AENEAS, son of Anchises and Aphrodite. In Homer, he is represented as a favourite of the gods, who frequently interpose to save him from danger (Iliad, v. 311; xx. 3o8) as he was destined to rule the surviving Trojans after the war. The story of his emi gration is post-Homeric, and is set forth in its fullest development by Virgil in the Aeneid. Carrying his aged father and household gods on his back and leading his little son Ascanius by the hand, he made his way to the coast, his wife Creusa being lost during the confusion of the flight. After a perilous voyage to Thrace, Delos, Crete and Sicily (where his father died), he was cast up by a storm, sent by Juno, on the African coast.
Refusing to remain with Dido, queen of Carthage, who in de spair put an end to her life, he sailed from Africa, and seven years after leaving Troy, reached the mouth of the Tiber. He was hos pitably received by Latinus, king of Latium, was betrothed to his daughter Lavinia, and founded a city called Lavinium after her. Turnus, king of the Rutuli, a rejected suitor, took up arms against him and Latinus, but was defeated and slain by Aeneas on the river Numicius. The story of the Aeneid ends with the death of Turnus. According to Livy (i. i. 2), Aeneas, after reigning a few years over Latium, was slain by the Rutuli; of ter the battle, his body could not be found, and he was supposed to have been carried up to heaven. He received divine honours, and was worshipped under the name of Iuppiter Indiges (Dionysius Halic. i. 64).
See Schwegler, Romische Geschichte (1867) ; Roscher's Lexikon, s.v. Romances.—The story of Aeneas, as a sequel to the legend of Troy, formed the subject of several epic romances in the middle ages. The Roman d'Eneas (c. ir6o, or later), of uncertain author ship, the first French poem directly imitated from the Aeneid, is a fairly close adaptation of the original, but with the characteristic tone of a mediaeval romance. On this work were founded the Eneide or Eneit (between I18o and Igo) of Heinrich von Veldeke, written in Flemish and now only extant in a version in the Thuringian dialect, and the Eneydos, written by William Caxton in 1490.
See Engels, ed. J. Salverda de Grave (Halle, 1891) ; also A. Peij, Essai sur li romans d'Eneas (1856) ; A. Duval in Hist. litteraire de la France, xix.; Veldeke's Eneide, ed. Ettmueller (Leipzig, 1852) and 0. Behaghel (Heilbronn, 1882) ; Eneydos, ed. F. J. Furnivall (189o). For Italian versions see E. G. Parodi in Studi di filologia romanza (v. 1887).