[buwaya]

Too early.

The great Roman historians wrote most usefully of things of their own time - Tacitus, Caesar, etc. Only Livy went back to the origins of Rome, and his work is very unreliable.

[Cronos]

TRue, the Aenied seems very much like the Romans were desperate to show that they were not barbarians at earlier times. Which they were. The GReeks themselves (contrary to the dad in 'My Big Fat GReek Wedding') were themselves barbarians before and even arguably IN the Mycenean age (1500 to 1200 B.C.) when the war against Troy took place. After that, they went into stagnation until the rise of the city states. A 1700 BC date of the Minoan civilisation in Crete still makes it a comparatively infantile civilisation compared to those in the Nile, Euphrates-Tiger and Indus valleys with their early points stretching back to 3100 BC (for the scorpion king) and 4000 B.C. (for the Sumerians in what is now modern day Iraq).

History is fascinating, eh?