Who was the author of the Aeneid, a tribute to Rome and one of the most influential poems in Western civilization?

The author of the Aeneid was Publius Vergilius Maro, better known as Virgil. He was born in 70 BC in Andes, near Mantua in Italy, to good peasant stock. Virgil's rural background was very important to him and formed the basis of much of his work. His father married into a wealthy family which enabled Virgil to get a good education in Rome, where he immersed himself in the study of the great poets of the past.
Virgil lived during a time of great turmoil in Rome. Political and military conflicts of one sort or another were rife. The idyllic countryside which Virgil had known as a boy provided him with a place of retreat during these tempestuous moments in history. They also inspired him to write the Eclogues, a series of poems that explored various aspects of life in the country. The fourth Eclogue was interpreted by successive generations of Christians as prefiguring the birth of Christ, with its reference to the birth of a child who would bring peace to the world. Because of this, Virgil was one of the most deeply venerated pagans during the Middle Ages. It's no accident that Dante chose Virgil as his guide in The Divine Comedy.
Virgil's undoubted skills as a poet soon brought him to the attention of Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome. Augustus was also attracted to Virgil's idealization of traditional Roman values, especially those exemplified by rural dwellers. All of these various elements found ultimate expression in the Aeneid, Virgil's unfinished masterpiece. Part propaganda, part foundation myth, Virgil's magnum opus (greatest work) perfectly encapsulated how Romans felt about themselves——strong, virile, culturally superior, and endowed with a divine mission to found an empire.
In 19 BC, Virgil traveled to Greece with the intention of completing his great epic. Unfortunately, he contracted a fever during the journey and had to head back home. Soon after he arrived at Brundisium (modern day Brindisi) he passed away. It's said that on this deathbed, Virgil requested that the Aeneid be burned as it was unfinished, and he wasn't in any case satisfied with what he'd written. However, Augustus intervened to stop this from happening, and successive generations since have had every reason to be thankful.