In the Aeneid, Virgil evaluates the new conditions under which Romans live. His epic poem enumerates the most worthwhile features of both republican and imperial Rome and treats the two together as if they were a single, intertwined whole. This unity implies that the glories of one form of government are the glories of the other, an argument that weakened the belief that the empire under Augustus was a new and foreign political entity. Furthermore, through prophecies, Virgil indicates in many ways that the imperial period is destined to be a new golden age for Rome: Only now, during the Augustan Age, can all of the Roman people's noblest aspirations and hopes be fulfilled.
By writing the Aeneid, Virgil hoped to extol the virtues of Augustus in a literary fashion that would last forever. Unlike the Iliad and the Odyssey, which are oral epics, the Aeneid is a literary epic, composed in writing and intended to be read by an audience of literate people who live in a settled, civilized society. All epic poetry has a serious theme narrated on a grand scale and intended to heighten the understanding of human nature and the meaning of life, but in a literary epic, the ideological content is more important than the human story itself. A comparison of the Aeneid and the Iliad, for example, shows that literary epic is more didactic; it subordinates its human characters and their affairs to its philosophical and moral themes.
