Aeneas Character Analysis in Metamorphoses

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.

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.

Aeneas, a survivor of Troy, takes his father Anchises and the statues of Troy’s gods and... (full context)

...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... (full context)

Aeneas and the Trojans sail to Crete, but they can’t endure the climate. Next they head... (full context)

...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. (full context)

...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... (full context)

Aeneas and the Trojans land on the shore of Cumae, a marshy land. Aeneas visits Sybil—a... (full context)

Achaemenides explains that he would rather stay with Aeneas than rejoin the Greeks. Achaemenides reveres Aeneas and is deeply grateful to him. When Ulysses... (full context)

...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. (full context)

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... (full context)

...these events, he can’t risk the few citizens he has left in the war against Aeneas. (full context)

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... (full context)

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... (full context)

Now that Aeneas has proved his courage and his son is reaching adulthood, his mother Venus asks the... (full context)

After Aeneas becomes a god, his son Iulus rules the new lands. Iulus is succeeded by his... (full context)

...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... (full context)

...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. (full context)