s epic is here rendered in vigorous and nervous couplets.Dryden''s Dedication is an excellent example of his prose atyle,and gives an interesting view of the method and standpoint of the greatest of seventeenth century English critics.