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I sing of arms and the man. Arma virumque cano. I began the Aeneid with these words because I wished to signal what it was: both an epic of war, in the tradition of the Iliad, and an epic of a man's character, in the tradition of the Odyssey. But Aeneas is neither Achilles nor Odysseus. His distinguishing virtue is pietas — devotion to duty, to family, to the gods, to Rome's future. He does not want glory. He wants to fulfil his obligation. Augustus understood why this made him the right hero for the new empire.