The Aeneid

THE AENEID (Virgil, Roman, 29-19 BCE)

Homer ends his epic story of Troy before the war is over--before the Trojan Horse. He then skips to the homeward journey of Odysseus. But how did things wrap up in Troy? That story comes to us in another, much later, epic by the Roman poet Virgil (or Vergil). His Aeneid tells the story of Aeneas, whose father was first cousin to King Priam of Troy, and who himself was ancestor to Romulus and Remus, (legendary) founders of Rome, as well as Brutus, (legendary) founder of Britain, and thus of King Arthur and others. Aeneas, like Odysseus, wanders for years--in the last one, he courts Queen Dido of Carthage--before undertaking the conquest of the Latins. It was the ancient Romans' national epic.

• Before The Aeneid, Virgil also wrote the ten pastoral poems called the Eclogues, and the four books of the Georgics, a poem on agricultural matters.

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