Waltharius: The Latin Epic of Walther of Aquitaine. Edited by Leonard Neidorf and translated by Brian Murdoch. Uppsala Books: London, 2025, ii, 184 pp.

The early medieval epic poem known as Waltharius is shrouded in mystery. Comprising 1456 lines of Latin hexameters in imitation of Virgil with resonances of Lucan, Statius, and Prudentius, this poem was probably the creation of a monastic writer, yet the story it tells about two royal fugitives on the run from the court of Attila the Hun and the violent armed confrontations endured and overcome by its eponymous hero did not serve an overt Christian devotional purpose. The author of the poem has not been identified, and its date of composition cannot be narrowed down more precisely than the ninth or tenth century. Surviving in four manuscript copies and eight related fragments, one of which dates to the tenth century, the work enjoyed a broad circulation throughout northern Europe from the Frankish heartlands to southern Germany, but it remains little known by modern readers when compared to the Beowulf poem or other Germanic poetry from this period. Leonard Neidorf and Brian Murdoch cast light on some of its mysteries in the introduction to their new facing-page edition and translation of the poem.