Virgil The Aeneid

Today, Virgil's Aeneid is respected as an enduring and important work, but when Virgil was writing it, he was faced with the problem of how to interest his readers and present his work to the readers as a legitimate epic poem. In lines 1 though 80 in Book I of the Aeneid, Virgil uses multiple arguments and ideas to convince his readers that the Aeneid is a epic work fitting for a Roman audience. One important argument he sets up is that the Aeneid is an epic because it contains language and plot elements that are similar to the most familiar epics of his time, Homer's Odyssey and Iliad. The next important argument Virgil makes is that the Aeneid is a uniquely Roman epic. Lastly, Virgil establishes that his work has the qualities of an epic

In line 8, Virgil directly addresses the Muse, asking that the Muse to “tell me the cause” of Aeneas' wanderings and Juno's anger that he has briefly mentioned (Virgil I.8). This direct address is placed just a few lines into the beginning of the poem, where the reader would be immediately able to notice it. Also Virgil, as the author of the work, is addressing the Muse himself, which is shown by the fact that in line 1, he speaks in the first person and assigns himself authorship, in the line “I sing of arms and the man” (Virgil I.1). These lines are deliberately similar to Homer's works, and even contain some of the same ideas. Homer's Odyssey begins with the words, “Sing to me of the man, Muse,” while the Iliad begins, “Rage, sing Goddess, Achilles' rage,” both of which also contain the author directly addressing the Muse, and asking the Muse to provide information about the subject of the story and inspiration to record the story as a poem (Homer, Odyssey I.1 ; Homer, Iliad I.1-2). Virgil's invocation to the Muse functions in the same way, but is also meant to reference Homer's works. By using the same basic formula of addressing the Muse, Virgil would be able to remind the reader of Homer, and imply that he is about to tell a story

He has already, in the first few lines, made the comparison between his choice of topic and Homer's works, but it is also important for Virgil to show that he is not just copying Homer. Instead, Virgil is making a type of epic that is entirely new and legitimate because it is Roman. Almost immediately, Virgil points out that his hero ends up in Italy, and moreover, “he founded a city / ...from that the Latin people / came, the lords of Alba Longa, the walls of noble Rome” (Virgil I.5-7). Virgil is not simply trying to grab the Roman reader's attention here by mentioning their city, but he is instead arguing that his poem is going to provide a treatment of how Rome was founded by his protagonist following a series of trials. He is therefore able to tie Rome's history in with the idea that the city's founding is a tale that could only be told in an epic format, which Virgil sums up by stating that the founder “wandered for many years.../ Such an effort it was to found the Roman people” (Virgil