THE MYTH OF AENEAS
The symbol of the encounter between different peoples and places and of intercultural dialogue
THE MYTH
The mythological tale is not only the product of pure fantasy, but often has a basis of truth and can also be useful for historical reconstruction. The word mythos, in ancient Greek, means “tale”, “word”, and these narratives, which have their roots in the remotest antiquity, settled in the collective memory of peoples since before the use of writing and the birth of literature, through continuous oral repetition.
Myths, handed down for centuries from generation to generation, have contributed to transmitting the cultural heritage of different communities, preserving their memories, and consolidating their identity and sense of belonging. And before the emergence of legislation and law, they also played an educational and exemplary role, proposing positive models of behaviour to adapt to and negative ones to avoid.
When writing is introduced, mythological tales are transformed into texts and literary works. This is what happened with poems such as the Iliad and the Odyssey, which were not created out of the blue. In the 8th century B.C., after the Greeks adopted the alphabet of the Phoenicians and adapted it to the Greek language, Homer, or whoever – one or more poets – composed them, collected and reordered the stories that generations of poets had recited in the streets and in homes, writing down the events of the Trojan War and the long and troubled journeys home of the warriors who took part in it, including Ulysses.
THE MYTH OF AENEAS
The character of Aeneas appears in the Iliad, as a Trojan warrior fighting to defend his city. Already in this poem he is marked by a great destiny: according to the words of the god Poseidon, who saves him from death during a duel with the invincible Greek hero Achilles, Aeneas will survive the destruction of Troy and will rule over the Trojans to perpetuate their lineage.
His legend is also present in a number of works by Greek and Latin authors of later centuries. Unfortunately, only a few precious fragments of all these authors have survived. But the development and spread of the myth of Aeneas can be, at least in part, reconstructed through the images depicted on archaeological finds.
The archaeological documents shows that, in the classical period, the city of Athens took up the myth of the surviving Trojans and did so in a positive light: they were the traditional enemies, but they were due respect for their virtues. This is the message that Athens officially consecrated and spread in the West by exporting vases depicting Aeneas and his father Anchises. The Greek legend of Aeneas thus reached both the Etruscans and the Romans, although it is not easy to explain the stages and methods of its dissemination.
It was with Virgil‘s account that Aeneas’ journey across the Mediterranean – from the abandonment of Troy in flames to the landing on the coast of Latium in Italy – was completed in its entirety, linking the Trojan hero’s destiny to the foundation of Lavinium, and then of Rome.
With the Augustan principate, the figure of Aeneas became one of the most pervasive in the Roman world, not only as a semi-divine character, son of Aphrodite, who lies at the origins of Rome, but also as an ideal model of the Roman citizen, devoted to the gods and respectful of the family. It is for this reason that the iconography of the myth of Aeneas became a recurrent theme both in official art, with its statues placed in the Forum of Augustus in Rome and in the forums of provincial cities, and in the private sphere (in everyday objects, frescoes in houses, funerary monuments, etc.).
The myth of Aeneas’ voyage spread across the Mediterranean, a sea that was already deeply interconnected and unified in antiquity, traversed by innumerable routes for the most diverse reasons. The legend of Aeneas is thus the echo of an ancient sea characterised by lively mobility, profound changes in settlement patterns, the rapid evolution of social systems and the meeting of different peoples and cultures.
