James Joyce s Ulysses is a modern version of Homer s Odyssey, but Joyce who was a better scholar of Latin than of Greek also was deeply influenced by the Aeneid, Virgil s epic poem about the journey of Aeneas and the foundation of Rome.
Joyce wrote Ulysses during the Irish War of Independence, when militants, politicians, and intellectuals were attempting to create a new Irish nation. Virgil wrote the Aeneid when, in the wake of decades of civil war, Augustus was founding what we now call the Roman Empire. Randall Pogorzelski applies modern theories of...