Publius Maro Vergilius, now known simply as Virgil, was born in 70 B.C. near Mantua in northern Italy. Virgil lived during the collapse of the Roman Republic and the subsequent rise of the Roman Empire under Octavius Augustus Caesar. Virgil's poem harkens back to an idealized time in the region's history prior to the founding of Rome.
The city of Troy. The Aeneid tells the story of how Troy is destroyed by a Greek army and what happens to the Trojan inhabitants after the city's fall. Virgil's hero, Aeneas, is one of the Trojans who manages to escape. Although Virgil's story is based mainly on legends, the ruins of a city believed to be Troy were discovered in the late 1800s and are still being excavated today. These ruins are located in the northwest corner of modern Turkey (ancient Asia Minor), across the Aegean Sea from Greece. Since the traditional date of the Trojan War is 1184 B.c., it is interesting that one layer of the stacked ruins shows evidence of a war around 1200 B.c.
According to the legends, the Greeks had journeyed to Troy to take hack Helen, the wife of the Greek king Menelaus.
