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INTRODUCTION
The Aeneas Tradition
When the poet Propertius heard the anticipatory excitement about
Virgil’s forthcoming Aeneid, he hailed the news: ‘something is coming
to birth greater even than the Iliad’ (2.34.66). What sort of poem
would Romans expect when they heard that Virgil was composing an
epic about Aeneas? (Aeneid, like the title Odyssey, announces itself as a
poem about a hero—the man whom Virgil himself introduces in his
first line ‘Arms and the man I sing . . .’)
Unless they were educated, Romans would have had little reason to
know the name of Aeneas. Certainly they might have handled the silver
denarii of 47 or 46 bc on which Caesar displayed Venus Genetrix
(founder of the Julian clan) on the obverse with Aeneas on the reverse,
carrying his father Anchises and the sacred image of Pallas Athena
(known as the ‘Palladium’) from Troy; again, primitive terracottas of
Aeneas carrying his father have been found in Etruria, as near to Rome
as Veii. But it would be from literature, not religious cult, that they
would know of this hero. Fragments of Rome’s first historical poet,
Naevius, speak of Aeneas and his father leaving Troy with heads covered, and someone asks Aeneas to tell the story of his escape.1 And
Ennius’ more celebrated Annales speak more than once of Anchises’
ancestry and prophetic wisdom: although Aeneas is not named, Ennius
has made him father of Ilia, and grandfather of Rome’s legendary
founder, Romulus. Later poets like Accius and Lucretius would call
the Romans ‘Children of Aeneas’. But if they knew of Aeneas it would
be as an ancestor of the Julian clan or a Homeric founder of their city.
Educated Romans would have met Aeneas far earlier in life and
more directly when they learned to read the Iliad with their elementary teacher, the grammaticus.2 It is from the Greek text of Homer that
they would have formed their ideas of Aeneas as a prince and a warrior.
Because Homer’s Aeneas is so different from Virgil’s, an outline of his
1 Naevius, Punic War, lines 2–10 and 19–20, in Remains of Old Latin, vol. ii, ed.
E. H. Warmington (Cambridge, Mass., 1936).
2
This man would be expected to teach both reading (of Greek and Latin) and the
interpretation of the poetic texts from which his pupils learned to read. Hence the
discipline called grammatice covers both language and literature.
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role in Homer’s battles provides a point of departure and shows just
what Virgil chose to leave behind and what to develop. While Roman
readers would have been embarrassed by any impression of weakness
or vulnerability in their ancestral hero, Virgil could stress that the gods
favoured Aeneas and destined him to become the founder of a mighty
dynasty: he could replace mere prowess in battle with the long-term
endurance and commitment of a national leader, and honour qualities
that would implicitly honour Aeneas’ descendant Octavian, Rome’s
powerful ruler and Virgil’s patron, soon to be the first citizen and
commander-in-chief ( princeps and imperator) Augustus.
Aeneas is prominent in two widely separated books of the Iliad,
book 5 and book 20, both exceptional in the extent to which the gods
participate in the combat: some gods support the Trojans, others the
Greeks. When the Greek Diomedes enters battle in book 5 Athena
(who is Pallas or Minerva in Virgil) breathes into him strength three
times greater than his own. Aeneas urges the Trojan archer Pandarus
to help him attack this unknown warrior. Fighting from Aeneas’ chariot,
Pandarus challenges Diomedes and casts a spear at him, but Diomedes’
counterthrust is more deadly and he kills Pandarus effortlessly. When
Aeneas dismounts to defend his friend’s body he is seriously wounded by
a rock cast by Diomedes and falls to the ground. Only the instant intervention of his mother Aphrodite (Virgil’s Venus) saves him from death.
Diomedes takes possession of Aeneas’ horses, then chases Aphrodite
and wounds her arm. Aphrodite drops her son, who is snatched up and
covered in a dark cloud by Apollo. Even under Apollo’s charge Aeneas
is not out of range; three times Diomedes leaps at Aeneas in rage, and
three times Apollo repels him, but the fourth time Apollo rebukes him
for trying to fight with a god. He raises Aeneas up to his sanctuary in
Troy’s citadel where Aeneas is healed and made more splendid by
Apollo’s divine mother, Leto (Virgil’s Latona), and sister Artemis
(Virgil’s Diana). As a distraction Apollo creates a phantom Aeneas
(a device which Virgil will adapt in Juno’s attempt to rescue Turnus in
Aeneid 10), which becomes the target of the fighting for Trojans and
Greeks alike. Aeneas makes one more appearance in this battle, when
the Greek commander-in-chief Agamemnon kills one of his companions.
Aeneas retaliates by killing two Greeks. When Agamemnon’s brother
Menelaus is about to fight Aeneas and is joined by another warrior,
Aeneas feels he cannot confront both men together.
Homer’s Aeneas is a warrior praised by the poet for his ancestry, but
marked more by discretion than heroic courage. In book 20, Aeneas is
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measured against the greatest Greek warrior, Achilles. Again, the gods
are involved. Apollo, in disguise, prompts Aeneas to challenge Achilles
and suggests that Aeneas’ divine mother is a reason for him to expect
victory, since Achilles’ mother is only a minor goddess. When Aeneas
and Achilles approach each other, Aeneas offers the first challenge, but
Achilles speaks first. He jeers at Aeneas for daring to meet him. Is he
prompted by ambition to take over Priam’s kingdom? Achilles reminds
Aeneas that he had put Aeneas to flight once before, when Aeneas was
herding on Mount Ida, and had only been rescued by Zeus (Virgil’s
Jupiter) and the other gods (20.178–98). When Achilles pierces Aeneas’
shield with a spear and draws his sword to finish him off, Aeneas
is saved by divine decision. Although Poseidon (Virgil’s Neptune) is
fighting against Troy, he urges the other gods to rescue Aeneas, for a
mixture of moral and prudential reasons; Aeneas has a moral claim
because he is without guilt and always makes the gods welcome offerings.
And the gods must save him in their own interest, so as to avoid Zeus’s
anger if Achilles should kill him. Poseidon swoops down and casts a
mist before Achilles’ eyes, uproots the spear from Aeneas’ shield, and
lifts Aeneas above the battle, then scolds him for challenging a superior
fighter. (Homeric warriors are rated and handicapped like sporting
champions.) Apollo now tells Aeneas he should not have challenged
Achilles, but once Achilles has been killed he will be able to fight in the
front ranks, for no other Greek will be able to kill him.
The outcome of the encounter between Aeneas and Achilles is in
some ways less important than what we are told of Aeneas’ genealogy.
Before they join combat, Aeneas says he is the son of Anchises and
Aphrodite and traces his descent from Zeus through Dardanus and
Erichthonius. Erichthonius was father of Tros, who had three sons,
Ilus, Assaracus, and Ganymede. The eldest son, Ilus, was father of King
Laomedon, and grandfather of King Priam, the ruler of Troy during the
Trojan War. Assaracus, as father of Capys, was grandfather of Anchises.
Later, as Achilles is about to kill Aeneas, Poseidon observes that he must
be saved, ‘because he is fated to escape, so that Dardanus’ race shall
not die out. For Zeus loves Dardanus above all his children by mortal
women, but he has come to hate the descent of Priam and the mighty
Aeneas will now become king of the Trojans, as will the sons of his
sons who shall be born hereafter.’ Aeneas, then, is to be the restorer of
the dynasty. And it is that dynasty that later Greek and Roman tradition moves to Italy. Significantly, Aeneas’ first adversary, Diomedes, is
also moved to Italy.
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As Roman boys read or heard their Iliad they would receive the
mixed message of Aeneas as a warrior less skilled than brave, who was
saved from defeat at the hands of better fighters because the gods
either loved him or recognized his destiny; defeated, he was nonetheless spared the imputation of cowardice by the same divine concern
which also gave him merit as a future leader, the man destined to
revive Troy. Perhaps they understood Aeneas’ career as encouragement to go on fighting even in defeat, as Rome had fought on despite
the victories of Hannibal in the Second Punic War. But when they read
Poseidon’s argument they surely thought that Aeneas had the power of
the gods behind him because he was to be the founder of Rome—or
the Latin city from which Rome was settled.
From the lost cycle of epics composed by Homer’s successors, only
Arctinus’ Sack of Troy mentions Aeneas, and that incidentally, when
his followers retire from Troy after the serpents have killed Laocoön
and his sons and the Trojans decide to bring the treacherous horse
inside their city.3 The Greek world knew many variants on the tale of
Aeneas before and after the city’s fall: it was commonly said that when
Paris had abducted Helen from her husband Menelaus and brought
her to Troy, Aeneas and Antenor, the future founder of Padua mentioned as Aeneas’ peer by both Virgil and Livy, had recommended
returning Helen to the Greeks, and some versions even saw them as
collaborators, even traitors, who had been allowed by the Greeks to
leave Troy laden with treasure. Other versions had celebrated Aeneas as
founder of various communities in the Troad, and across the Aegean,
as also in Sicily. There were so many self-interested local traditions
that when Virgil came to make this Trojan prince the hero of his poem
he had numerous, often conflicting, myths to adapt to shape his hero’s
westward journey and ultimate reception in Latium.
Of Rome, Virgil, and his Times
Two generations before Virgil’s birth Rome was becoming a sophisticated metropolis, commanding an empire which her senatorial government was no longer equipped to rule. The influx of wealth from
conquered Asia Minor had swollen the discrepancy between the riches
of the elite and the endangered farmsteads of the peasants who made
3 See Proclus’ summary in the Loeb volume, Hesiod and the Homeric Poems (Cambridge,
Mass., 1914).