Founding of Rome the line of Romans through his son Iulus, the namesake of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. The national epic of mythical Rome, the "Aeneid" of Virgil, tells the story of how Trojan prince Aeneas came to Italy. The "Aeneid" was written under Augustus, who claimed ancestry through Julius Caesar from the hero and his mother Venus. According to the "Aeneid", the survivors from the fallen city of Troy banded together under Aeneas and underwent a series of adventures around the Mediterranean Sea, including a stop at newly founded Carthage under the rule of Queen Dido, eventually reaching the Italian coast. The Trojans
Virgil from which Rome would emerge. The "Aeneid"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s first six books describe the journey of Aeneas from Troy to Rome. Virgil made use of several models in the composition of his epic; Homer, the preeminent author of classical epic, is everywhere present, but Virgil also makes special use of the Latin poet Ennius and the Hellenistic poet Apollonius of Rhodes among the various other writers to which he alludes. Although the "Aeneid" casts itself firmly into the epic mode, it often seeks to expand the genre by including elements of other genres such as tragedy and aetiological poetry. Ancient commentators noted