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Biographical reconstruction supposes that Virgil soon became part of the circle of [[Maecenas]], Octavian's capable ''agent d'affaires'' who sought to counter sympathy for Mark Antony among the leading families by rallying Roman literary figures to Octavian's side. It also appears that Virgil gained many connections with other leading literary figures of the time, including [[Horace]] and [[Varius Rufus]] (who later helped finish the ''Aeneid''). After he had completed the ''Bucolics'' (so-called in homage to Greek [[Theocritus]], who had been the first to write short epic poems taking herdsmen's life as their apparent theme — ''bucolic'' in Greek meaning "on care for cattle"), Virgil spent the ensuing years (perhaps 37–29 BCE) on the longer epic called ''Georgics'' (from Greek, "On Working the Earth", because farming is their apparent theme, in the tradition of Greek [[Hesiod]]), which he dedicated to Maecenas (source of the expression ''[[tempus fugit]]'' ["time flies"]).
Virgil and Maecenas took turns reading the ''Georgics'' to Octavian upon his return from defeating Antony and his consort [[Cleopatra]] at the [[Battle of Actium]] in 31 BCE. In 27 BCE the [[Roman Senate]] conferred on Octavian the more than human title [[Augustus]], well suited to Virgil's ambition to write an [[epic poetry|epic]] to challenge Homer, a Roman epic developed from the Caesarist mythology introduced in the ''Bucolics'' and incorporating now the Julian Caesars' family legend that traced their line back to a mythical Trojan prince who escaped the
===Composition of the ''Aeneid'' and death===
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