![]() Virgil began composing the Aeneid soon after the climatic defeat of Marc Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium (31 BCE), the moment that finalized Rome’s transition from Republic to Empire. Following Caesar’s assassination in 44 BCE, his adopted son and heir Octavian (later the first emperor of Rome, Augustus) began a second civil war with another Roman statesman, Marc Antony, and his ally, the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. ![]() The foundations of the Roman Republic had already been weakened by a civil war between the Senate-aligned Pompey the Great and an upstart general, Julius Caesar, who made a grab for absolute power in 49 BCE and succeeded. Nearly a century of violent infighting had come at great cost to the Roman people, both politically and personally. Born in the year 70 BCE, Virgil witnessed decades of tumultuous civil wars. ![]() Publius Virgilius Maro-or Virgil, for short-composed the Aeneid at a time of seismic change for Roman society. ![]()
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