V
70–19 BCE
Virgil
Poet of the Augustan settlement. The Aeneid recasts Homeric epic as a Roman destiny, at once celebratory and shadowed by cost.
Created the imperial epic that later Christian and national poets would imitate and argue with.
Primary works
Epic poem · 19 BCE
The Aeneid
Virgil
Aeneas flees burning Troy and, after Carthage and the underworld, fights to plant a future Rome in Italy. Piety wins; the cost is written in every victory.
National epic
Didactic poem · 29 BCE
The Georgics
Virgil
A four-book poem on fields, trees, herds, and bees that is also a meditation on labor after civil war. Instruction becomes a theodicy of work.
Agricultural verse