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Virgil's Aeneid

Condensation by PROF. WILLIAM FENWICK HARRIS ARMS and The Man of Destiny are the subject of Virgil's story-in which he portrays the birth of a nation.

The author goes far back into history as Homer told it, to find a national hero for his people. But his story has one great difference from the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," from which it borrows so much besides a hero. Homer's tales are spontaneous stories of the great chiefs who stand at the beginning of Greek history, while Virgil, a man of letters and a patriot, who would make plausible the divine mission of his race to rule the world, deliberately chooses his hero and then makes for him a history to suit his needs. One wonders sometimes whether AEneas or the Italian nation is the hero of the great national story.