With Jerusalem liberated, Torquato Tasso set out to write an epic poem on par with the Iliad and the Aeneid, not inspired by mythology, but by a historical fact: the Christian conquest of Jerusalem during the First Crusade. The siege of the city provided the framework for the restoration of classical epic poetry, but poetic imagination infused it with pathos, for Tasso never relinquished his desire to astonish the reader or his conviction that verse was the means to achieve it. Blending truth and fiction, weapons and love, fable and tragedy, he created a sublime, reflective, and melancholic moral epic, and not only sang the praises of the victors, but also placed poetry at the service of the vanquished. Published in 1581, the work soon became one of the most widely read and appreciated in Europe, inspiring generations of painters, musicians and writers: from Tintoretto to Delacroix, from Monteverdi and Händel to Dvorák, and from Milton and Rousseau to Goethe and Byron, all succumbed to the charms of this extraordinary feat that José María Micó's melodic verses manage to translate into Spanish with precision and ease.