Aeneas&Aeneas
Duty, Exile, & the Founding of Rome
Aeneas
Aeneas, Son of Anchises
Shield of Vulcan, household gods, the sword
A minor Trojan prince in the Iliad, saved by the gods and destined to survive the fall of Troy.
Pious and passive — his defining trait is obligation rather than desire.
Hero cult at Lavinium, where he was said to have landed and ruled.
Pietas: the subordination of the self to family, gods and destiny.
Aeneas
Pius Aeneas, Father of the Roman People
Penates, the sow and thirty piglets, the shield of Vulcan
Elevated by Virgil into the ancestor of Romulus and the founder of the Roman destiny.
The ideal Roman — dutiful, self-denying, and burdened by a mission he did not choose.
State foundation rites and the ancestral cult of the Penates at Lavinium.
Duty as the founding myth of the Roman state, and the cost of an empire.
Syncretism Analysis
The same Trojan prince is a footnote in Greek epic and the protagonist of Rome's national poem. Rome took a minor Greek character and built an entire imperial genealogy on his shoulders.