Virgil has overcome the difficulties and joined the best results of both these imperfect forms. By adopting the legend of Aeneas, which, since the Punic wars, had established itself as one of the firmest national beliefs, [51] he was enabled without sacrificing reality to employ the resources of Homeric art; by tracing directly to that legend the glorious development of Roman life and Roman dominion, he has become the poet of his nation's history, and through it, of the whole ancient world. The elements which enter into the plan of the _Aeneid_ are so numerous as to have caused very different conceptions of its scope and meaning. Some have regarded it as the sequel and counterpart of the _Iliad_, in which Troy triumphs over her ancient foe, and Greece acknowledges the divine Nemesis. That this conception was present to the poet is clear from many passages in which he reminds Greece that she is under Rome's dominion, and contrasts the heroes or achievements of the two nations. [52] But it is by no means sufficient to explain the whole poem, and indeed is in contradiction to its inner spirit. For in the eleventh Aeneid [53] Diomed declares that after Troy was taken he desires to have no more war with the Trojan race; and in harmony with this thought Virgil conceives of the two nations under Rome's supremacy as working together by law, art, and science, to advance the human race. [54] Roman talent has made her own all that Greek genius created, and fate has willed that neither race should be complete without the other. The germs of this fine thought are found in the historian Polybius, who dwelt on the grandeur of such a joint influence, and perhaps through his intercourse with the Scipionic circle, gave the idea currency. It is therefore rather the final reconciliation than the continued antagonism that the _Aeneid_ celebrates, though of course national pride dwells on the striking change of relations that time had brought.