Publius Vergilius Maro, known to English-speakers as Virgil (70 B.C.-19 B.C.), is best remembered for his masterpiece, The Aeneid , in which he represented the Emperor Augustus as a descendant of the half-divine Aeneas, a refugee from the fall of Troy and legendary founder of Rome. Virgil claimed on his deathbed that The Aeneid was unfinished and a failure, but it became the national epic of ancient Rome, a monument of Latin literature, and has been regarded as one of the great classics of Western literature ever since. Virgil’s other works include the Eclogues and the Georgics , also regarded as masterpieces.