Purpose of the Aeneid, and Motives determining the Form of the Poem

The motives and purpose influencing Virgil to undertake the composition of the Aeneid are to be sought partly in his own literary position, partly in the state of public feeling at the time when he commenced his task, and partly in the direction given to his genius by the personal influence of Augustus. As the author of the Georgics he had established his position as the foremost poetic artist of his time. He had achieved a great success in a great and serious undertaking. He had entered into competition with Greek poets of acknowledged reputation, and had surpassed them in their own province. He had accomplished all that could be accomplished by him as the poet of the peaceful charm of country life. But while in his two earlier works he limits himself to that field assigned to him by Horace,—that over which the ‘gaudentes rure Camenae’ presided,—the stirring of a larger ambition is observable in both poems:—

and again:—

He had yet to find a fuller expression for his sympathy with his age, which had deepened with the deepening significance of the times, and for that interest in the contemplation of human life which becomes the dominant influence in all great poets whose faculty ripens with advancing years.