structural:reformatting
Mythology and origins

The Aeneid can be divided into halves based on the disparate subject matter of Books 1–6 (Aeneas' journey to Latium in Italy), commonly associated with Homer's Odyssey, and Books 7–12 (the war in Latium), mirroring the Iliad. These two halves are commonly regarded as reflecting Virgil's ambition to rival Homer by treating both the Odyssey ' s wandering theme and the Iliad ' s warfare themes. This is, however, a rough correspondence, the limitations of which should be borne in mind.

Although the definitive story of Aeneas escaping the fallen Troy and finding a new home in Italy, thus eventually becoming the ancestor of the Romans, was codified by Virgil, the myth of Aeneas' post-Troy adventures predates him by centuries. As Greek settlements began to expand starting in the sixth century BC, Greek colonists would often try to connect their new homes, and the native people they found there, to their pre-existing mythology; the Odyssey containing Odysseus's travels in many far away lands already provided such a link. Aeneas's story reflects not just Roman, but rather a combination of various Greek, Etruscan, Latin and Roman elements. Troy provided for a very suitable narrative for the Greek colonists in Magna Graecia and Sicily who wished to link their new homelands with themselves, and the Etruscans, who would have adopted the story of Aeneas in Italy first, and quickly became associated with him.

Greek vases as early as the sixth century BC provide evidence for these early Greek mythological accounts of Aeneas founding a new home in Etruria predating Virgil by a wide margin, and he was known to have been worshipped in Lavinium, the city he founded. The discovery of thirteen large altars in Lavinium indicates early Greek influence, dating to the sixth through fourth century BC. In the following centuries, the Romans would come in contact with Greek colonies, conquer them and subsume the legend of Aeneas into their own mythological narratives. It is most likely that they fully became interested in Greek myths—and their incorporation into their own foundation legends concerning Rome and the Roman people—following the war against King Pyrrhus of Epirus in 280 BC, as Troy offered a way to insert Rome into Greek historical tradition as good as the one it had in the past for Greeks to link themselves to their new lands.