Written during the final decades of the first century BCE, Virgil's Aeneid is often celebrated as the masterpiece of Latin epic poetry. For centuries, it served as one of the principal narratives through which Romans understood their origins, justified their political institutions, and imagined their collective destiny. The Aeneid did not merely recount the journey of the Trojan hero Aeneas from the ruins of Troy to Italy. It offered Rome a coherent narrative that linked the

Best known as the birthplace of Herodotus, Halicarnassus also produced, nearly five centuries later, another historian whose contribution to classical scholarship has long remained overshadowed by that of his illustrious predecessor. Yet if Herodotus sought to explain the emergence and conduct of imperial power, Dionysius of Halicarnassus sought to answer a different question: why had Rome become the rightful ruler of the Mediterranean? This distinction is fundamental. Dionys