Virgil

The Aeneid of Virgil

The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written between 29 and 19 BC by Virgil. The poem tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. The hero Aeneas was already known to Greco-Roman legend and myth, having been a character in the Iliad. Virgil took the disconnected tales of Aeneas's wanderings, his vague association with the foundation of Rome and a personage of no fixed characteristics other than a scrupulous pietas, and fashioned this into a compelling founding myth or national epic that at once tied Rome to the legends of Troy, explaining the Punic Wars, glorifying traditional Roman virtues, and Legitimize the Julio-Claudian dynasty as descendants of the founders, heroes, and gods of Rome and Troy.