The Roman poet, Virgil wrote The Aeneid between 29 and 19 B.C. It recounts the travels of Aeneas, a Trojan and minor character in Homer’s Iliad as he travels from Troy to Italy. In Italy Aeneas founds the city-state that is destined to become the Roman Empire. In composing the Aeneid, Virgil availed himself of a mythic, though summarily drawn character, without firmly drawn characteristics, as the protagonist of his epic poem, comprised of 9,896 lines in dactylic hexameter. The purpose of Virgil’s effort was to compose Rome’s national epic, its founding myth. By 19 B.C. Rome dominated the world. The empire encompassed all of the civilized world and much of the world that had yet to be tamed under Roman law. The empire was so grand it called out for a history and mythology equal to its sheer size, as well as its military and commercial status. Myths, like great rivers, tend to originate in the trickle of a spring in some far-off, never-to-known place, their all-pervasive importance realized in hindsight when a culture looks back on its humble beginnings. Virgil did not have the benefit of anonymity attendant to less-than-prepossessing beginnings, though he chose a hero who was a vague presence on the far edge of Roman consciousness. Ultimately the Aeneid did several things: it tied Rome to the legends of Troy, it explained the Punic Wars, it honored Roman virtues, and it helped to legitimize the Julio-Claudian dynasty. (Summary by Michael Hogan)