Aeneas
The Exile of Troy
ih-NEE-us
Walked out of burning Troy with his father on his back and his gods under his arm, and founded the line that became Rome.
Domains
DutyExileFoundingPiety
Symbols
Household GodsHis Father on His BackGolden Bough
Family
Parents:
The Story
A secondary figure in Homer, a Trojan captain his mother Aphrodite keeps rescuing, and the central one in Virgil, where the Greeks' victory becomes the first chapter of Rome's founding. He escapes the sack carrying Anchises and the household gods, having lost his wife in the smoke.
Virgil's word for him is pius, which means duty rather than devotion, and it costs him everything he might have wanted. He leaves Dido in Carthage because he is told to, and she burns herself on a pyre cursing his descendants, which is one poet's account of why Rome and Carthage could never share a world.
Did You Know?
- Julius Caesar's family claimed descent from him through his son Iulus, which made Venus an ancestor of the emperors and the Aeneid a document with a stake in current politics.
- Virgil died with the poem unfinished and asked for it to be burned. Augustus overruled the will.
- Around sixty lines in the Aeneid stop mid-sentence. They were left as they were.