Book excerpt: This is the first intermediate-student edition of a selection from Virgil's Aeneid X. Lines 215–250, 260–307, 362–398 and 426–542 are included as Latin text with an accompanying commentary and vocabulary. Focusing on a deliberately concise extract from the original, this edition is designed to be manageable for students reading the text for the first time while also perfectly encapsulating the interest of the longer work and inspiring further study of it. A detailed introduction explains points of historical and stylistic interest, encompassing the whole of Book X, including sections omitted here from the Latin. In Book X, the story moves from a council of the gods, via a depiction of Aeneas's return by sea to his beleaguered Trojan camp, to a bloody field of battle. We see Aeneas for the first time as a heroic warrior, but also afflicted by the searing pain of loss as the young son of his new ally, entrusted to him by his father, is killed. Aeneas is for now cheated of his revenge, a revenge which is the preoccupation of the rest of the poem. He does, however, slay the son of a champion of the opposition and then the champion himself, in scenes which re-emphasise that pain. The heart of the book, where Aeneas and his allies join the fray, constitutes the selection presented here. It is an immensely powerful confrontation between violence and compassion, cruelty and nobility.