A city burns, a man carries his father out on his back, and the gods are not finished with him yet.

Reference librarian Flannery leads a four-session close reading of Virgil’s Aeneid, finished in 19 BCE and still the strangest founding myth ever written to order. Aeneas escapes the wreck of Troy and spends the poem crossing the Mediterranean looking for a homeland, running into vengeful gods, monsters, a love affair that ends badly for everyone, and the restless dead. The series looks at how Virgil turned all of that into an argument about duty, sacrifice and what it meant to be Roman. This first meeting takes on books one to three.

Good to know. The group meets every other Thursday from September 10 to October 22, reading Scott McGill and Susannah Wright’s 2025 translation. Copies are held for registrants on the holds shelf. Registering for this first session signs you up for the rest.

Registration is full. Capacity has been reached and additional registrants go onto the waitlist.

Check before you go. New Canaan Library does not publish a price for this program. Confirm the cost and registration details on the library’s event page before you plan around it.