Abstract
The opening verses of the Aeneid reflect Vergil's interest in numerology, seen foremost in the choice to write twelve books so as to reflect an exact proportionality with the twenty-four-book structure of the Iliad and Odyssey. The number twelve would come to be viewed as canonical by subsequent epic poets. But Vergil's honorific nod to Homer in these verses, announced by the opening phrase Arma virumque, reveals a more complex numerology than has previously been argued and introduces several virtual anagrams designed to summarize the poem's narrative. An important model for such a beginning is the first sentence of Apollonius' epic.