For the poets of the early empire, architecture and architectural imagery was an important medium through which to explore the relationship between political power and poetic art. Virgil and Horace, and their contemporaries and successors, composed literary monuments to stand beside the physical monuments of their patrons. No less than the palaces and temples of the emperors, these literary monuments participated in the formulation and evolution of imperial ideology. Within those poetic monuments, the description of architecture afforded a space in which to explore the relationship between poetry, monumental and pictorial art, and political power. This study is an attempt to elucidate how Virgil and his successors explore the dynamics of this relationship.