This book is an examination of the ideological reception of Virgil at specific moments in the last two millennia. The author focuses on the emperor Augustus in

Virgil became a school author in his own lifetime and the centre of the Western canon for the next 1800 years, exerting a major influence on European literature

Combines material and literary cultural approaches to the study of the reception of Augustus and his age during the reign of the emperor Domitian

Offers a fresh interpretation of Virgil's Aeneid via a detailed study of its child hero, Ascanius, young son of Aeneas.

This is the first comprehensive English langage reference volume on Virgil, a poet whose works and thoughts have been at the center of Western literary, cultura