For leaders who built empires throughout history, The Aeneid has been a blueprint for how to take over land that belongs to ...

His rural upbringing influenced all his poetry, especially his earlier work, like the “Eclogues”. As he was growing up, Rome was in crisis, with power-hungry nobles fighting between themselves.

Historians are skeptical that this has a basis in fact, but it was useful propaganda for Augustus Caesar, who established himself as Rome’s first emperor while Virgil was writing his poem.

Ovid’s playful poetry made him a favorite among Rome’s elite, but angered Emperor Augustus. Just as he was producing his finest work, Ovid (43 BC – 17 AD) was exiled to the darkest corner of ...

therefore Rome, and her empire, are sanctioned by the heavens. That divine sanctioning of empire is what many leaders in the decades and centuries that followed took from the poem, too.