After the death of Virgil in the First Century BC, the Roman
Emperor Augustus Caesar posthumously published his Aeneid.
Caesar Augustus loved this book because it took the history of
Rome, romanticized it and treated it as “prophecy.” Virgil built
on an existing legend about the founding of Rome. He expanded a
story around that legend based on the Odyssey. The most famous
part of the book is the story of the Trojan Horse. The hero of
the Aeneid, Aeneas, son of Venus, was one of Hector’s
commanders. He fled Troy with a small band of Trojans when it
fell to the Greeks. They built ships and sailed to Italy, with
many adventures along the way. They were commanded by the gods
to join with the existing people in Italy and to build Rome.
Aeneas and the Trojans were opposed and attacked by the Latins,
led by Turnus. Turnus is described by some scholars as having a
mother who was a nymph, and the Aeneid states that his sister
was a nymph. In the final scene, Turnus and Aeneas fought to the
death for Lavinia, the daugh