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Aeneas flees burning Troy, Federico Barocci, 1598 Galleria Borghese, Rome Virgil's poem tells the adventures of Aeneas from his escape from Troy with his son Iulus after its sack, (illustration, left) his wanderings through the Mediterranean region, and his final arrival in Italy where he becomes the ancestors of the Roman people.
The most famous episode of this work is when he is driven by a storm to the coast of Africa, where he meets Dido, queen of Carthage, a city which has only recently been founded and which will later become Rome's greatest enemy. However that lies in the far future; the Trojans are welcomed hospitably and at a banquet given in their honour, Aeneas recounts the tale of the sack of Troy and of their escape from it. During the Trojan visit, Dido and Aeneas fall in love, but the Roman gods insist he fulfil his destiny and he has to depart. Her heart broken, Dido commits suicide by burning herself on a pyre. Looking back from the deck of his ship, Aeneas sees its smoke and knows its meaning only too clearly. However Destiny calls and the Trojan fleet sails on to Italy.
They eventually land and further adventures ensue. Aeneas descends to the underworld through an opening at Cumae, where he speaks with his father Anchises and has a prophetic vision of the destiny of Rome. He marries Lavinia, the daughter of the king of the Latini , and her rejected suitor Turnus, king of the Rutuli , challenges Aeneas to a duel in which Turnus is slain.
The work was written at a time of major change in Rome, both political and social. The Republic had fallen, civil war had ripped apart society, and the sudden return of prosperity and peace after a generation of chaos had badly eroded traditional social roles and cultural norms. In reaction the emperor Augustus was trying to re-introduce traditional Roman moral values, and the Aeneid is thought to reflect that aim. In addition, the Aeneid attempts to legitimate the rule of Julius Caesar (and by extension, of his adopted son Augustus and his heirs). Aeneas' son Ascanius is called Ilus (from Ilium, meaning Troy), is renamed Iulus and offered by Virgil as an ancestor of the gens Julia, the family of Julius Caesar. When making his way through the underworld, Aeneas is given a prophecy of the greatness of his imperial descendants.
The poetry of the Aeneid is polished and complex; legend has it that Virgil wrote only a single line of the poem each day. Although the work is complete, with the same length and scope as Homer's epics which it imitates, it is unfinished: A number of lines are only half-complete. It is common, however, for epic poems to have incomplete, disputed, or badly adulterated text, and because it was composed and preserved in writing rather than orally the Aeneid is more complete than most epics.
On his death Virgil left instructions for the Aeneid to be destroyed if he died with his work unfinished. On his death in 19 BC, Augustus ordered his literary executor Varius Rufus to disregard the poet's wishes, and after minor modifications the Aeneid was published.
There were two attempts at producing an addition to the work made in the 15th century, one by Pier Candido Decembrio which was never completed and one by Maffeo Vegio which was often included in 15th and 16th century printings as the Supplementum.
The most famous translation of the Aeneid is that by the 17th-century poet Dryden. Although it takes numerous small liberties with the text, it is one of the very few examples of a poetic translation that retains the power and flow of the original in a new language, and is often regarded as a classic in its own right.
For external links to the text of the Aeneid see Virgil.
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