Aeneas

w/Romulus, Remus, Numa Pompilius, Brutus, Heremon

Born: c1500 BC Died: ? Father: Anchises (?-?) Mother: Venus Spouse: Lavinia, dau of King Latinus Children: Ascanius [Iulus] others? At right, a picture from tAR p15 ===>>

Aeneas carries Anchises

This story covers (and ties together) Aeneas, Romulus [and Remus], Numa Pompilius, Brutus, Heremon.

"Romans accepted and perpetuated the idea that they were descended from the Trojan prince Aeneas [mentioned in Greek poet Homer's stories Iliad and Odysseus] ... associat[ed] them with the legendary traditions of the Greeks, whose cultural superiority they were forced to acknowledge ... [Greeks took in] pride in their ancestors' exploits in the remote and legendary 'Age of Heroes' [i.e. Bronze age c1400-1150 BC Greek-speaking Mycenaean era] ... In the hands of Virgil and other writers of the 1C BC, it became a means to reconcile them, and make Roman rule acceptable in the Greek world ... Especially important to the Greeks was the Trojan War. In this epic tale, later immortalized by the Greek poet Homer in his Iliad, a number of early Greek kings banded together in an expedition against the trading [Greek?] city of Troy (on the NW coast of Asia Minor, now Turkey). After a 10yr siege they sacked the city and recovered Helen, a Greek queen who had been abducted by a Trojan prince [name?]. The heroes of the war - the Greeks Achilles and Odysseus and the Trojans Hector and Aeneas, for example - were seen as men of larger-than-life stature who accomplished deeds of incredible valor and interacted with the gods ... by the 6C BC, it appears, Roman legends had incorporated the [Greek] tale of the Trojan prince Aeneas's escape from the burning Troy [carrying his father Anchises on his back] and his fateful journey to Italy. After many dangerous and colorful adventures, so the story goes in The Aeneid, an epic poem composed by the 1C BC Roman writer Virgil, Aeneas sailed to Cumae in S Italy. A prophet had earlier told him to seek out the Sibyl, a wise woman who could see into the future. The Sibyl greeted him and told him that he was destined to fight a war in Italy over the right to marry an Italian bride. Aeneas then begged her to help him find a way into the underworld so that he might once more see his beloved father, Anchises, who had died during the journey across the Mediterranean. Granting the request, the Sibyl led Aeneas down into the underworld, and in time they found the spirit of the old man. After their reunion, the father offered to show the son the future of the grand and blessed race Aeneas would sire. 'Come then,' said Anchises, 'I shall show you the whole span of our destiny.' First, he revealed, Aeneas's offspring would found the city of Alba Longa in the Italian region of Latium (S of the Tiber River); the line of Alba's noble rulers would lead to Romulus, who himself would establish a city - none other than Rome. 'Under his tutelage,' Anchises predicted, 'our glorious Rome shall rule the whole wide world [and] her spirit shall match the spirit of the gods.' Anchises showed his son the long line of noble Romans, finally culminating in the greatest of them all, Augustus Caesar, who was destined to bring about a new golden age for Rome and humanity. After Aeneas and the Sibyl returned from [the underworld], the hero traveled N to Latium ... met the local ruler, Latinus, and soon sought the hand of [his] dau, Lavinia. But Turnus, the prince of a neighboring people called the Rutulians, had already asked for Lavinia's hand ... led to a terrible war ... Aeneas defeated Turnus and m. Lavinia. And from the union of the Trojan and Latin races ... sprang the lineage that would lead the noble Romans, who would one day rule all the world. For the Romans, Jupiter had earlier told Venus, 'I see no measure nore date [and] I grant them dominion without end ... the master-race, the wearers of the Toga'" (tAR pp14-6).

"In this way - through family lineage - the Romans tied Romulus, the hero of their most popular founding legend, to Aeneas [from Homer's story]. Romulus and his twin bro, Remus, were supposedly members of the royal house of Alba Longa. When they were infants, their great-uncle, who [had] usurped the throne, ordered them to be drowned in the Tiber, but they fortunately washed ashore, where a she-wolf fed them and some poor shepherds eventually took them in. When the brothers grew to manhood and learned their true identities, they returned to Alba, overthrew their uncle, and restored their grandfather, the rightful king, to his throne. Then they set out to establish a new city of their own on the N edge of the Latium plain. As it turned out, however, Romulus ended up founding the city by himself, for he and Remus got into a petty squabble, fought, and Romulus slew his brother. Shortly after this tragedy, Romulus laid the new town's initial foundations [by consensus 21 Apr 753 BC, consulted nearby Etruscans for proper ceremonial techniques]" (tAR pp16-7).

"The exact length of the monarchical period, as well as the number of kings and the lengths of their reigns, is unknown. According to later tradition, there were 7 kings, beginning with Romulus, who supposedly reigned from 753 to 717 BC. He was then succeeded by Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius [r673-642], Ancus Marcius, Tarquinius Priscus, Servius Tullius, and Tarquinius Superbus (or 'Tarquin the Proud') ... heroic myths tell of Rome's takeover of Alba Longa, the region in which the legendary Aeneas had supposedly settled centuries before" (tAR pp25-6). "The Etruscans may have had a hand in ending Tarquin's rule - and with it the Roman Monarchy. Though a great builder, Tarquin, himself of Etruscan birth, was a tyrant who apparently abused his authority ... [overthrown with help from] legendary heroic patriot Lucius Junius Brutus [and] Etruscan king Lars Porsenna of the city of Clusium (80m miles NE of Rome) ... sometime between 509 and 504 BC, the period in which modern scholars believe the Republic was established" (tAR p29). An early patrician family was the Horatii, from which the legendary hero Horatius came (he single-handedly defended Rome at a nearby bridge across the Tiber). King Lars Porsenna helped overthrow the tyrant Tarquin, but then took over Rome himself. Shortly after he was driven from the city and a new era of self-govt was begun by its patricians.

Later, during the Augustan age, Romans saw their destiny or mission to "bring order to the whole world ... The works of the Augustan writers [usually dated from d. of Cicero in 43 BC to d. of Ovid in AD 17] had a profound and lasting impact, not only on later Roman society but also on the literature and philosophy of later medieval and modern Europe ... [esp. Virgil's Aeneid] put into stirring words and verses the Romans' deep pride in their past and their belief that they had a superior destiny. Summing up Virgil's appeal ... R H Barrow writes, 'The most significant movement in history ... according to Virgil, is the march of the Roman along the road of his destiny to a high civilization; for in that destiny is to be found the valid and permanent interpretation of all [human] movement and all development ... the universal and the ultimate triumph of the Roman spirit as the highest manifestation of man's powers" (43, hmmm, with or without God?). In a section titled "Roman Grandeur, System, and Order," its stated that under Trajan (98-117), the empire reached its largest extent; 3.5 square miles and some 100M people (48, v. Britain's 9M sq miles at its height). "In the years following [Marcus Aurelius' death], for the first time in living memory, large numbers of Romans began to accept the formerly inconceivable idea that Rome might not be invincible. And they were afraid" (49). "'Rome's monumental achievement,' wrote the late, great scholar Edith Hamilton, 'was law. A people violent by nature, of enormous appetites and brutal force, produced the great Law of Nations, which sustained with equal justice the rights of free-born men everywhere'" (51).

"The 12C writer Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose book The History of the Kings of Britain was a medieval best-seller, has a slightly different chain of events, though with some similarities. He suggested that the 1rst king was Brutus, the ggson of the Trojan prince Aeneas. After the siege of Troy Aeneas and his son Ascanius wandered through the Greek world, eventually settling in Italy, where they founded the city of Alba Longa, the forerunner of Rome. Ascanius's son Silvius was the father of Brutus. Brutus inadvertently killed his father and fled to Greece and from there to Britain which he found uninhabited, 'except for a few giants.' The traditional dating of the siege of Troy is c1180 BC although recent reassessments of Egyptian and Greek chronology have shifted the date forward by at least 250yrs, placing it c900 BC and much closer to the traditional founding of Rome, which the Romans date to 753 BC. We may [therefore] regard Geoffrey's largely mythical first king [Brutus] as settling in Britain c700-800 BC" (MBKQ pp41-2).

Aeneas defeats Turnus (tAR p16)

Numa Pompilius (tAR p26)

Homer (PHAAG p18)

Numa P (FoRE p16)

statue of suckling Romulus and Remus (AR p15)

Romulus (RoAR p11)

"Troy, ancient walls of Priam's city [Aegean Sea in background], ruins believed to be those of 6th city, dating from c1600 BC (The [Illustrated] NT, ABS, 1965, 259pp, own, p214). This book also has a drawing of reconstructed Temple of Diana at Ephesus (p200). Most portrayals of Aeneas carrying Anchises also show latter carrying the palladium or image of Pallas Athena [Minerva] (p163).

Artistic reconstruction of Troy showing royal palace, inner/outer walls, Scaean gate at front, next to Great Tower of Ilios, behind idols on pedestals, dry ditch surrounded outer walls w/village and farms beyond (ISOT p7)

ISOT also says Wilhelm Dorpfeld later confirmed that there had been 9 distinct cities of Troy, each built on the ruins of the former, on the hill known as Hissarlik [Turkish for the palace] between 3000 BC and 500 AD. Timeline (p38):

c3600 BC, seafaring people arrive
c3000 BC, 1rst known fortified site [Troy 1]
c2500 BC, Troy 1 destroyed, Troy 2 built [Schliemann thought this was Homer's Troy, w/Priam's treasure]
c2200 BC, Troy 2 destroyed, Troy 3 built
c2050 BC, Troy 3 destroyed, Troy 4 built
c1900 BC, Troy 4 destroyed, Troy 5 built
c1800 BC, Troy 5 destroyed, Troy 6 built [Dorpfeld thought this was Homer's Troy, destroyed c1300 by earthquake, not by Greeks]
? Troy 6 destroyed, Troy 7 built
c1300 BC, Troy 7 destroyed by fire, rebuilt as 7a, abandoned c1000 BC, most archeologists now believe Troy 7a is Homer's Troy
c700 BC, Troy 8 built over abandoned site, Iliad written
c500 BC, Troy 9 built, 1rst a Greek, then a Roman city
c335 BC, AlexGrt visits Troy

Main characters (p10, p42):
- Aeneas, Trojan hero, escapes w/young son Ascanius and carrying father Anchises, founds Rome
- Helen, wife of King Menelaus of Sparta, abducted by Paris
- Agamemnon, bro of Menelaus, gathered army and led attack on Troy (1K ships)
- Ajax, great Achaean [early Greek] warrior, claimed Achilles' armor after his death
- Achilles, hero of Iliad, killed Hector, later k. by Paris
- Paris, son of Priam, abducted Helen
- Priam, King of Troy, father of 50 sons, k. when Troy fell
- Hector, Troy's defender, k. by Achilles at end of story

See Romans and Ancient Greece.

Sources:
- tAR = The Ancient Romans, Don Nardo, Lucent, 2001, FHL.
- AR = Ancient Rome, Nigel Rodgers, Hermes House (Anness), 2006 (own).
- FoRE = The Fall of the Roman Empire, Bradley Steffens, Greenhaven, 1994, Mustang.
- RoAR = Rulers of Ancient Rome, Don Nardo, Lucent, 1999, Mustang.
- MBKQ = The Mammoth Book of British Kings and Queens, Mike Ashley, Carroll & Graf, 1998, own.
- PHAAG = The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Greece, Robert Morkot, Penguin, 1996, 144pp, Mustang.
- ISOT = In Search of Troy: One Man's [i.e. Heinrich Schliemann 1822-90] Quest for Homer's Fabled City, Giovanni Caselli, Peter Bedrick Books, 1999, 44pp, FHL