The Aeneid of Virgil is one of the greatest works of Classical antiquity. This study by the Virgilian scholar R. Deryck Williams, first published in 1987 and long unavailable, sets the Aeneid in its historical literary background and shows how Virgil related his own world of the newly established Roman Empire to the experience of the past. The poetic qualities of epic are analysed and illustrated by frequent quotations from the Latin, always with prose translations. The book will be appreciated by students and teachers of literature, and by knowledgeable non-academic readers. James Morwood's new Foreword for this edition contains an appreciation of R.D. Williams' work and provides a select bibliography of later writing on the subject.