Aeneas

Aeneas was a Trojan hero, the son of the goddess Aphrodite and the mortal Anchises. In Homer he is one of the best Trojan fighters and is saved by the gods from Achilles; in Virgil’s Aeneid he escapes the burning city and leads the Trojan survivors to Italy, where his descendants found Rome.

The Birth of Aeneas

Hesiod says simply that Aphrodite “was joined in sweet love with the hero Anchises and bore Aeneas on the peaks of Ida” (Theogony 1008–1010), and the Iliad introduces him the same way, as the son whom Aphrodite conceived to Anchises among the spurs of Ida, “a goddess couched with a mortal man” (Iliad 2.819–821). The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (Hymn 5) tells the story in full. Aphrodite had made gods fall in love with mortal women, so Zeus put into her heart a desire for the mortal Anchises, a herdsman watching his cattle on Mount Ida (lines 45–74). She came to him dressed as a young woman and told him she was a Phrygian princess, the daughter of Otreus, whom Hermes had carried off to be his bride (lines 81–142). After they lay together, she revealed herself and told him that he would have a son who would rule among the Trojans, he and his children’s children after him, and that his name would be Aeneas, because of the terrible grief (ainon achos) she felt at lying with a mortal (lines 191–199). Mountain nymphs would raise the boy until boyhood and then bring him to his father (lines 256–275). Aphrodite warned Anchises never to boast of their union, or Zeus would strike him with a thunderbolt (lines 281–290).

Aeneas in Troy

In the Iliad, Aeneas leads the Dardanians (2.819–823) and fights beside Hector. In book 5 Diomedes strikes him with a huge stone; Aphrodite throws her arms around her son to carry him from the battle, and Diomedes wounds her wrist with a spear. Apollo then takes Aeneas to his temple on Pergamos, the citadel of Troy, where Leto and Artemis heal him (5.297–449). In book 13 Aeneas, nursing a grudge against Priam for the little honour he received, is brought back into the fighting by Deiphobus and kills Aphareus and other Greeks (13.459–544).

In book 20 Apollo, in the likeness of Priam’s son Lycaon, urges Aeneas to face Achilles (20.79–111). After the two exchange spears, Poseidon, who normally favours the Greeks, pities him and lifts him out of the fight. He tells the other gods that Aeneas is destined to survive, because the line of Dardanus must not be wiped out, and says that mighty Aeneas shall rule over the Trojans, and his sons’ sons who are born in the days to come (20.293–308). The poet thus already looks to a future for Aeneas beyond the fall of Troy. The lost epics knew other endings: the Little Iliad had Neoptolemus take Aeneas captive and put him on board his ship (fr. 14, quoted by the scholiast on Lycophron 1268). In Quintus of Smyrna the Greek version is already Virgil’s: Aeneas leaves the burning city with his father on his shoulders and his son by the hand, Aphrodite parts the flames before him, and the seer Calchas stops the Greeks from throwing their spears, foretelling that he will found a city by the Tiber (Fall of Troy 13.300–353). Hyginus adds that Anchises boasted of Aphrodite’s love over wine, against her command, and was struck by the thunderbolt of Zeus, though others said he died a natural death (Fabulae 94).

Aeneas in Italy

This future is the subject of Virgil’s Aeneid. In the second book, Aeneas flees the burning city carrying his father Anchises on his back and holding his young son Ascanius by the hand. His wife Creusa is lost in the confusion; her ghost appears to him and tells him that a long exile and a kingdom in Hesperia await him (book 2). After years of failed attempts to settle in other places, Anchises dies in Sicily (book 3). A storm throws the Trojan fleet onto the shore of Carthage, where Queen Dido falls in love with Aeneas; he leaves her at the command of the gods and she kills herself (books 1 and 4).

In book 6 Aeneas travels to the underworld, where his father shows him the future heroes of Rome. In Italy, King Latinus offers Aeneas his daughter Lavinia, but Juno stirs up war between the Trojans and the Italian peoples led by Turnus, to whom Lavinia had been promised (books 7–12). The poem ends with Aeneas killing Turnus in single combat.

Wives and Children

Aeneas’ Trojan wife was Creusa, and his son by her was Ascanius, who is also called Iulus (Aeneid 1.267–268). In Italy he married Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus (Livy 1.1–2). Livy records a doubt about whether the Ascanius who ruled after Aeneas was Creusa’s son or a later son born to Lavinia; the Julian family claimed descent from Iulus (Livy 1.3).

Death and Deification

In Livy’s account Aeneas died in a battle against the Rutulians and their Etruscan ally Mezentius; the Latins won, but it was “the last of his mortal labours.” His tomb lay on the bank of the river Numicius, and he was worshipped there as Jupiter Indiges (Livy 1.2). Ovid turns this into an apotheosis: Venus had the Numicius wash away everything mortal in Aeneas and anointed him with nectar and ambrosia, and the Romans honoured the new god under the name Indiges (Metamorphoses 14.581–608).

Ancestor of the Romans

Roman writers made Aeneas the ancestor of their people through Ascanius, who founded Alba Longa. In the Roman tradition Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were born of the Alban royal line many generations later (Livy 1.3–4).

See Also: Anchises, Aphrodite, Hector, Dido, Remus, Romulus, Zeus, Trojan War, Apollo, Poseidon