There is in the Aeneid of Virgil, as in Homer, more particularly in the Iliad, a very great abundance of similes, and many of them are indeed based on Homeric models. The general range of their subject-matter is very similar to that in Homer, with images derived from the natural and animal world, the heavens, elemental phenomena, and human pursuits. As in Homer, the similes are mostly extended, active and dynamic in nature, and bipartite in structure.

There is one instance of a general comparison with attributes of a god: I. 588 restitit Aeneas claraque in luce refulsit, ∣ os umerosque deo similis (Aeneas stood forth and was resplendent in the clear light, like a god in face and shoulders). This passage is associated with another simile in the lines which follow: this beauty had been bestowed on him by his mother, beauty such as that which the hand gives to ivory, or when silver or Parian marble is set in gold. When Juno fashions a likeness of Aeneas to send into battle to confound the enemy, his head is described as divus ‘godlike’: X. 638 Dardaniis ornat telis, clipeumque iubasque ∣ divini adsimulat capitis (she adorns it with Dardanian weapons, and simulates the shield and the plumes on his godlike head). So too in XI. 657 Camilla is described as dia Camilla (see Verg. 5). These rare examples are in marked contrast to the profusion of general comparisons of the heroes with the divine in Homer.