God of the Week: Aeneas

08/02/2010: Aeneas

Aeneas was an ancient Roman god and legendary founder of Rome. The son of Anchises and Venus, his story is recounted in Virgil’s Aeneid.

Whether he was an historic king that came to be worshiped as a god, or a god that came to be thought of as an historic king is not known.

Aeneas (Greek Aineias), as we have read, was the son of
Anchises and Venus (i. e. Aphrodite). Amid the confusion
attendant on the sack of Troy, he made his way with his father
and little son, lulus, to the shelter of the wooded heights near
the city, and there gathered about him a number of fugitives,
whom he led in making preparations to sail away to a strange
land and found a new home; After many busy weeks they set
out, first crossing to Thrace and then steering southward to
Delos, where, at the shrine of Apollo, they were bidden by
the oracle to seek the motherland of their ancestors and
there make their abode. Believing that this referred to Crete,
Aeneas led his followers thither, but after the little colony
had suffered many misfortunes he was warned in a dream to
establish it instead in the western land of Hesperia (i. e. Italy).
-The Mythology of All Races, Volume I: Greek and Roman
by William Sherwood Fox, Ph.D
Louis Herbert Gray, Editor