Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius

According to the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite and Hesiod's account referred to in the sources, Aphrodite united with the mortal Anchises on Mount Ida and bore Aeneas. The Homeric Hymn provides the narrative framing for Aphrodite's liaison and names the child Aineías, giving a mythic etymology connected to the adjective αὶνóν ('terrible') because of the 'terrible grief' his mortality causes the goddess. Later Roman writers develop Aeneas' role as a divinely sanctioned founder-ancestor whose survival links the fallen Troy to the eventual lineage of Rome (ancestor of Romulus and Remus), and sources note uncertainty about the precise etymology of his name.

The supplied sources do not offer a consistent, systematic physical description of Aeneas. They record his parentage (son of Aphrodite and Anchises) and relate episodes in which he bears and assists his father (Anchises is reported in some sources to be struck in the foot by a thunderbolt from Zeus, a condition later accounts associate with his being carried from Troy). Homeric and Virgilian epithets (e.g., heros, magnus, pater) describe social and moral stature rather than bodily features.

In Homeric passages Aeneas is depicted as a warrior and leader—commander of the Dardanian contingent and a principal lieutenant to Hector—who is twice saved from death by the gods (Aphrodite and Apollo in one episode; Poseidon intervenes elsewhere in Homeric tradition). Hyginus, as summarized in the sources, credits him with slaying twenty-eight enemies in the Trojan War. Roman tradition (notably Virgil's Aeneid) reframes his principal capacities as pietas and dutiful agency: he is shown as divinely protected and instrumental in carrying out a providential destiny that culminates in Rome's sacred genealogy.