|
The
reading is that of Professor
Robert Sonkowsky of the University
of Minnesota.
You
will note first and foremost his painstaking attempts to recapture authentic Latin
pronunciation. For instance, urbem in verse 5, which sounds as if it ends
in a nasalized -n. But
beyond sheer vocal pyrotechnics, note Sonkowsky's loosening of the meter:
his short syllables are indeed short, but are not always of even tempo. Furthermore,
although he pauses for caesurae, he rarely
offers full pauses at the ends of verses. Rather, he tends to read sentence by
sentence: at the end of verse 2 he proceeds directly to litora in 3, which
is the object of venit in the previous line. (This
brief recording is made available online by kind permission of Professor Sonkowsky
and Jeffrey Norton Publishers, Inc. The recording is taken from Sonkowsky's Selections
from Vergil, a two-cassette volume in Norton's Living Voice of Greek and
Latin Literature series.) | 
