The Aeneid

The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem written by Virgil between 29-19 BCE telling the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It comprises 9,896 lines in dactylic hexameter. The first six of the poem’s twelve books tell the story of Aeneas’s wanderings from Troy to Italy, and the poem’s second half tells of the Trojans’ ultimately victorious war upon the Latins, under whose name Aeneas and his Trojan followers are destined to be subsumed.

    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’ wanderings, his vague association with the foundation of Rome, and a personage of unfixed characteristics other than a scrupulous pietas and fashioned these components into a compelling founding myth or national epic, tying Rome to the legends of Troy, explaining the Punic Wars, glorifying traditional Roman virtues, and legitimizing the Julio-Claudian dynasty as descendants of the founders, heroes, and gods of Rome and Troy.