The Myth of Aeneas

Aeneas was a Trojan hero of Greek mythology, a princely son of the mortal Aghisis and the goddess Aphrodite. In addition, Aeneas was the legendary progenitor of the Roman race. Although Troy was located in Asia Minor, it was fully influenced by Greece, the Greek culture, as it was an old trading colony of the Greeks in the area.

So even though the Trojans were not considered Greek by many, they nevertheless married Greeks, had Greek customs and manners, spoke Greek, worshiped the same gods, and even their royal line descended from the king of the gods, Zeus.

Aeneas was said to be the son of the goddess Aphrodite. The main source of the Aeneas stories is the Aeneid, written by the Roman poet Virgil, but there were many other earlier legends in the Greek world.

Aphrodite did not choose Aghisis as a lover. The “consulship” was arranged by Zeus as a punishment for accusing her of using her power over him to fall in love with mortal women. Aphrodite was ashamed of this union. He forbade Aghisis to speak of it, but vowed that their son would become a great hero. After Aeneas was born, he was cared for by nymphs, who raised him until he was old enough to become a warrior.

Aeneas came of age at the start of the Trojan War. There is the view that Aeneas like other heroes, including Achilles and Odysseus, are transitional figures standing on the brink of a change in the culture of the people. After the Trojan War, demigods like Aeneas and Achilles would cease to influence the destinies of nations, but the world would also no longer be “inhabited” by the supernatural monsters and witches that Aeneas and Odysseus encountered on their travels.

When the Achaeans besieged Troy, Aeneas helped defend the city as the leader of a group of Trojan allies called the Dardanians. He was one of the bravest defenders of Troy, although he was forced to flee by the supreme Greek warrior, Achilles, when on more than one occasion he escaped death by the intervention of the gods. Although Aeneas and Priam were on the same side , there was friction between them. The antipathy between them is due to the proposal made by Aeneas, that the Trojans capitulate with the Achaeans.

In any case when the Achaeans invaded Troy Aeneas, unlike other Trojan warriors, either escaped or was allowed to escape. The hero taking his aged father on his shoulders, and his young son Ascanius by the hand, led a group of survivors away from the destroyed city. However, in the confusion he lost his wife, Creusa.

Aeneas wandering in the Mediterranean

The Trojan fugitives wandered for years in search of a new homeland. As during the Trojan war, the goddess Aphrodite helped them, while instead the goddess Hera continued the war against the Trojans. During these voyages the Trojans suffered, some died, due to storms and hardships, while they failed several times to found a new city. They also met other survivors from Troy, who, however, could not escape her tragic fate.

According to the stories, the Trojans first tried to found the city of Aeneas in Thrace, but were prevented from doing so by terrifying omens. When they set sail again they reached the island of Delos. There the oracle of Apollo advised them to find their “first Mother”.

Aghisis concluded that he probably meant the island of Crete, the original homeland of the royal line of the Trojans. When they got there, the Trojans tried to found a city called Pergamum as Troy was called in the past. However, when the Trojans were hit by a plague, they realized that it was probably the first homeland of another part of the royal family, which came from Italy.

Traveling west, the Trojans stopped at the islands where they encountered the Harpies, the fearsome female monsters who had fought with Jason and the Argonauts. Continuing their journey, they found themselves at Actium, on the west coast of Greece, where they held athletic contests in honor of Apollo. The next step of their journey brought them to Bouthrotos in northwestern Greece, where they met the seer Helenus, the only living son of Priam.

Helenus gave Aeneas important information for the rest of his journey. Sailing to Sicily, the Trojans tricked the Cyclops and avoided Scylla and Charybdis, who had also caused problems for Odysseus. At the next stop, Drepano, Aghisis died of natural causes. As they sailed to mainland Italy, the goddess Hera sent a terrible storm that sank many of the Trojan ships, while the rest drifted to Carthage, off the coast of modern Tunisia.

In North Africa the Trojans accepted an invitation to join a Phoenician colony, ruled by Queen Dido. Aeneas fell in love with Dido, but the gods informed him that the fate of the Trojans was not to unite with the Phoenicians, but with the Italians. So Aeneas with great reluctance sailed away. He left in the middle of the night, and when Dido found out he swore eternal Carthaginian strife with the future Romans, and then killed himself.

The Trojans reached Italy again. Returning first to Sicily, they held funeral athletics at Aghisis. After the games the Trojans, tired of wandering, set fire to the ships, but Aeneas prayed to Zeus to send rain so that only four ships were burned. Arriving at Kymi (near modern Naples) Aeneas consulted the fortune-teller Sibyl who sent him to the Underworld, after first leading him to fetch a golden branch from a sacred forest. In the Underworld Aeneas faced the ghosts of his former rivals and allies, as well as the shadow of his father, who showed him the glorious future of Rome. Guided by Aghisis and other divine omens, the Trojans persisted until they found the mouth of the Tiber River.

The end of the journey

Although they had reached the “promised” land, the Trojans’ suffering was not over. Aeneas tried to make a treaty with the inhabitants of the Tiber region, the Latins, whose king Latinus was of Greek origin. Latinus initially agreed to an alliance, and promised his daughter Lavinia to Aeneas. But he had earlier ordered her to Turnus, prince of the Rutiles, who, led by Hera, threatened war. Aeneas then found an ally in King Evandros, another Greek colony of Arcadians who had settled near the future site of Rome.

The war broke out. On one side Turnus led an alliance of Latins, Rutiles and Etruscans under the tyrant Mezentius. Against them was Aeneas with the Trojans and their allies, including the Arcadians of Evander and another group of Etruscans with Tarchon as king.

Many were killed on both sides, such as Evander’s son Pallas and the two brave Trojan brothers Nissus and Euryalus. Mezentius and Camilla, a warrior of the Latins, were also killed. During the battles, Tournos tried to set fire to the Greek ships. However, Hera, enraged because the ships were made of sacred wood from her forests, pleaded with Zeus, who transformed the ships into sea nymphs.

The Death of Aeneas

Enraged by the death of Pallas, Aeneas killed Turnus in battle. With their champion warrior dead the Latin alliance broke up and begged for peace. Hera finally accepted the presence of the Trojans on the Tiber. Aeneas married Lavinia, who for some became the mother of Julius.

Perhaps she was also the mother of his daughter Aeneas Ilias. Aeneas ruled over a people mixed with Trojans and Italians and founded a new city, Lavinia, near the future site of Rome, which was later established by Aeneas’ descendants, Romus and Romulus.

Aeneas died just three years after arriving in Italy. Some versions say that he was killed in battle, while others say that he simply disappeared after his victory. After his death, Aphrodite pleaded with the other gods and they made her son immortal, as was done with other heroes like Heracles.

Virgil’s Aeneid

Aeneas has just set sail from Sicily, when Hera catches sight of him, and, at her bidding, bolus, the king of the winds, lets them loose against the Trojan fleet. The ships are scattered, and one goes down before their leader’s eyes. But Neptune comes to the rescue, and orders the winds, the tempest is stilled, and Aeneas, with seven of his ships, reaches a harbour on the coast of Carthage. Venus, his reputed mother, also intercedes for him with Zeus, who reveals to her that he shall reach Latium safely, and reign there three years. His son Iulus, or Ascanius, shall then succeed him, and for three hundred years his race shall rule, until Rome is founded by Romulus.

The object of the poet being to claim for his countrymen a Trojan descent.

Attended by his friend Achates, the hero is exploring the strange coast, when his mother, in the guise of a Tyrian maid, informs him that the inhabitants are a colony from Tyre, and that their queen Dido is founding a new city with the wealth she has brought with her, after escaping from her false brother Pygmalion.

He also learns from her that all his ships, except one, are safe. He and his companion then view the rising city from a hill, from whence they are transported by Venus, in a mist, to the temple of Hera, the doors and walls of which they find sculptured with the incidents of the siege of Troy. While they are studying the several groups, the queen approaches and tells them, that she is not ignorant of woe and compassion.

The strangers are hospitably entertained, and the royal bard sings to them not of heroic deeds, but of the wonders of nature and creation. The queen fancies she is fondling the son of Aeneas, but Venus has substituted Cupid for the boy, and already she is feeling a tender interest in the hero, whom she asks to relate his seven years’ adventures since leaving Troy.
He begins with the later history of the siege and capture of the city, and the stratagem of the Wooden Horse, which Sitton induced the Trojans to bring within the walls.

The priest Laocoon, who would have prevented them, and his sons, were crushed to death by two huge sea serpents and then the structure was dragged through a breach in the fortifications, with nine Greeks concealed within it fully armed. At night their fleet, which had pretended to depart for home, returned, and they emerged from their hiding place. The ghost of Hector warns Aeneas that Troy must fall, and entrusts him with the sacred fire of Vesta to be carried to the new land which he is to colonise. He is aroused from his vision by the war cries of the Greeks, and the clash of arms, and is summoned by a comrade, Panthus, with the despairing words “We have been Trojans, Troy has been, She sat, but sits no more, a queen”.

He assures Helen that resistance is vain, for Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, is approaching like a serpent after casting its skin and old Priam, who totters forth to meet his fate, is slain by him at the altar. Aeneas then tells how his blood was fired to quit Troy’s fall by killing Helen, but that his hand was stayed by Venus, who bade him save his father, and his wife Creusa, and their infant son. Anchises, however, refused to escape until he saw a flame of light playing on the child’s head, accompanied by thunder, and a flashing meteor pointing out their path, which he recognised as signs from heaven. So he is lifted on his son’s shoulders, bearing in his hands the household gods, Iulus walking by his side, and Creusa following behind.

Losing sight of her, they retrace their steps as far as the ruins of Priam’s palace, where her shade bids them not grieve for her death and they make their way, with other fugitives, to Mount Ida. There, during the winter, they build a fleet of galleys, and in the early summer set sail, in ignorance of their destination but relying on the guidance of heaven, to the Land of the West.

Their first resting place was on the coast of Thrace, where, whilst plucking a sapling, Aeneas noticed that the ends dropped blood, and a voice from below warned him that it was the grave of Polydorus, a son of Priam, who had been murdered for the sake of some treasure he had brought there. Next they landed at the isle of Delos and from thence made for Crete. From there they reached the islands of the Harpies monster sisters, half women and half birds one of whom prophesied that before they arrived at the promised Hesperia they would be forced to eat their tables.

Continuing their voyage they came to Actium, where they rested and celebrated games. In Epirus they found Andromache, the widow of Hector, had become the wife of his brother Helenus.
Helenus foretells that their voyage will be long and weary, and that on reaching their destination they will find a white sow with a litter of thirty young ones there they are to build their new town Alba Longa.

The following day they landed under Mount Aetna, and Homer’s story of Polyphemus is introduced. Sailing onwards, Aenea buries his father at Drepanum and from Sicily the winds had driven him to the shores of the Tynan queen’s new colony.

Dido had been an eager listener, and was love-stricken. Her sister encourages the passion and Hera, seeing with satisfaction a chance of preventing the foundation of Rome, persuades Venus to let Carthage be the seat of their joint power. A royal hunt takes place on the morrow, in the midst of which a storm arises;

Aneas and Dido seek shelter in the same retreat, and become man and wife. But Mercury is sent to remind the hero of his high destiny, and he bids his comrades prepare secretly for continuing their tsbj+age to Italy. hido’s passion oft learning his Change of purpose occupies the whole of the fourth book of the poem, the defence of A peas being that he must obey the behest of heaven. Under the pretence of burning his armour as a spell to detain him, she causes a lofty pile to be prepared and, having seen his ships already far away in the offing, she mounts it, and stabs herself with his sword, predicting the fierce wars between Carthage and Rome.

Being overtaken by a storm, Aeneas ran his ships into a sheltered bay under Mount Eryx in Sicily and the next day, being the anniversary of the burial of Anchises, he instituted a solemn sacrifice and funeral games to commemorate it.

Meanwhile Hera sends Iris, in the guise of one of the Trojan matrons, to instigate them to set fire to the ships, which are drawn up on the beach, rather than endure a wandering life any longer. Ascanius gallops down to remonstrate with them, and his father appeals to Zeus, who sends a thunder shower which quenches the flames, and all but four of the galleys escape with little damage. But Aeneas is troubled, and takes counsel from an old sailor, Nautes.

It is then settled that the women, and the old men, and all who are weary of faint hearted, shall be left behind to found a new city and starting with the rest once more, in quest of their western home.
Neptune sends them prosperous gales, but Palinurns, the pilot of the leading ship, falls asleep at his post and slips overboard, near the coast of the Sirens.

Aeneas discovers his loss by the unsteady motion, and, taking the helm himself, steers the fleet into the harbour of Cumx, where Daedalus alighted when he flew from Minos. Having disembarked his crews, Aneas consults the Sibyl who in a paroxysm of inspiration, gives her response, sitting on a tripod, in a cave with a hundred doors, which all fly open when the oracle is uttered. The wanderers shall reach Latium safely, but will wish they had never reached it. The hero is then permitted to visit the Shades below.

He must also take with him, as a gift to Proserpine, a golden bough from the neighbouring forest, which, accompanied by Achates, he goes in quest of and is guided to by two white doves sent by Venus.
They then come in sight of the rivers of hell, Acheron, Cocytus, and Styx, where the surly Charon drives back the spirits whose bodies have not received the rites of burial, and who are condemned to wander on the other side for a hundred years amongst them Aeneas recognises his pilot Palinurus. Charon at first warns them off, but the golden bough acts as a passport, and they enter his ferry. Cerberus is silenced by the Sibyl with a medicated cake, and then she leads Aeneas through the various regions of the world below. First they hear the cries of the infants who have died soon after birth. Next are those who have been unjustly condemned then those who have thrown away their lives. They now approach the victims of love, a passion which the poet describes as excusable in man, but either to be reprobated or pitied in woman. Here the hero encounters Dido. Thence the Sibyl leads him to the field of the heroes,

The poet reserves till the last a touching sketch of the shade of young Marcellus the son of Octavia, the emperor’s sister, who was looked upon as his uncle’s successor, but had lately died. Anchises utters some prophecies as to his son’s fortunes in Italy.
Rejoining his companions, and sailing from Cuma, Aeneas stops at Caieta, to bury his old nurse.

Then they pass the promontory of Circe, where they hear the yells of the unhappy captives who have been changed by the sorceress into the forms of animals and with the morrow’s dawn, the fleet enters the mouth of the Tiber. On reaching Latium they lay the wild fruit they gather on their wheaten cakes, with which they complete their meal, having eaten the fruit first, when Iulus exclaims “We are eating our tables” as the Harpies had predicted.

The king of the land is old Latinus, for whose daughter, Lavinia, Turnus of Ardea, the chief of the Rutuli, is a suitor. Aeneas despatches an embassy to the palace, and Ilioneus, as spokesman, tells their errand. The king has been warned by auguries of the hero’s coming as a bridegroom for his daughter, and sends a chariot of honour to convey him to an interview. Hera’s hatred is stirred once more, and she summonses the fury Alecto from the infernal regions to sow discord between the Latins and the Trojans.

First she maddens the queen, and incites her to call upon the mothers of Latium to rescue her offspring from a foreign marriage. She next rouses the jealousy of Turnus, wha marches at once to expel the intruders, and to demand the princess. Meanwhile, Ascanius kills a tame deer belonging to the ranger of the royal forest, which is a pet of the country folk, whose anger is excited, and they attack the young prince and his party. The Trojans rush from their entrenchments, and the ranger’s son and an old ploughman are slain. Their bodies are carried through the streets as an appeal to the people, and there is a universal cry for war.

Turnus now arrives, and shouts for instant battle, but the old king refuses to fight against destiny, and abdicates. Hera, however, in person, unbars the Temple of Janus, and the Latin clans impetuously arm. The general muster, the details of costume, the devices on the shields, and the description of the chiefs, are quite in the Homeric style, with Latin names substituted for those of Greek descent. The pageant closes with the troop of the Volscian huntress Camilla, who has been exercised from her infancy in the use of the bow, and vowed to maidenhood and Diana.

Disquieted by all these preparations, Aeneas has a vision, in which a figure rises before him, wrapped in a grey mantle, with his brow encircled by reeds he is Tiber who come to remind him of the prophecy of Anchises respecting the white sow, and to tell him of allies within reach a colony of Arcadians under their king Evander. The sow with her thirty young ones is soon found, and Evander, after a long story of his reminiscences, and of the local traditions, enters into a league with the Trojans, and proposes Aeneas to his allies the Etruscans as a heaven sent leader of their joint forces.

He also trusts his young son Pallas with him to learn the art of war, and Aeneas sets out with his new army for the capital of Turnus. At the behest of Venus, Vulcan undertakes to forge the armour and weapons for her son, in the caverns under the Lipari Islands, where the Cyclopes are ever at work.

The scene now changes to Olympus, where Zeus is troubled, as in the Iliad, with the dissensions between his wife and daughter, and swears, with an awful nod, that the Trojans and Rutulians shall fight it out. The contest is renewed the following morning, but succour for the Trojans is at hand. During the night Aeneas is leading the Etruscan ships along the Tyrrhenian coast, with young Pallas by his side, when suddenly his galley is surrounded by the nymphs into which his vessels have been changed, who warn him of his companions’ danger.

At daybreak he enters the Tiber, and raises aloft his shield, which the Trojans recognise with shouts, and Turnus hurries down to oppose the landing of their leader with his reinforcements. The Arcadian horsemen get into confusion on the beach but Pallas rallies them, and has disabled the Rutulian twin brothers, Thymber and Larides, when he encounters Turnus, and, venturing a combat with him, is slain. Aeneas, hearing of the young prince’s death, rushes furiously towards Turnus, but Hera beguiles him into a ship which carries him to Ardea, he turns upon Mezentius, the father of Camilla, and, having wounded him, kills his son. The crippled sire remounts his charger, and desperately hurls his javelins at the Trojan chief, who at last spears his opponent’s horse, which, rolling over, pins his rider to the ground.

Wrapped in a robe embroidered by Dido, with his horse following the bier, and his lance and helmet borne in the procession, the body of Pallas is escorted to Laurentum, his father Evander’s capital, with military honours and there is a truce of twelve days between the armies for the burial of their dead.

The Latins now seek the aid of Diomed, one of the Trojan heroes who has settled in Italy, but he declines to fight against Aeneas, who, while they are debating a compromise, marches on their city. Turnus deputes Camilla, with her Volscian horsemen, to meet the enemy, while he lays an ambuscade in a wooded valley.

She singles out Chlorus, a soldier-priest, whose brilliant accoutrements attract her, and chases him over the field. Next day Turnus announces his intention to meet Aeneas in single combat, the challenge is sent and joyfully accepted. Aeneas declares that, if the victory falls to Turnus, the Trojans will make war no more against Latium and that should he be the conqueror.

The fight becomes general, and Aeneas, while endeavouring unarmed to stay it, is struck by a cowardly arrow. But Venus heals her son’s wound, and he at once seeks out Turnus, who, with a presage of his fate, becomes pale and unnerved and his sister, a demi-goddess and a favourite of Hera, acting as his charioteer, drives him in another direction. Baffled in his search, Aeneas suddenly throws all his forces against the town, and Turnus sees it already in flames.

His courage now returns, and, leaping from his chariot, he makes for the wall where the heroe is leading the attack. The two chiefs advance, and the combat between them commences, first with spears, and next with swords. Now Turnus’s is broken, and he takes to flight pursued by his foe, against whom he hurls a stone which twelve degenerate men could hardly lift but he is unmanned, and the stone failed of the measure of its cast.

Aeneas strikes with all his frame, and pierces him through the thigh he begs his lifeb and the conqueror half relents, until his eye falls upon the belt of Pallas which Turn us had girded in triumph over his armour. And as he spoke his sword he drave, with fierce and heavy blow and kills his foe.
And thus the Aeneid ends.