- The Birth of Aeneas
- Dardanus
- Aeneas Present at the Abduction of Helen?
- Aeneas in the Battles at Troy
- Pius Aeneas
- Escape from Troy and the Question of Treachery
- Wanderings
- Carthage
- Aeneas, the Alban Kings and the Twins: a Problem of Chronology
The Birth of Aeneas:
For the birth of Aeneas See The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (5.19 6-201) and Hesiod's Theogony (1008-1009). In the Hymn to Aphrodite, the Goddess proclaims that Aeneas, the son she has conceived by the mortal Anchises, will come to rule the Trojans, as will the generations upon generations that succeed him. In the Theogony the birth of Aeneas is said to be a result of the sexual union of Anchises and Aphrodite "on the peaks of windy Ida." This passage is followed directly by mention of the birth of three sons of Circe by Odysseus, one of whom named Latinus, who will rule over the "famous Tyrsenians." In this account, then, it is Odysseus, not Aeneas, with whom an early Greek presence in Italy is associated. The overlapping of the roles of Aeneas and Odysseus in the Italian foundation stories is a regular feature in the legends, and one that Vergil makes rich use of.
In the Iliad on the battlefield at Troy Aeneas recounts his birth and ancestry to his opponent Achilles (Il. 20.209ff.). Here we learn that Aeneas descends from immortal stock on both his mother's and his father's side. His mother is Aphrodite and his father, Anchises, can trace his lineage back to Dardanus, the son of Zeus and legendary founder of the Trojan race.
Dardanus:
In the Iliad (20.209ff.) Aeneas traces his lineage to Zeus through Dardanus, the legendary founder of Troy. Aside from this, little survives of the legend of Dardanus. From fragments of Hesiod's Ehoiai (fr. 177 West) we learn that Dardanus is the offspring of the union of Zeus and Electra, and from later mythographers we learn that his origins are in Samothrace, from where he migrates to the Troad in the period of the Great Flood. Upon arriving at the Troad he marries into the family of Teucrus and founds the city Dardanie in the hills of mount Ida. It is from Dardanus and Teucrus, then, that the race of Trojans arises.
In the Aeneid (3.162-171, 7.195-207) Vergil innovates on the story of Dardanus' migration to Troy by making his starting place Corythus in Etruria instead of Samothrace. The advantage of the innovation for Vergil is that it places the ancient origins of Rome squarely in Italy and removes from the legend of Rome's origins a fundamental association with the 'barbarians' of the East that the legend of Dardanus of Samothrace would have conferred. Furthermore, with Dardanus reinvented as an Etrurian, Aeneas' arrival to Italy can then be represented as a return to his ancestral homeland.
Aeneas Present at the Abduction of Helen?
In Proclus' summary of the Kypria Aphrodite tells Paris to bring Aeneas with him on the ill- fated trip to Sparta. In Attic red-figure vase painting of the fifth century B.C. There are representations of the scene of the abduction of Helen at which Aeneas is present. Information on the following vases is available:Aeneas in the Battles at Troy:
A number of the characteristic traits of Aeneas that are thematized in the Aeneid can be found in the description in the Iliad of Aeneas on the battlefield at Troy. His general valor and prominence among the Trojan fighters is attested to at
It is, however, the defeats Aeneas suffers at the hands of Diomedes at
Likewise in the encounter with Achilles in Iliad 20, Poseidon comes to the rescue of Aeneas, saving him from death at the hands of Achilles and preserving him for a future rule over the Trojans following the war at Troy. For this is the fate that Zeus has in store for Aeneas and his progeny. Zeus has selected Aeneas for this honor because in him lies the hope of the future of the line of Dardanus, Zeus' cherished son.
Aeneas' survival of the war, then, seems not so much a function of his
excellence as a warrior, but is due
rather to his being a particular favorite of the gods. This
characteristic of his owes in part to the fact that he
descends from Aphrodite on one side and on the other Zeus (through his
relation to Dardanus), but also in
part to his special quality of piety attested to by Poseidon at
Pius Aeneas
One of the outstanding characteristics with which Aeneas is endowed in
the Iliad is a close
relation with the gods. This is shown on a number of levels.
Genealogically, Aeneas can trace his lineage
back to divine origins on the side of both his mother and his father,
which he does at
The religious piety that Aeneas that is attributed to Aeneas by Poseidon in the Iliad becomes one of the defining characteristics of the hero of the Aeneid. In the proem of the Aeneid Aeneas is described as insignem pietate (Aeneid 1.10), and at Aeneid 1.378 Aeneas identifies himself to the Carthaginian queen with the famous declaration, "sum pius Aeneas." To what extent the piety of Aeneas as it is thematized in the Aeneid draws from a tradition of religiosity connected with Aeneid in the Iliad, or to what extent the amplified piety of the Vergilian Aeneas is a creation of Vergil as the poet responds to political contingencies of Augustan Rome is still a matter for scholarly debate, a debate that will not be resolved here.
It is possible, however, to briefly review a selection of various sources that may have influenced or informed Vergil's selection of pietas as an emblem for the hero of his epic. It is often supposed that the popular tableaux depicting Aeneas departing from Troy with little Ascanius in tow, carrying the Trojan sacra and penates in his arms and bearing his father Anchises on his shoulders is the imagistic equivalent of the verbal epithet pius. The scene is described in the Aeneid at 2.721 and is conspicuously recalled at the conclusion of book 2. At 4.597-600 Dido derides Aeneas' fides, a word that is related though not identical to pietas, and its ostentatious and ingenuous display in the picture of Aeneas described above. If this scene is equivalent to the pietas of Aeneas then the legend of "pius Aeneas" is old.
The scene is depicted on the Tabula Iliaca Capitolina, a carved relief found at Bovillae that dates to the Augustan period. On the Tabula Iliaca a caption indicated that the image on the carving accords to the Iliou Persis of Steisichorus, a Greek poet of the sixth century B.C. whose work has since been lost. The fidelity of the representation of Steisichorus poem in the iconography of the carving has been called into question, but it is at least possible that what lies behind the Tabubla Iliaca is an early literary account of the scene of the Departure from Troy.
The scene appears in the artistic record frequently in the sixth century on a number of Athenian black and red figure pots (e.g. B oston 59.178), and the fact that these vases have been found in large numbers is Etruria indicates an early Italian interest in the Aeneas legend. Theories have been advanced in favor of an Etrurian source for the Roman adoption the Trojan foundation legend, and the popularity of this particular image on the Etrurian pots suggest that the piety of Aeneas may have been associate with this legend and may even have constituted one of the criteria for its selection. On the other hand, scholars have argued that it is not Aeneas' piety that is at issue in the scenes on the pots, but the function of Aeneas as a founder of cities: a founder of a city would bring with him the ancestral gods of his old home, and accordingly it is Aeneas transporting the Penates out of Troy that is essential to the images, not the piety associated by some with the tableaux as a whole. This is in fact confirmed by a fifth-century B.C. coin from Aeneia , near Chalchidice, depicting its eponymous founder in the traditional scene with Anchises and the penates.
Aside from the possible exception of Steisichorus, the literary record does not associate Aeneas with the quality of piety until the third century B.C. In Xenophon's Cygnegeticus (1.1 5) Aeneas' piety is directly connected with his rescuing his ancestral gods and his father from Troy. But the authenticity of the attribution of this text to Xenophon is often called into question, and some would like to move its date of composition to the first or second c. A.D. If the text does date from the beginning of the third c. B.C. it is not clear that it represents an independent Greek tradition of an Aeneas marked by piety, but may be responding to early developments of the Aeneas legend in Rome, whose power in Italy in the third century is on the rise and beginning to attract the attention of Greek mythographers in Magna Graeca. Other texts from the third century B.C. containing references to Aeneas piety are Apollodorus' Biblioteca (in the Vatican Epitome 5.21.3) and Lycophron's Alexandria (1270). But as is the case with Xenophon, neither of these need be associated with a legend independent of ones being promulgated at Rome, and in the case of Apollodorus, the authenticity of the text is in question.
The lack of conclusive evidence for an early tradition of piety as the defining characteristic of Aeneas has led some scholars to conclude that this aspect of the Aeneas legend is a direct result of Augustus' efforts to create a public image of himself as a pious ruler. This desire is reflected in the golden shield of Augustus dedicated at the Curia Iulia in 27 B.C. on which are inscribed the words virtus, clementia, iustitia, and pietas. And attitudes of piety are intimately connected with the cult of Divus Augustus, by which Octavian emphasized his connection with Julius Caesar and the gens Iulia, whose legendary progenitor is Aeneas.
Escape from Troy and the Question of Treachery:
According to legends that begin to appear in the Greek historians of the third c. B.C., The piety (eu)se/beia
The special favor Aeneas enjoys at the hands of his captors is sometimes
in the legends credited not to his
piety but to an act of treason by which he betrayed Priam and the Trojans
to the Greeks. Evidence to
support the presence of hostilities between Aeneas and Priam is available
already in Homer's
Iliad. At Iliad
13.459-61 Aeneas is pictured sulking at the rear of an assembly
because, although he is noble, Priam
extends to him no rank of honor; and again at
The first direct mention of Aeneas' betrayal of the Trojans is attributed to the fourth c. B.C. historian Menecrates of Xanthos in the Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1.48). The story is that Aeneas goes over to the Greeks who are mourning the death of Achilles and betrays Priam and the Trojans on account of a grudge he holds against Priam's son Alexander. Other references to this legend are scarce, but there are indications that is was well known by the time of the composition of the Aeneid. In the Origo Gentis Romanae (9.2) it is recorded that the consul of 102 B.C. Lutatius Catulus in a historical treatise made reference to Aeneas' betrayal of the Trojans. A fragment in the Naevius' Bellum Punicum points to negotiations Aeneas underwent to secure his safe departure from the city ("Aenea quo pacto Troiam urbem linquerit" Fr. 23). And Seneca (De Beneficiis 6.36.1) is clearly aware of the legend when he asks, "Quis pium dicit Aenean, si patriam capi uolouerit, ut captiuitate patrem eripiat?" The question Seneca asks is interesting in that it pits against one-another two contradictory legends of Aeneas, that of his piety symbolized by his rescuing Anchises from Troy, and that of his treachery in betraying the Trojans to the Greeks.
Finally, in the fictional journals of Dares the Phrygian and Dictys of Crete, the apocryphal eye-witness accounts of the Trojan war that appear in Latin in the fourth c. A.D., it is recorded that Aeneas betrayed the Trojans with another of his countrymen Antenor. Antenor has an independent tradition of treachery that appears for the first in the mid third c. B.C. in the Lycophron's Alexandria, and that is known by the historian Sisenna in the first half of the first c. B.C. (cf. Servius in Aeneida 1.242). The story as it is told by Lycophron is that Antenor was the one to open the hatch on the Trojan Horse, freeing the Greeks inside to wreak havoc within the walls of Troy. It is certain that Vergil was aware of the legends of the treachery of both Aeneas and Antenor, a fact that should be taken into account when reading Aeneid 1.242-53 where Venus appeals to Jupiter for the safe arrival of Aeneas at Italy, and uses Aeneas' forerunner Antenor as an exemplum in support of her plea. One wonders, given the negative reminiscences a direct comparison of Antenor and Aeneas occasions, how perspicuous is Venus' rhetorical strategy.
The treachery of Aeneas, though scintillating, is not by any means the only legend of Aeneas departure from Troy. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1.46-48) the most trustworthy account is that of Hellanikos (fifth c. B.C.), who has Aeneas leave the in the confusion of the sack, and lead a band of refugees to the hills of Mount Ida, an account that agrees in many ways with the story as its presented in book 2 of the Aeneid. Other variants have Aeneas escape after the incident with Laokoon and the serpent; in one account Aeneas is taken from Troy on the ship of Neoptolemus,and on still another he joins forces with Odysseus and the two of them set off to the East to found Rome.
Carthage:
Did Vergil have a model for the Carthaginian excursus? It appears that such a model may have been available in Naevius' Bellum Punicum, a text that survives only in fragments preserved for the most part in the commentaries on the Aeneid by Servius and Macrobius.Two fragments are of special importance. The first is to be found in Servius' commentary (in Aeneida 4.9: "cuius filiae fuerint Anna et Dido, Naevius dicit." The quotation from Naevius clearly establishes that Dido received at least brief treatment in the Bellum Punicum, but the role she plays in Naevius' epic, and whether she had any interaction with Aeneas is not at all clear.
The second fragment is potentially more enlightening: "blande et docte percontat, Aenea quo pacto / Troiam urbem liquerit" (frg. 23). What are clearly missing from the description are identifications of the speaker, the addressee and where this interview takes place. It is possible that the fragment describes an interview by Dido of Aeneas in Carthage, in which case it would provide a model for Aeneid 1.750-756 in particular, and for Vergil's Carthaginian excursus in general. To argue in favor of this connection, critics have noted that, in Plautus, blande is often used to describe women, and that Vergil at Aeneid 1.670-671 mentions the blandae voces of Dido. Another critic warns that apparent verbal echoes between Vergil and Naevius should be treated with caution.
If the fragment does describe a meeting between Aeneas and Dido in Carthage, it remains to be said what role this scene might have played in the overall scheme of the Bellum Punicum. What we know of the epic is that its main topic is the historical First Punic War (so much can be gleaned from the title), and that at some point Aeneas' departure from Troy, voyage to Italy and founding of Rome are told by way of providing legendary background to the struggle between Carthage and Rome. Most reconstructions of the Bellum Punicum assume that Naevius also introduced a legendary account of the founding of Carthage, and an early encounter between Aeneas and Dido that went bad, and so provided a mythological aition for the historical hostilities between Carthage and Rome. Thus the ominous consequence of a visit to Carthage by the Trojan founder of Rome would have been understood by Vergil's contemporary readers already in book one. Indeed Vergil makes this consequence explicit near the end of his Carthaginian excursus at Aeneid 4.615-629.
While the question of the presence of an Carthaginian excursus in Naevius can not be fully resolved, a quote from Varro in Servius makes it fairly certain that a story of a love affair between Aeneas and Anna was current before the composition of the Aeneid. Servius in Aeneida 4.682 writes: "Varro ait non Didonem, sed Annam amore Aeneae impulsam se super rogum interemisse," and again at in Aeneida 5.4: "Varronem dicere, Aeneam ab Anna amatum."
This implies that there were legends of Aeneas' stay at Carthage that pre-dated the Aeneid, but that the legend had not attained a final form and was subject to variation and innovation. The topic of Vergil's love affair in Carthage was under debate in Rome at the time of the composition of the Aeneid, when the rhetor L. Ateius composed an essay entitled "An Didun Amaverit Aeneas."
[The preceding is a summary of Michael Widowsky, Vergil and Early Latin Poetry, Hermes Einzelschrift 24, (Weisbaden 1972), pp. 29-34.]
Wanderings
The Tabula Iliaca Capitolina, a carved relief from the Augustan period, depicts Aeneas climbing on board a ship after the sack of Troy. On the Tabula Iliaca it is inscribed that the image accords to the poem of the sixth c. B.C. by Steisichorus entitled Iliou Persis. Above the head of Aeneas are inscribed the famous words EIS THN HESPERIAM (to the west? to Hesperia?). If the attribution to Steisichorus is trustworthy, which many scholars seriously doubt, then the carving attests to an early Greek legend of the nautical voyage of Aeneas to the west from Troy.
The legend of the Wanderings of Aeneas were to develop considerably the sixth c. B.C. to the time of the composition of the Aeneid, by which time the legend had attained a loosely canonical form, as is shown by the close similarities between Vergil's account and the descriptions of Aeneas' voyages in Naevius' Bellum Punicum (attested by Servius and Macrobius; see Wigodski, Vergil and Early Latin Poetry, Hermes Einzelschrift 1972 pp. 22-23), and in the Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1.49-53 and 55-65). The forces that inform the legend as Vergil receives it are various and are best dealt with in connection the commentary on book three of the Aeneid
Aeneas, the Alban Kings, and the Twins: A Problem of Chronology
The three-hundred-and-thirty-three year period that Vergil figures between the arrival of Aeneas to Italy and Romulus' founding of Rome is the result of a tradition of grappling with a basic problem in chronology of a legend that attributes to Aeneas the Origins of Rome. The problem stems from the incongruity of the date of the end of the Trojan war with that of the founding of Rome, an inconsistency that would make it impossible have a refugee from Troy found Rome. This problem is not addressed in the early Greek accounts that have Rome founded by Aeneas, Odysseus. These accounts take little notice of the native legends of Rome that would have made the problem of date inescapable, but develop out of a desire of Greeks in Magna Graeca to comprehend the legendary history of the Italy in relation to the Greek mythology that is familiar to them. One of the most often cited of these Greek stories is that of Hellanikos (fifth c. B.C.) preserved in the Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1.72.2). The story has Odysseus and Aeneas found Rome, which they name after one of the Trojan women, Rhome. How the two notorious enemies reconcile their differences is not stated in the fragment that survives.In the end of the fourth century Rome begins to assert her dominance in Italy, and the rise in power gains the attention of the Greek world. A result of this is that the Greek historians and mythographers begin to take account of local traditions at Rome in formulating accounts of her origins. In the third century the Sicilian historian Timaeus, the first whose fragments betray an intimate acquaintance with the customs at Rome, places the date for the foundation of the city at 814/813 B.C. (Jacoby, FGH 566 F 60). In another fragment Timaeus places the Trojan war at the beginning of the twelfth c. B.C., thus acknowledging at least implicitly a gap of around three-hundred years that must be accounted for by those who would have Aeneas or any other veteran of the Trojan war responsible for the founding of Rome. The gap is explicitly recognized by Fabius Pictor, the third c. B.C. Roman Historian, who set the date for the foundation of Rome by Romulus at 748/47, a date "much later" than Aeneas' arrival to Italy. The fragmentary quality of Fabius' surviving work makes it impossible to determine how much of the account of the period that intervenes between Aeneas and the twins that Vergil presents in the Aeneid is already articulated in Fabius. However, The names of two of the Alban kings, Numitor and Amulius, are preserved in one of the fragments (fr. 5ab; see N. Horsfall, Roman myth and Mythography 1987, 22 n. 29), and this at least suggests that as early as the third c. B.C. the legend of the Alban kings as the intervening stage between Aeneas and Romulus and Remus had begun to develop. The gap is acknowledged by Cato, who places the founding of Rome 432 after the Trojan War (Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1.73.4), and included the account of Alban kings, as does Dionysius of Halicarnassus in his prose history of Rome composed contemporarily with the Aeneid.
It should be noted, that the legend of Aeneas in Italy was flexible, and it was by no means mandatory to include the Alban kings or give any attention at all to the chronological problems of a Trojan foundation of Rome. Striking evidence of this is that Naevius and Ennius make Romulus a grandson of Aeneas, and thus transport the founding of Rome back into the eleventh c. B.C. (Servius Danielis in Aeneida 1.273).
(12/17/95)