The Aeneid is a Roman epic poem written by Virgil in the late 1st century BC (29–19 BC). It recounts the legend of Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy, where he founded Rome. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter. The first six of the poem's twelve books tell the story of Aeneas' wanderings from Troy to Italy. The the poem's second half tells of his ultimately victorious war upon the Romans, under whose name he and his Trojan followers are destined to be subsumed.

The hero Aeneas was already known to Greco-Roman legend and myth, having been a character in The Iliad. Virgil took the disconnected tales of Aeneas' wanderings, his vague association with the foundation of Rome, and a personage of no fixed characteristics (other than a scrupulous piety) and fashioned them into a compelling nationalistic epic that at once tied Rome to the legends of Troy, glorified traditional Roman virtues, and legitimized the ruling dynasty as descendants of the founders, heroes, and gods of both Rome and Troy.