... Augustus. In writing the Aeneid, Virgil was creating a different sort of heroic figure to those created by the literary writers of the past such as Homer. In his poem, Virgil was essentially trying to make a social hero, who possessed the characteristics of 'pietas' or piety, where his concerns were less to do with his own honour, and instead for his own people in a very selfless manner. In his poem, Virgil presents the destiny of the roman race from the destruction of Troy through until the Augustan period and beyond. Virgil had to create in his hero a prototype of the Roman character, a person who showed by his behaviour the kind of qualities to be the ideal Roman with qualities of leadership and piety, in order to be a sort of model for Augustus and his successors. Virgil may also have been trying to depict as character ...

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