The Aeneid

Description

The Aeneid is a Latin epic sonnet composed by Virgil in the late first century BC (29–19 BC) that recounts to the unbelievable story of Aeneas, a Trojan who went to Italy, where he turned into the precursor of the Romans. It is written in dactylic hexameter. The initial six of the sonnet’s twelve books recount to the account of Aeneas’ wanderings from Troy to Italy, and the sonnet’s subsequent half recounts the Trojans’ at last triumphant war upon the Latins, under whose name Aeneas and his Trojan adherents are bound to be subsumed. The saint Aeneas was at that point known to Greco-Roman legend and fantasy, having been a character in the Iliad; Virgil took the detached stories of Aeneas’ wanderings, his obscure relationship with the establishment of Rome and a personage of no fixed qualities other than a careful devotion, and designed this into a convincing establishing fantasy or patriot epic that without a moment’s delay attached Rome to the legends of Troy, celebrated customary Roman ideals and legitimized the Julio-Claudian administration as relatives of the originators, legends and lords of Rome and Troy.