In previous scholarship on mid-seventeenth-century translations of the Aeneid, the so-called ‘Augustan’ Virgil has dominated the attention of critics. Starting with Ben Jonson's Poetaster, extending through translations by famous poets such as Sandys, Waller and Denham, and culminating in Dryden's Complete Works of Virgil (1697), the Augustan Aeneid has often been treated as the English Aeneid of the century. The values that constitute the Augustan Aeneid are sometimes vague, but they cluster around three main concepts. The first is stylistic: the progressive development and refinement of English versification and the closed couplet. Augustan poetics are characterised by purity, clarity, decorum and ornament – qualities for which Virgil was the touchstone. This narrative has most recently been told by Robin Sowerby in his study The Augustan Art of Poetry. Second, Augustan Virgil employs this refined style to express praise and gratitude to a prince. Howard Erskine-Hill's The Augustan Idea in English Literature has shown how a panegyric strand of Virgilian reception developed in the seventeenth century through a new emphasis on the pax Augusta under the Stuart kings. In this way, Virgil's epic could become a poem primarily prophesying a stable future that was made possible through the peace preserved by the monarch. The third main aspect of the ‘Augustan’ Aeneid gained impetus from James's advice to his son in Basilikon Doron: that he should rule with clemency. In this tradition of royal Aeneids, Aeneas as the expression of royal sympathy is set in opposition to rebels against a monarchical system, who are portrayed as expressions of wrath. Refined versification, gratitude for a monarchical peace and royal sympathy form the pillars of the best-known narrative in the history of Virgil reception in England. Unfortunately, the prominence of this important strand of reception has led to the erroneous impression that there is no other important line of Virgil reception in this era.

This chapter aims to show that there was another tradition of Virgil interpretation and translation of great consequence in the first half of seventeenth-century England. If George Sandys is sometimes taken as a starting point for the ‘Augustan’ Virgil, then Dudley Digges could be seen as the founder of this alternative tradition.