Thanks to a very talented group of students under the supervision of Dr. Lucy McInerney (B.A. Dickinson ’15, PhD Brown ’24), the DCC edition of Vergil’s Aeneid is now complete through Book 2. The initial release back in 2016 only covered the then AP selections. It was always my intent to expand the coverage, and the opportunity to complete Books 1 and 2 came this summer (2024) with the pilot Dickinson College Commentaries High School Online Internship Program.
The inaugural 2024 program served a total of 24 students over the period June 24 through August 2. Five were rising juniors (class of ’26), 16 were rising seniors (’25), and three had just graduated. Ten were from public schools, 10 from private schools, and 4 from parochial schools. The states represented were PA (7), NY (5), MA (4), NC (3), CA (2), TN (2), and VA (1).
Two groups (of four total) worked with Lucy on gathering notes for the Aeneid. They drew on a variety of published and public domain commentaries. They met on Zoom five days per week for 50 minutes and read Latin and chose and edited notes on their own, before and after the daily sessions. They completed the so-far uncommented selections of Books 1 (177 lines) and 2 (330 lines). The group from Book 1 finished early and was able to do some final proofreading on the work done by the Book 2 group. Lucy cleaned up the results, and I did a final editing pass, adding some hyperlinks, fixing formatting, and adding a few notes of my own where I thought they were needed.
Huge thanks are due to the students and their teachers:
The Book 1 group was Felix Chen (The Harker Upper School, San Jose, CA, teacher Scott Paterson), Victoria Greco and Madeline LaJoy (Shenendehowa High School, Clifton Park, NY, teacher Keziah Armstrong), and Bridget Bauman (East Chapel Hill High School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, teacher Jenni Hoffman).
The Book 2 group was Maeve Cannon and Imaan Ansari (Trinity School in New York, NY, teachers Peter Aronoff and Eric Casey), Lily Moore (San Luis Obispo Classical Academy High School, teachers Sarah Weinschenk [Dickinson ’84] and Pamela Bleisch), Thea Blakley (Central Magnet School, Murfreesboro, TN, teacher Lindley Henson), and Xan Matuch (The Haverford School, Haverford, PA, teacher Andrew Fenton).
