ABSTRACT
Literally, the story covers just one year in Aeneas’ life. But through the use of flashbacks to past events and prophecies of the future and other literary distortions of time, Virgil makes his poem embrace all of Roman history. In essence, the poem is a foundation story, like the foundation stories of other nations, such as the Pilgrim Fathers in the US and the Maori tales of travellers arriving by canoe in New Zealand. This epic presents in memorable poetic form a myth about the foundation of the Roman nation by settlers from the East who through a combination of alliances and military supremacy established themselves in Italy, in obedience to the commands of Jupiter, the king of the gods.
