A deeper understanding of Virgil’s Aeneid can only be achieved through the Iliad and Odyssey as its most important models. As the author shows, Classical views of Homer differ significantly from those prevailing today, and this allows the conception of the Aeneid to be seen in a new light. In the first part of the study, the author analyses the way in which Virgil indirectly characterises the protagonists of his epic (incl. Aeneas, Turnus, Dido) through allusions to the contemporary philosophical and ethical understanding of Homer’s models. In the second part, the author examines how the “poeta doctus ” creatively transforms the Hellenistic critique of Homer in the Aeneid.