‘Heaneid’ breathes fresh life into Virgil’s book of the dead

Classics; Aeneid Book VI; Translated by Seamus Heaney; Faber & Faber, €20

Seamus Heaney’s posthumous translation of Aeneid Book VI is a triumph Picture: Geray Sweeney

‘It is easy to descend into Avernus,” the Sybil tells Virgil’s Aeneas. “But to retrace your steps and get back to the upper air, / That is the task, that is the undertaking.”

The words come from Seamus Heaney’s rugged new translation of Aeneid Book VI, completed a month or so before his death in 2013. This section of Virgil’s epic revolves around the hero’s encounter with the Sybil and journey into the ...