Aeneas is Venus’s son and a survivor of Troy who flees with several companions. He wanders around by ship, escaping many dangers, until he finally takes over some small Italian cities led by Turnus and establishes what will later become Rome. His ancestors become Rome’s rulers, and Venus makes him a god.
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Aeneas Character Timeline in Metamorphoses
The timeline below shows where the character Aeneas appears in Metamorphoses. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Book 13: The Wanderings of Aeneas (1)
Aeneas, a survivor of Troy, takes his father Anchises and the statues of Troy’s gods and...
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Book 13: The Daughters of Orion
...search for their “kindred shores.” Before they depart, King Anius gifts Anchises a staff and Aeneas a mixing bowl that depicts a funeral taking place in a city. The daughters of...
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Book 13: The Wanderings of Aeneas (2)
Aeneas and the Trojans sail to Crete, but they can’t endure the climate. Next they head...
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Book 14: Glaucus and Scylla (2)
...gets her revenge by seizing Ulysses’s companions when they sail into port. She would seize Aeneas’s companions too, but she is transformed into a rock first.
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Book 14: The Wanderings of Aeneas (3)
...Scylla’s rock, but a storm blows them to an island off the Italian coast. When Aeneas leaves this island with his companions, a woman named Dido is so heartbroken that she...
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Book 14: The Sibyl of Cumae
Aeneas and the Trojans land on the shore of Cumae, a marshy land. Aeneas visits Sybil—a...
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Book 14: Achaemenides’ Story: Ulysses’ Men in Polyphemus’ Cave
Achaemenides explains that he would rather stay with Aeneas than rejoin the Greeks. Achaemenides reveres Aeneas and is deeply grateful to him. When Ulysses...
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...to sail away. Achaemenides hid in a cave, surviving on acorns, hopeless and lonely. When Aeneas’s ship came, Achaemenides moved the Trojans to pity, and they took him on board.
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Book 14: The Wanderings of Aeneas (4)
After hearing Macareus’s story, the Trojans bury Aeneas’s recently deceased nurse on the island. In the inscription they place on her tomb, they...
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Book 14: The Mutinous Companions of Diomedes
...these events, he can’t risk the few citizens he has left in the war against Aeneas.
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Book 14: The Ships of Aeneas
Even without the help of Diomedes, Turnus proceeds to challenge Aeneas to a war. After days of bloodshed, Turnus attacks the Trojan’s ships and lights them...
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Book 14: Ardea
Even after the transformation of the Trojan ships, Turnus continues to fight Aeneas. Gods fight on both sides of the battle. Turnus no longer hopes to win Lavinia’s...
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Book 14: The Apotheosis of Aeneas
Now that Aeneas has proved his courage and his son is reaching adulthood, his mother Venus asks the...
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Book 14: Aeneas’ Descendants
After Aeneas becomes a god, his son Iulus rules the new lands. Iulus is succeeded by his...
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Book 15: Pythagoras
...falling, Priam foreshadowed that it wouldn’t fall completely, but that it would live on in Aeneas, who would forge it anew on a strange land. Rome started in this way, and...
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Book 15: The Apotheosis of Julius Caesar
...suffered an unfair amount of treachery: she had to fight against Juno’s rage to protect Aeneas, and now Aeneas’s only living descendent, Julius Caesar, is under threat.
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