.... The book discusses how ancient critics considered the flexible Odysseus the model of a good leader but censured the hero of the Iliad, the intransigent Achilles, as a bad one. It describes how the battle over which kind of leader Aeneas will prove to be continues throughout the poem, and explores how...

... classroom, where boys identified with Dido, where teachers turned an unfinished classical poem into a bildungsroman about young Achilles, and where students not only studied but performed classical works. The book opens by examining teachers' notes and marginal commentary in manuscripts...

... and the evidence from manuscripts indicating that this tradition persisted during the Middle Ages, as well as before and after. The three chapters in this book begin with a boy: the historical Augustine who weeps for the suicide of a fictional queen; young Achilles waking up in a strange new land where he...