Virgil and the Aenid: A Roman Great
Virgil was an ancient Roman poet and is regarded as one of Rome's greatest poets. His epic, the Aeneid, is considered to be one of the defining pieces of literature to come out of Ancient Rome, and perhaps the greatest epic ever written. Influenced by Homer's own epics, the Iliad and Odyssey, the Aeneid follows a Trojan refugee by the name Aeneas along his journey to reach Italy, where his descendants Romulus and Remus were destined to found the city of Rome. According to legend, Virgil went to Greece in 19 BC to edit the Aeneid. However, he caught a fever while visiting a small town. After returning to Italy, weakened with disease, Virgil died shortly later that year. Augustus ordered Virgil's literary executors to ignore Virgil's wish that the poem be discarded, instead ordering it published with as few editorial changes as possible. Because of this, the work has a couple faults in which Virgil meant to revise before its publication. Despite this, the Aeneid has survived the course of time and has gone on the become one of the classic literary works of ancient Rome, as well as cementing Virgil as one of the figureheads of ancient Roman literature















