This is consistent with her role throughout the Iliad and the Odyssey. He then explains the reason for the principal conflict in the story: the resentment held by the goddess Juno against the Trojan people. The Aeneid, the story of a band of survivors who leave their destroyed city to seek another home in a faraway country, is about rebirth, about life springing forth from ruin and death. Virgil begins his poem with a statement ( arma virumque cano …, “Of arms and the man I sing …”) and an invocation to the Muse, falling some seven lines after the poem’s inception ( Musa, mihi causas memora …, “O Muse, recount to me the causes …”).

These two halves are commonly regarded as reflecting Virgil’s ambition to rival Homer by treating both the Odyssey‘s wandering theme and the Iliad‘s warfare themes.īelow a synopsis of each book will be given: The Aeneid can be divided into halves based on the disparate subject matter of Books I–VI (Aeneas’ journey to Latium in Italy) and Books VII-XII (the war in Latium). The Aeneid, the story of a band of survivors who leave their destroyed city to seek another home in a faraway country, is about rebirth, about life springing forth from ruin and death.

Aeneas’ defeat of Turnus, painting by Luca Giardano. When Aeneas first happens upon Carthage, his mother, the goddess Venus, tells him of the queen of the land, the Phoenician Queen Dido.

The eneid