The first major single-volume edition in English of the pivotal book in Virgil's Aeneid, featuring the expedition of Nisus and Euryalus.

Publius Vergilius Maro, known to English-speakers as Virgil (70 B.C.-19 B.C.), is best remembered for his masterpiece, The Aeneid, in which he represented the Emperor Augustus as a descendant of the half-divine Aeneas, a refugee from the fall of Troy and legendary founder of Rome. Virgil claimed on his deathbed that The Aeneid was unfinished and a failure, but it became the national epic of ancient Rome, a monument of Latin literature, and has been regarded as one of the great classics of Western literature ever since. Virgil's other works include the Eclogues and the Georgics, also regarded as masterpieces.

Introduction; 1. The place of book IX in the second half of the Aeneid; 2. The structure of book IX; 3. Links with other books; 4. Reworking Homer; 5. Cities and sieges; solidarity and division; 6. Young men at war; defining the epic hero; Trojans and Italians; 7. Turnus; 8. Homeric gods and Roman religion; knowledge human and divine; recognition; 9. The Nisus and Euryalus episode; P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber IX; Commentary; Indexes.