During the flight, he lost Creusa, whose shade appeared to him, telling him to follow his destiny, which is to build a great city and take a royal bride. Over dinner one night, he tells Dido and her court about his travels thus far.Īeneas recounts the story of the fall of Troy, and how he was forced to leave the city of his birth with his father Anchises, his son Ascanius, and his wife Creusa. Largely influenced by Homer's Odyssey and Iliad, the Aeneid begins halfway through Aeneas's journey, as he nears the city of Carthage, ruled over by Dido, who built the city after fleeing from her murderous brother.

Entering its third millennium, the Aeneid can still speak immediately to the reader.Virgil's seminal epic, the Aeneid, tells the story of Aeneas's journey in search of the land where he is destined to build the city that will one day become the great Roman Empire. In the last two thousand years the Aeneid has been a pagan bible, a Latin style manual, a moral allegory, a document of European unity, a pacifist document - and one of the most-read and studied works of world literature of all time. Because of its generic inclusiveness and linguistic brilliance, the Aeneid spread its influence across every form of written discourse for centuries. He expanded the range of the Latin epic, using elements from most types of late classical literature, while refining the linguistic and metrical possibilities of the epic genre. The Aeneid represents a pivotal point in western literature: Virgil drew on the whole of Greek and Latin literature to create this epic. The Aeneid also universalizes Roman experience, ideals, and aspirations. The Aeneid was composed at least in part to celebrate 'truth, justice, and the Roman way' and to promote the rebirth of the Roman way of life under Augustus. The Aeneid and the Bible were probably the two most consistently read books in Western Europe for two thousand years. Early Christian writers who attempted to reject Virgil could escape neither his style nor his attitudes. Even in his own lifetime Virgil's poetry had become a school text. This decision affected the course of literary history and the development of western culture. The emperor Augustus refused the request. When Virgil was dying in 17 BC he asked for the unfinished Aeneid to be destroyed.

The aeneid by virgil