The Aeneid is like The Odyssey in recounting a series of Mediterranean adventures and an eventual homecoming (Books 1-6). It is like The Iliad in recounting a war to capture a city (Books 7-12). But the home Aeneas sails to is a new one, and his quest is to establish something that had not before existed, rather than to return to something he once knew, as Odysseus does. The Aeneid is therefore a [F]ounding myth, a story about how something got started, and virtually every episode is symbollically charged with the weight of Aeneas' historic destiny. This destiny is what enables Virgil to reshape the character he found in Homer, transforming a warrior hero into a man with a mission that will influence the world for centuries to come.