Aeneas - mythical hero of Troy
and Rome, son of the goddess Aphrodite and Anchises. Aeneas was a member of the
royal line at Troy
and cousin of Hector.
He played a prominent part in the war to defend his city against the Greeks, being
second only to Hector
in ability. Homer implies that Aeneas did not like his subordinate position, and
from that suggestion arose a later tradition that Aeneas helped to betray Troy
to the Greeks. The more common version, however, made Aeneas the leader of the
Trojan survivors after Troy was taken by the Greeks. In any case, Aeneas survived
the war, and his figure was thus available to compilers of Roman myth. Legend
connected Aeneas, too, with certain places and families, especially in Latium.
As Rome expanded over Italy and the Mediterranean, its patriotic writers began
to construct a mythical tradition that would at once dignify their land with antiquity
and satisfy a latent dislike of Greek cultural superiority. The fact that Aeneas,
as a Trojan, represented an enemy of the Greeks and that tradition left him free
after the war made him peculiarly fit for the part assigned him, i.e., the founding
of Roman greatness. It was Virgil who gave the various strands of legend
related to Aeneas the form they have possessed ever since. The family of Julius
Caesar, and consequently of Virgil's patron Augustus, claimed descent from Aeneas,
whose son Ascanius was also called Iulus. Incorporating these different traditions,
Virgil created his masterpiece, the Aeneid, the Latin epic poem whose hero symbolized
not only the course and aim of Roman history but also the career and policy of
Augustus himself. In the journeying of Aeneas from Troy westward to Sicily, Carthage,
and finally to the mouth of the Tiber in Italy, Virgil portrayed the qualities
of persistence, self-denial, and obedience to the gods that, to the poet, built
Rome. The death of Aeneas is described by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. After
he had fallen in battle against the Rutuli, his body could not be found, and he
was thereafter worshiped as a local god, Juppiter indiges, as Livy reports.