Aeneas, the Trojan son of Aphrodite who became Rome's ancestor

Aeneas is a Trojan prince, son of the mortal Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite, one of the best fighters in Troy in the Iliad and the only great Trojan leader the gods promise will survive the war. His fame rests on that second destiny: after the city falls he escapes carrying his old father on his shoulders, and tradition leads him all the way to Italy, where he becomes the ancestor of the Romans. He is the bridge between the Greek Trojan cycle and Rome’s national myth.

A goddess’s son among the Dardanians

Aeneas descends from Dardanus, son of Zeus and founder of the Trojan dynasty, through the junior branch: his great-grandfather Assaracus was the brother of Ilus, ancestor of Priam. He is therefore a cousin of the princes of Troy without belonging to the ruling house.

His birth is told in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. Tired of seeing the goddess of desire make other gods fall for mortal women, Zeus makes her fall for a mortal in turn: the herdsman Anchises on Mount Ida. Aphrodite comes to him disguised as a young girl, sleeps with him, then reveals herself. She announces the birth of a son who will rule the Trojans and forbids Anchises, on pain of Zeus’s thunderbolt, to say who the mother is (53-199). A later tradition says Anchises boasted anyway and was lamed or blinded for it. Hesiod records the same union at the end of the Theogony (1008-1010).

In the Iliad: a hero the gods keep rescuing

Aeneas leads the Dardanians (Iliad 2.819-823) and ranks with Hector among Troy’s finest warriors. Homer also gives him a quiet grievance: he holds back from the fighting because Priam does not honour him as he deserves (13.459-461).

Two episodes define him, and both end with divine intervention. In book 5, Diomedes smashes his hip with a boulder; Aphrodite wraps him in her arms to carry him away, but Diomedes wounds the goddess in the hand and she drops her son. Apollo picks him up, hides him in a cloud and has him healed in his temple on the citadel of Troy (5.297-453).

In book 20, Apollo spurs Aeneas to face Achilles. Before fighting, Aeneas recites his whole lineage from Dardanus to Anchises. Achilles is about to kill him when Poseidon — hostile to Troy though he is — steps in: Aeneas must not die, because Zeus does not want the race of Dardanus to vanish, and “the might of Aeneas shall rule the Trojans, and his children’s children” (20.302-308). The god lifts him through the air and sets him down far from the fighting.

That prophecy matters enormously. It guarantees, already in Homer, that Aeneas’ line will outlive the ruin of Troy. Ancient readers spent centuries asking where, and over which Trojans, it would rule.

Escape from Troy

The poems of the Epic Cycle tell it differently. According to Proclus’ summary of the Sack of Ilion, Aeneas and his people withdraw to Mount Ida as soon as the serpents kill Laocoön, before the wooden horse is even brought in. Other versions have him fight to the end, or negotiate safe passage from the Greeks on account of his piety.

The image that won out, however — already on Athenian vases of the sixth century BC — is of Aeneas carrying Anchises on his back and leading his little son by the hand, while Anchises clutches the sacred objects of the household. Virgil takes it up in book 2 of the Aeneid: on the night of the fire, Aeneas shoulders his father, takes young Iulus by the hand and has his wife Creusa follow behind. She is lost in the confusion; her ghost appears to tell him of his destiny in the West. Andromache, whom he will meet again at Buthrotum, and Hecuba are led away as slaves instead.

From Greek legend to Roman foundation myth

Aeneas’ westward voyage is not a Roman invention. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who compiled the traditions in the first century BC, reports that the Greek historian Hellanicus (fifth century BC) already brought Aeneas to Italy and credited him with founding Rome (Roman Antiquities 1.72). Other writers had him settle in Thrace, Arcadia or Sicily, where several cities claimed him as founder.

Rome fixed and expanded the story. In Livy, Aeneas lands in Latium, marries Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus, founds Lavinium and fights the Rutulian Turnus; his son Ascanius founds Alba Longa, from which Romulus and Remus will descend (1.1-3). Julius Caesar’s family, the gens Iulia, claimed descent from Ascanius under his other name, Iulus — and therefore from Venus, the Roman Aphrodite.

Virgil’s Aeneid (29-19 BC) gave the legend its definitive form: the storm, the tragic love of Dido at Carthage, the descent to the underworld with the Sibyl of Cumae, the war in Latium. The epithet that follows the hero everywhere, pius, says it all: Aeneas is not Homer’s adventurer but the man of duty — to the gods, to his country and to his father.

Versions and sources

• Homer (Iliad 5 and 20) makes Aeneas a leading warrior saved by Aphrodite, Apollo and Poseidon, and foretells his line’s rule.
• The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite tells his conception and predicts his kingship.
• The Sack of Ilion (summarised by Proclus) has him leave Troy before it falls.
• Pausanias (10.26.1) notes that Lesches and the Cypria called his Trojan wife Eurydice rather than Creusa.
• Dionysius of Halicarnassus collects the competing voyages; Livy and Virgil fix the Roman version.

Further reading

For the war he survives, read the full account of the Trojan War and our page on Troy. For his parents and Trojan cousins, see Aphrodite, Priam and Hector. For his Greek opponents in the Iliad, continue with Diomedes and Achilles.