Aeneis

After the fall of Troy, Aeneas flees the burning city and sets out on a long journey full of wanderings. The epic takes him across the sea and even into the underworld before he reaches Latium. The journey is meant to make him the forefather of a people yet to come.

The work combines the mission of founding a nation with the question of how war and mercy belong together. It promises peace and unity if people preserve the old virtues, and it shows that even the enemy, once defeated, deserves kindness.

The epic comprises twelve books with roughly 10,000 verses and in its first six follows the pattern of the Odyssey, in the remaining six that of the Iliad.