In Book 1 of Vergil’s Aeneid, Jupiter prophesies (lines 278-79):

His ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono;

imperium sine fine dedi.

On them [i.e, the Romans], I place limits of neither realm nor time;

I have given them empire without end.^[1]

The second line, imperium sine fine dedi, becomes one of the most alluded-to lines in Latin literature.^[2] What follows is just one example.

Vergil’s successor, Ovid, wrote a set of love letters (mostly) from mythological heroines to their love interests. The third poem in the collection is from Briseis to Achilles, where she laments that Achilles doesn’t seem to be more bothered by the fact that Agamemnon took her from Achilles to be his own.^[3] In lines 14-16, she laments:

ei mihi! discedens oscula nulla dedi;

at lacrimas sine fine dedi rupique capillos–

infelix iterum sum mihi visa capi!

Woe is me! When I departed, I gave no kisses;

but I gave tears without end and I tore my hair–

unhappy, I seemed to be taken captive again!^[4]

Where Jupiter claims that he has given the Romans boundless political sovereignty, which they will take mostly through war and conquest, Ovid has Briseis grieve over such war and conquest, which has now made her a slave twice over. And as an additional touch, he calls her infelix, “unhappy” or “unlucky”–the adjective Vergil regularly uses for the tragic and abandoned Queen Dido of Carthage.