Topic Page: Aeneas (Legendary character)

Transcription

1 Topic Page: Aeneas (Legendary character) Definition: Aeneas, in Greek mythology from The Columbia Encyclopedia (ĭ nē'әs), in Greek mythology, a Trojan, son of Anchises and Aphrodite. After the fall of Troy he escaped, bearing his aged father on his back. He stayed at Carthage with Queen Dido, then went to Italy, where his descendants founded Rome. The deeds of Aeneas are the substance of the great Roman epic, the Aeneid of Vergil Summary Article: AENEAS from Gods, Goddesses, and Mythology Aeneas was a hero of ancient Greek and Roman mythology. A Trojan prince, he was the son of a mortal, Anchises, and the Greek goddess Aphrodite (the Roman Venus). Aeneas was the legendary ancestor of the Roman race. Image from: Landscape Although Troy was in Asia Minor (part of modern Turkey), it was with the Union of Dido and thoroughly Hellenized, or influenced by Greek culture, through extensive Aeneas in National Gallery trade with Greek colonies in the area. Thus, although the mythical Collection Trojans were thought of as non-greek, they intermarried with Greeks, practiced Greek customs, spoke Greek, and worshiped Greek gods, even tracing their royal line to the chief Greek deity, Zeus. The Trojan Aeneas was reckoned to be the offspring of the Greek goddess Aphrodite. The main source of stories about Aeneas is now the Aeneid, by Roman poet Virgil (70 19 BCE), but there were numerous legends about the hero long before in the Greek world. The Romanization of Aeneas Although the Romans mythologized their Trojan origins, they did not invent them. By the sixth century BCE, before Rome emerged as a major power, Greeks already identified peoples they encountered in Italy with descendants of Aeneas and other veterans of the Trojan War. As Roman power expanded, Greeks also made use of the link between Troy and Italy. Thus, for example, the Greek king Pyrrhus of Epirus in the third century BCE declared himself a descendant of Achilles and justified his invasion of Italy as Greek opposition to the "new Troy" at Rome. It is possible that Aeneas was worshiped as a hero or god in Italy as early as the fourth century BCE. By this time he may already have been considered an ancestor of the Roman people in general. Thus Aeneas's remains were supposedly interred at a local shrine, and the half of him that was divine was worshiped by the Romans as Jupiter Indiges ("Jupiter the native"). Partly because of his status as a sort of non-greek Greek, the figure of Aeneas helped Greeks and Romans to articulate their complex relationship. The Romans were greatly influenced by Greece, which they came to rule in the second century BCE. The link between Aeneas and Rome allowed the Roman rule of Greece to be seen as a kind of payback for the supposed destruction of Troy by the Greeks in the distant past.

2 Aeneas, Virgil, and Augustus When in the first century BCE Julius Caesar, and later his nephew Octavian (Augustus), ruled Rome, Aeneas emerged as the quintessential Roman hero, in part because the imperial family, the Julii, claimed descent from Aeneas's son Julus. One of the great Roman statesmen of the reign of Augustus, Gaius Maecenas (c BCE), was an outstanding patron of literature who encouraged the poets Virgil (70 19 BCE), Horace (65 8 BCE), and Propertius (c. 50 c. 15 BCE) to weave patriotic themes into their work. Augustus wanted an epic poem celebrating Rome's empire and his own government, not as propaganda, but as a heartfelt expression of the Roman values that he believed himself to embody. Poets were reluctant to take on this delicate task. Virgil at last agreed to do so, however, and wrote the Aeneid. Rather than listing Augustus's accomplishments, Virgil turned to a mythical past in which the seeds of the Julii and of Rome itself were merged. Characteristics that distinguish Virgil's Aeneas from Homeric heroes selfless devotion to his people, compassion for his opponents, and unquestioning deference to the gods align him with the image that Augustus tried to project. So, for example, Aeneas first appears in the Aeneid not as a triumphant warrior, but as a leader deeply distressed by his people's plight. In another episode, Aeneas rescues a Greek whom Odysseus abandoned to the Cyclopes. Thus Virgil's achievement was to fuse the themes of the two major Greek epics, the Iliad and Odyssey, into a uniquely Roman vision of the past. Aphrodite did not take Anchises as a lover by choice. The match was forced on her by Zeus (the Roman Jupiter) as a punishment: he blamed her for using her power as the goddess of love to make him mate with mortal women. Aphrodite was ashamed of her liaison. She forbade Anchises to speak of it, but she vowed that their son would be a great hero. After Aeneas was born, he was cared for by some nymphs, who raised him until he was old enough to become a warrior. Aeneas came of age on the eve of the Trojan War. Ancient Greeks and Romans believed that this conflict took place in the distant past, and that the cultural and political map of their own world was a consequence of the clash between the Greek "west" and the Trojan "east." According to this view, Aeneas, and other heroes, including Achilles and Odysseus, are transitional figures who stand at the brink of a monumental shift in human affairs. After the Trojan War, no longer would semidivine heroes such as Aeneas and Achilles decide the fate of nations, nor would the world be populated by the monsters and witches encountered by Aeneas and Odysseus. Aeneas, Achilles, and Odysseus Comparisons between the legendary role of Aeneas and the exploits of Achilles and Odysseus provide some useful insights into what the Romans saw as the heroic nature of the founder of their society. Aeneas was a capable warrior, but not the greatest at Troy. He was overshadowed by Achilles, who, like him, was the son of a goddess and a mortal man. Aeneas's hostility toward Priam paralleled that of Achilles toward Agamemnon. Yet in other ways Aeneas was greater than Achilles: he placed his

3 people's welfare before his own interests, while Achilles was willing to let his fellow Greeks perish over a point of pride. Aeneas survived the Trojan War to establish a new royal family; Achilles died at Troy, and in most accounts founded no royal line. Although Odysseus was a great fighter, like Aeneas his reputation rested more on his ability to preserve the cohesion of the community, as, for example, when he faced down the troublemaker Thersites or helped to mediate between Achilles and Agamemnon. Also like Aeneas, Odysseus wandered far after the Trojan War, visited the underworld, and fought again once he reached his destination. Yet whereas Odysseus had to kill many fellow citizens on his return in order to establish his power, Aeneas sacrificed himself for his people, dying either during or shortly after the battles that secured the Trojans' position in Italy. Thus Aeneas occupied the middle ground between the two main Greek heroes. Like Achilles, he came into conflict with authority; like Odysseus, his focus was on the preservation of his people. Whereas Achilles died during the Trojan War, and Odysseus long survived it, Aeneas lived only long enough to see his people safe and their future secure. The Trojan War was generally represented as Greek retaliation for Trojan aggression. With the help of the goddess Aphrodite, Paris, son of the Trojan king Priam, sailed to Greece, abducted Helen, wife of the Spartan king Menelaus, and brought her back to Troy to be his own bride. Aeneas accompanied Paris on this voyage, although he seems not to have been told in advance that their mission was to steal another man's wife. Menelaus was outraged, and with his brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, raised an army to invade Troy and rescue Helen. The Greeks sailed to Troy and besieged the city, which Aeneas helped defend as leader of a group of Trojan allies known as the Dardanians. He was one of Troy's most valiant defenders, although he was forced to flee from the Greek warrior Achilles and escaped death in battle on more than one occasion only through the intervention of the gods. Although Aeneas and Priam were on the same side, there was friction between them. Their mutual dislike was attributed variously to Priam's disregard for Aeneas's contribution to the war effort, Aeneas's recommendation that the Trojans make a truce with the Greeks, and the historic rivalry between their two branches of the Trojan royal family. In any case, when the Greeks at last captured Troy, Aeneas, unlike most Trojan warriors, either escaped or was allowed to leave. The hero, with his aged father Anchises on his shoulders and his young son Ascanius (also called Julus) at his side, led a band of survivors from the ruined city; amid the confusion, however, he lost his Trojan wife, Creusa. Mediterranean wanderings The fugitive Trojans then wandered for years in search of a new home. As during the war, they were aided by Aphrodite and opposed by Hera (the Roman Juno), the wife of Zeus, who bore a grudge against Troy both because of her attachment to the Greeks and because of wrongs supposedly done to her by members of the Trojan royal family. During these wanderings the Trojans suffered and some even died as a result of storms and sickness, failed in a number of attempts to found a new city, and encountered other survivors of the Trojan War, all of whom were seemingly unable to escape from its aftermath. Local shrines and myths commemorating various supposed stopping points in the Trojans' wanderings are found throughout the Mediterranean region. According to the stories, the Trojans first tried to found a new city, called Aenea, in Thrace, but were warned off by dreadful portents. Setting sail again, they put

4 in at the island of Delos; there they were told by the oracle of Apollo that they should proceed to their "first mother." Anchises concluded that this must mean the island of Crete, original home of one branch of the Trojan royal family. Proceeding there, the Trojans attempted to found a city called Pergamea, one of the names for old Troy. However, when the Trojans were afflicted by a plague, they realized that "first mother" must refer to a different branch of the royal family that had originated in Italy. The Flight from Troy by Gian Lorenzo Bernini ( ) depicts Aeneas leaving the ruined city with his father, Anchises, on his shoulders. Proceeding west, the Trojans stopped at the islands of the Harpies, where they encountered the same hideous flying creatures that had plagued Jason and the Argonauts. Sailing on, they put in at Actium on the west coast of Greece, where they held games in honor of Apollo. The next leg of their journey took them to Buthrotum in northwest Greece, where they met the seer Helenus, Priam's sole surviving son. Helenus provided Aeneas with information about the remainder of his journey. Sailing on to Sicily, the Trojans outwitted the Cyclopes and avoided the monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis that had caused problems for Odysseus. They next stopped at Drepanum, where Anchises died, apparently of

5 old age. As they sailed on to mainland Italy, the goddess Juno sent a storm that wrecked many Trojan ships and drove the rest across the Mediterranean to Carthage on the coast of modern Tunisia. In North Africa the Trojans were invited to join a colony of Phoenicians ruled by queen Dido. Aeneas fell in love with Dido, but the gods told him that the destiny of his people was to merge not with the Phoenicians but with Italians. So Aeneas reluctantly sailed away. He snuck away in the dead of night; when Dido found out that he had gone, she angrily swore that there would be unending conflict between the Carthaginians and the future Romans, and then killed herself. The Trojans sailed back to Italy. Returning first to Sicily, they held funeral games for Anchises. According to another tradition, Anchises was buried on Mount Anchisia in Arcadia near a sanctuary of Aphrodite. After the games the Trojan women, tired of wandering, set fire to the ships, but Aeneas prayed to Zeus, who sent rain so that only four of the vessels were destroyed. Proceeding to Cumae (near modern Naples) on the Italian mainland, Aeneas consulted the Sibyl, a prophetess who conducted him to the underworld, having first instructed him to fetch a golden bough from a sacred forest. In the underworld Aeneas encountered the ghosts of his former allies and enemies, as well as the shade of his father, who instructed him about the future and showed him famous Romans to come. Guided by Anchises' instructions and by divine portents, the Trojans pressed on until they found the mouth of the Tiber River. Approaching journey's end Although they had reached their promised land, the Trojans' ordeals were not over. Aeneas attempted to form a pact with the inhabitants of the Tiber region, the Latins, whose king Latinus was himself of Greek descent. Latinus at first agreed to the alliance, and promised his daughter Lavinia to Aeneas. However, she was already pledged to Turnus, prince of the Rutulians, and he, goaded by Juno, threatened war. Aeneas then found an ally in Evander, king of another Italian colony of Greeks Arcadians who had settled near the future site of Rome.

6 This oil painting by Italian artist Pietro da Cortona ( ) is entitled Aeneas with King Evander and Pallas. War broke out. On one side Turnus led a coalition of Latins, Rutulians, and Etruscans under the tyrant Mezentius. Against them were Aeneas's Trojans and their allies, including Evander's Arcadians, and another group of Etruscans under King Tarchon. Many on both sides died, including Evander's son Pallas and the brave young Trojans Nisus and Euryalus, as well as Mezentius and Camilla, a female warrior who fought for the Latins. In the course of the battle, Turnus tried to set fire to the Greek ships. However, Juno, upset because the ships were made of wood from her forests, appealed to Jupiter, who decreed that the ships be transformed into sea nymphs. The death of a hero Incensed by the death of Pallas, Aeneas killed Turnus in battle. With their champion dead, the Latin coalition sued for peace. Juno at last accepted the Trojans' presence along the Tiber, her only remaining condition being that they should no longer bear the name of the city she despised. Aeneas married Lavinia, who had been betrothed to Turnus. In some accounts she was the mother of Julus; she was perhaps also the mother of Aeneas's daughter Ilia. Aeneas proceeded to rule a Trojan-Italian people from a new city named Lavinium, near the future site of Rome (which was established later by Aeneas's descendants Romulus and Remus). Aeneas died only three years after arriving in Italy. In some accounts, he died in battle; in others, he simply vanished after his victory. After his death, Aphrodite appealed successfully to the other gods to make her son immortal like other heroes, such as Heracles. See also: ACHILLES; AGAMEMNON; APHRODITE; CYCLOPES; HELEN; HERA; HERACLES; JASON; JUNO; JUPITER; MENELAUS; ODYSSEUS; PARIS; PRIAM; ROMULUS AND REMUS; VENUS; ZEUS.

7 Furt her reading Homer, and Robert Fagles, trans. The Odyssey. New York: Penguin, Virgil, and Robert Fagles, trans. The Aeneid. New York: Penguin, " JIM MARKS Copyright 2012 Marshall Cavendish Corporation

8 APA Marks, J., & MARKS, J. (2012). Aeneas. In Gods, goddesses, and mythology. Tarrytown, NY: Marshall Cavendish Reference. Retrieved from Chicago Marks, Jim, and JIM MARKS. "Aeneas." In Gods, Goddesses, and Mythology. Marshall Cavendish Reference, Harvard Marks, J. and MARKS, J. (2012). Aeneas. In Gods, goddesses, and mythology. [Online]. Tarrytown: Marshall Cavendish Reference. Available from: [Accessed 29 April 2018]. MLA Marks, Jim, and JIM MARKS. "Aeneas." Gods, Goddesses, and Mythology, Marshall Cavendish Reference, 1st edition, Credo Reference,. Accessed 29 Apr