DEPT: Centre for Classics and Archaelogy (HISTORY). SUBJECT: Ancient Rome. Myth and Empire. TOPIC DETAILS ATTACHED - Essay Example

he Latin epic Aeneid by Virgil is an ambitious, original poetic work that depicts the story of the legendary Trojan hero Aeneas, who traveled to Italy and became the ancestor of the Romans. The epic is divided into twelve books among which the first six deal with Aeneas’ journey to Italy and the remaining six deal with the war in Italy, roughly following the pattern of Homeric epics. Aeneas, the son of Venus and Anchises is found in the Greco-Roman legends as a hero of the Trojan War who is perhaps equaled only by Hector.

A Late Roman tradition depicts Aeneas as an ally of King Evander, leader of Greeks from Arcadia, who settled on the Palatine hill already before the Trojan War, who taught the natives the art of cultivation and introduced the Lupercalia festivities. As recorded in a book on Ancient civilizations edited by Boris Piotrovsky, Aeneas …. fought the Latins, conquered them, married Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus, founded the city of Lavinium, (which shows that he was a forebear of Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome) and was deified after his death, while his son became the forefather of the gens Julia”(Piotrovsky 267) In the epic, Jupiter takes into account the concern of Venus for Aeneas and he prophesies the founding of Rome, a few centuries after many Trojans are born in Italy.

He tells her how Aeneas, “mightily warring in Italy, shall crush/ Proud tribes, to establish city walls and a way of life”. Piotrovsky states that recent archaeological and linguistic studies have proven the presence of an Arcadian settlement in C.12th B.C. on the Palatine hill. And he further states that 6th of 5th century B.C. figurines that were discovered there portray Aeneas carrying Anchises on his shoulders while escaping from the burning Troy. The mythical allusions to gods and goddesses who beget heroes through relationships among themselves or through an alliance with human beings in the epics may attribute an element of fantasy in these narratives