Aeneas’ Wanderings. The journey begins

Aeneas carrying Anchises, Ascanius is in the background. Attic black-figure eye-cup, 520 BC. From Vulci. Paris, Louvre Museum.

Everything apparently begins with Vergil, who wrote the story of Aeneas between 29 and 19 B.C. Vergil lived in the Augustan age, when Rome was slowly coming to terms with the terrible consequences of the Civil Wars, and a new order was gradually taking shape: the Augustan principate.

In the immediate aftermath of the victory of Actium (31 BC), Octavian set up a political and cultural program, with the aim of  healing the wounds that years of wars, proscriptions, political murders and bloody fighting had driven the Roman society to the ground .

The Aeneid was written and shaped to promote a rationalized and coherent reconstruction of the Roman past. The city, this was the message suggested by the poem, was destined since its very foundation, to dominate the world. And Augustus, the heir…