Virgil's Aeneid, A Brief History:

29BC - Virgil, a Roman poet who probably didn't deserve any of this, is instructed by Augustus to write an epic glorifying the Romans much in the style of Homer. Homer's great themes being, to whit, a war and then the journey of one man, Virgil includes both. The first words of the Aeneid are: "Arma virumque cano..."

( nobody expects divine intervention... not in the very first scene, anyway! )