“So vast was the struggle to found the Roman race.”
Aeneid 1.33
Virgil wrote the Eclogues and Georgics before turning, at the emperor's suggestion, to a national epic. The Aeneid follows Aeneas from burning Troy to Italy, where his descendants will found Rome.
Written between 29 and 19 BCE and left unfinished at his death, it fuses Homeric epic with Roman destiny. Jupiter, Juno and Venus act openly in the poem, and every episode explains a Roman place, rite or name.
Legacy
It became Rome's school text and the model for epic in Europe, from Dante to Milton.