The Aeneid is the crowning work of the Roman poet Virgil and a cornerstone text in the history of Western literature. Unlike Virgil's earlier works (the Eclogues and The Georgics), The Aeneid is an expressly political work, taking for its subject matter the aftermath of the fall of Troy and the subsequent rise of Rome. Its hero, Aeneas, is one of the latter's distant, mythological founders, and in describing his journey to Italy, Virgil creates an intricate, allusive, and beautifully-worded meditation on fate, virtue, and power.
Virgil's epic was popular even among his contemporaries, especially the Roman political class (the Emperor included), for whom the poem was composed. In the...
