Anchises- Roman FigureMortal"Prince of Dardania"

Venus on Mount Ida

Anchises was a prince of the Trojan royal house, descended from Tros through the junior line of Assaracus. His beauty while herding cattle on Mount Ida drew Venus herself down from Olympus. She came disguised as a Phrygian princess, claiming Mercury had snatched her from a dance and set her on the mountain. Anchises suspected she was divine, but she swore she was mortal, and he led her to his bed.

Afterward, Venus woke him and stood revealed in her full height, her head brushing the roof-beam of his hut. Anchises covered his face and begged her not to leave him a broken man. She told him their son would be raised among the nymphs of Ida until old enough to be brought to Troy, and she forbade him ever to name the boy's mother. If he boasted, Jupiter's thunderbolt would find him. In Servius's account, he did boast, and the bolt struck him lame. That is why Aeneas would one day carry him from a burning city.

The Fall of Troy

On Troy's final night, as Greeks poured from the wooden horse and the city burned, Aeneas found his father in the chaos. Anchises refused to leave. He had seen the city in its glory and would not see it as a ruin. Creusa and young Ascanius pleaded with him. He would not move.

Then a flame appeared on the head of little Ascanius, burning without consuming his hair. A shooting star blazed across the sky toward Mount Ida. Anchises recognized Jupiter's hand and consented. He gathered the household Penates, the sacred images of Troy's gods that must travel with them to the West. Aeneas hoisted his father onto his shoulders, took his son by the hand, and fled through the burning streets.

The Wandering Years

The Trojans wandered the Mediterranean for years, and at each landing Anchises helped interpret the signs. When Apollo's oracle at Delos told them to seek their "ancient mother," Anchises read the phrase as meaning Crete, birthplace of Teucer. They settled there. They were wrong. The Penates themselves appeared to Aeneas in a dream: the ancient mother was Italy, homeland of Dardanus.

At Drepanum in western Sicily, within sight of Italy, Anchises died. No prophet had warned Aeneas of this loss. Of all the griefs in the long voyage, Virgil calls this one the heaviest.

The Funeral Games

When the Trojans returned to Drepanum a year later, Aeneas honored his father with funeral games. Before the contests began, a great serpent emerged from Anchises's tomb mound, gleaming blue-green with golden scales. It tasted the offerings and glided back underground. Aeneas took it for the tomb's guardian spirit.

In the boxing ring, the aged Sicilian Entellus faced the boastful young Dares. For several rounds Entellus absorbed punishment before answering with a single blow that dropped Dares to his knees. In the archery contest that followed, Acestes's arrow burst into flame mid-flight. Aeneas read it as Jupiter's favor.

The Shade in Elysium

When Aeneas descended to the Underworld through the cave at Avernus, bearing the Golden Bough, he found his father in the meadows of Elysium. Anchises wept at the sight of him. Three times Aeneas tried to embrace his father. Three times the shade slipped through his arms like wind.

Anchises led his son to the banks of the river Lethe, where thousands of souls gathered to drink and forget their former lives before returning to new bodies. Then he showed Aeneas what no living man had seen: the parade of Roman souls waiting to be born. Romulus was among them. Augustus was among them. The whole future of Rome stretched through the mist, each figure awaiting a body and a name.

Last came the young Marcellus, dead at nineteen. At the sight of the boy, Anchises wept again.

He told Aeneas what Rome's purpose would be. Let others cast bronze that breathed or chart the heavens. Rome would rule peoples and impose the habit of peace. It would spare the conquered and war down the proud.