The ancient critics were not in doubt about the purpose of the Aeneid: it was to glorify Rome and Augustus. In the Donatus-Suetonius life we read (21) ‘Last of all he began the Aeneid, a varied and complicated theme, a sort of equivalent of both Homer’s poems; also it was concerned with characters and events which were both Latin and Greek, while in it (and this was his special interest) there would be contained the origin of the city of Rome and of Augustus’ (… in quo, quod maxime studebat, Romanae simul urbis et Augusti origo contineretur). Similarly Tiberius Claudius Donatus says (Prooem. Aen. i): ‘he had to depict Aeneas as a worthy first ancestor of Augustus, in whose honour the poem was written’ (talem enim monstrare Aenean debuit, ut dignus Caesari, in cuius honorem haec scribebantur, parens et auctor generis praeberetur). And again, Servius (in the introductory note to his commentary on the Aeneid): ‘Virgil’s intention is to imitate Homer and to praise Augustus by means of his ancestors’ (intentio Vergilii haec est, Homerum imitari et Augustum laudare a parentibus); and he quotes a magno demissum nomen Iulo (i 288).