composition

• Virgil was already known for his previous works: the Eclogues and the Georgics
• his patron was Maecenas, a close adviser of the Emperor Augustus
• it is an epic poem written in the dactylic hexameter (line containing 6 feet)
• 'As for the Aeneid, he first drafted it in prose and divided it into twelve books, deciding to construct it bit by bit, so that he could do each part as it seized his fancy, taking up nothing in order'

  Aelius Donatus, Life of Virgil
• the composition of the epic was a topic of conversation even in the poet's lifetime
• Propertius (50-15 BC) writes: 'Give way, you Roman authors! Give way, you Greeks! Something more than the Iliad's being born' - Elegies