Aeneid, Book 3

The Aeneid, Vergil's epic of the Trojan Aeneas and the origins of Rome, occupied him from about 29 BC until his death in 19 BC, and was published unrevised on Augustus' orders. Books 2 and 3 are a story within the story: at Dido's banquet in Carthage Aeneas tells of the fall of Troy and then, in Book 3, of the seven years of wandering that brought his people to her shores.

The exiles first try to settle in Thrace, until a bleeding myrtle reveals the murdered Polydorus. At Delos Apollo tells them to seek their 'ancient mother'; Anchises takes this to mean Crete, but plague drives them out, and the household gods appear in a dream to name Italy. A storm brings them to the islands of the Harpies, who foul their food and prophesy hunger. They hold games at Actium, then find Hector's widow Andromache at Buthrotum, married to the seer Helenus, who maps out their route and sends them to the Sibyl at Cumae. After a first sight of Italy they pass Etna, rescue Achaemenides, a Greek left behind by Ulysses, and escape the Cyclops Polyphemus. The book ends at Drepanum in Sicily with the death of Anchises.

Book 3 is the Aeneid's Odyssey, a sequence of adventures and prophecies, and it is less often read than the books around it. The episodes are short and varied, the Latin is generally straightforward, and the scene with Andromache is one of the most moving in the poem.