Sources
As Virgil’s sources for his story and indeed for no small portion of his language may be mentioned preeminently:— Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad; Euripides, “with his droppings of warm tears”; the Greek epic poets, called the cyclic poets, as dealing with the cycle of story revolving around Troy; the Greek freedman and teacher, Livius Andronicus, who translated roughly the Odyssey; Nævius, who wrote on the First Punic War, tracing Carthaginian hostility back to the Æneas visit; and especially Ennius, “father of Latin literature,” who in a great epic traced the history of Rome from Æneas down. Of Virgil’s borrowings it were enough perhaps to say that, like our Shakespeare, he ennobled what he borrowed, wove it into the texture of his song—stamped it Virgilian.