LEADER
Mark Cwik has been leading seminars and trips at Classical Pursuits for over 20 years. His deep understanding and appreciation of texts from Classical Greece and Rome are evident in his ability to engage discussion participants and bring ancient stories to life. He has devoted thousands of hours to reading and discussing the texts of classical Greece and Rome with adult learners of all ages. Mark is the founder and managing director of Great Books Great Discussions.
READINGS
The Aeneid by Vergil, translated by Shadi Bartsch
(Modern Library, 2021)
ISBN-13: 978-1984854124
SEMINAR OVERVIEW
“My song is of war and a man: a refugee by fate, the first from Troy to Italy’s Lavinian shores, battered much on land and sea by blows from gods obliging brutal Juno’s unforgetting rage; he suffered much in war as well, all to plant his town and gods in Latium. From here would rise the Latin race, the Alban lords, and Rome’s high walls.” —Aeneid, tr. Shadi Bartsch
Taking Homer’s great epics the Iliad and Odyssey as his models, Vergil created a poem and a hero and that are uniquely his own—and that are distinctly Roman. Where Homer’s Achilles and Odysseus are fundamentally private heroes whose struggles and conflicts are personal and centred on their own desires and goals, Vergil’s Aeneas journeys through the more complicated world of familial and civic responsibility. Aeneas is a widowed father, a devoted son, and the appointed leader of refugees from the Trojan War. He struggles with — and against — his duty to lead survivors from the fallen city of Troy to find a new home in a distant land.
The Aeneid is a poem of adventure, violence, heroism, duty, and love, recounting along the way the famous tale of the Trojan horse and the fall of Troy, Aeneas’ love affair with the doomed Queen Dido of Carthage, his journey into the underworld, and the conflict-filled arrival of the Trojan refugees in Italy.
More significantly, Vergil’s poem engages in the conscious creation of a national foundation myth for what became the vast empire of Rome. Vergil crafts a nuanced exploration of the price paid for empire in lives lost, relationships broken, blood spilled, and peoples displaced and destroyed.
Reading the Aeneid in the 21st century raises profound questions for us as readers: How do societies construct myths to unify or define themselves? What are the ethical and emotional implications of linking a nation’s identity to stories of conquest, exile, and divine favour? And, how do such narratives shape the way we think about history, memory, and civic responsibility?
As Shadi Bartsch puts it in her introduction, “The Aeneid is in many ways a story about stories and how they work. It is an epic that tells the story of foundation but puts on display the fault lines at the base of its own edifice, revealing the mechanisms at work in wholesome origin-stories and justifications of imperial aggression.”
TORONTO PURSUITS 2026 PRICING
The registration cost for Toronto Pursuits 2026 is C$1850. All seminars are C$75 off through 11:59 p.m. Eastern, January 3, 2026. Sale prices are automatically applied.
All orders placed by 11:59 p.m. Eastern, January 3, 2026, also get a complimentary Toronto Summer Music Festival ticket. Participants who register after January 3 can purchase a concert ticket at our group rate, typically around C$80. The concert we will be attending will be announced in early spring 2026.
Bring a new friend and save even more! Take $100 off your registration for every new friend you bring to Toronto Pursuits. Your friend also saves $100 on their registration. Choose your discount from the dropdown menu based on the number of friends who also plan to register, and let us know your friend’s name in the order notes.
The fine print: To get the bring-a-friend discount, your friend must not have registered for any previous Toronto Pursuits seminar in any year. Your friend must register by May 31, 2026, or Classical Pursuits will apply the nondiscounted price to your final payment. Limit one $100 discount per participant for being referred as a new friend. For example, if person A brings new friend B, person C cannot also claim friend B for the bring-a-friend discount. If friend B brings new friend D, friend B qualifies for $100 discount for being a new referral, and an additional $100 for referring new friend D. Classical Pursuits reserves the right to make all decisions about discount eligibility.
Toronto Pursuits 2026
See the Toronto Pursuits 2026 page for full details on the program schedule, health and safety, booking your accommodations, terms and conditions, and more.
Image credit: Amasis Painter on Wikipedia/Creative Commons
