Britannica Sources used in this answer

How did Homer’s Iliad influence the second half of the Aeneid?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Ancient Roman mosaic showing the poet Virgil seated and writing, flanked by the muses Clio and Melpomene, displayed in a decorative border. — Virgil Virgil (centre) holding a scroll with a quotation from the *Aeneid* and flanked by the muses Clio and Melpomene, mosaic, early 3rd century ce; in the Bardo National Museum, Tunis, Tunisia.

Virgil’s Aeneid is deeply indebted to the works of Homer, with the poem's structure divided into two distinct halves that mirror the Greek master's epics.1

While the first six books of the Aeneid are patterned after the Odyssey to recount Aeneas’s arduous travels, the second half—Books VII through XII—is modeled after the Iliad. This latter section focuses on the arrival of the Trojans in Italy and the subsequent war against the local Latins and the Rutuli, led by Turnus.213

Virgil infused this second half with incidents and themes directly inspired by the Iliad, utilizing the narrative of the Trojan War as a framework to depict the conflict in Italy. By adapting these Homeric models, Virgil successfully transformed traditional Greek epic structures into a distinctly Roman national epic that legitimized the origins and destiny of Rome.21