Ascanius

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Aeneas carries Anchises , with Ascanius and his wife, amphora from a Greek workshop in Etruria , around 470 BC. BC , State Collections of Antiquities

Askanius ( Greek  Ἀσκάνιος Askanios ) or Iulus (also: Ilus or Julus ) is the son of the Trojan prince Aeneas and first king of Alba Longa in Roman or Greek mythology .

Name and parentage

Marble head around 13-9 BC BC, which could have belonged to a representation of Ascanius. The fragment is on display in the Museo dell'Ara Pacis in Rome.

Virgil's mother of Ascanius is the Trojan Krëusa . After Virgil in Troy (Ilium) the name of Ascanius was Ilus and then Iulus . Livy narrates Eurydice as the mother of Ascanius Lavinia and other traditions . According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus , his name was originally Euryleon , and he was only given the name Ascanius while fleeing.

In Homer's Iliad there are people named Askanios, but they are not sons of Aeneas. Only in post-Homeric tradition is Aeneas assigned a son of this name, who was rescued from the burning Troy by his father and who moved with him to Italy. Ascanius later became the founder of Alba Longa , the mother city of Rome . Romulus and Remus , the founders of Rome, descended from him through the ruling dynasty of this city . Some authors even made him the father of the two brothers in a chronological leap.

Iulus appears in Livy as the son of Aeneas, to whom the gens Iulia , a Roman patrician dynasty from which Gaius Iulius Caesar arose, traced their family back. Livy also leaves open whether the ancestor of the kings of Alba and Rome was the son of Lavinia or Krëusa.

In the Roman epic before Virgil, Aeneas has either a son Romulus or a daughter Silvia .

Domination

Aeneas and Ascanius find the white wild boar (Roman marble relief, 140–150, British Museum ).

After the death of Aeneas and while Ascanius was still a boy, Lavinia exercised the rule in Lavinium and ruled there over Trojans and Latins. But when Ascanius had grown up, Lavinium's population had grown so much that Ascanius founded a new city, Alba Longa, on the Alban Mountain. This happened after 30 years had passed since the founding of Lavinium, corresponding to the 30 piglets of the white wild boar that Aeneas had once found at the place of Lavinium after his dream and the prophecy of Tiberinus .

According to Livius 'report, Ascanius' reign was a time of peace after a decisive victory over the Rutuls of Turnus and the Etruscans of Mezentius had been won while Aeneas was still alive . In contrast, in Dionysius of Halicarnassus the dispute with the Etruscans falls in the time of Mezentius. According to him, the Latins were in great distress due to a siege of Lavinium by the Etruscans and so finally forced to accept a peace that obliged them, among other things, to surrender their entire wine harvest. This seemed an unbearable disgrace and on the advice of Askanius the Latins swore that their wine should henceforth be sacred to Jupiter . In the war that followed, Ascanius managed to surprise the enemy by making a night raid from the besieged city, seize an important bulwark and, on this occasion, kill Lausus , the son of Mezentius. Discouraged by the losses, Mezentius agreed the next day to sign a peace treaty.

In any case, there was peace after Alba Longa was founded. The new city prospered, a temple had been built for the sanctuaries that Aeneas had brought with him from Troy and the Penates had been transferred from Lavinium to Alba Longa. Now it happened that at night the Penates mysteriously disappeared from Alba Longa and appeared in their old place in Lavinium. After this process had been repeated, it was decided to leave the Penates in Lavinium and to send a group of 600 men back to Lavinium under the leadership of an Aegestus in order to cultivate the cult of the Penates there.

Ascanius ruled for 38 years. If one uses the reigns given by Dionysius of Halicarnassus with a back calculation from the traditional year of the founding of Rome , then this corresponds to the years 1179 to 1141 BC. After his death his brother Silvius took over the rule and not his son Iulius, to whom Silvius was defeated in a popular election. Ascanius himself is said to have stalked the brother and his mother Lavinia when he was a small child, which is why Lavinia had to hide with the child in the wilderness.

literature

Web links

Commons : Iulus  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Virgil Aeneid 1.267f.
  2. ↑ Livy Ab urbe condita 1,1,11.
  3. ↑ Dionysius of Halicarnassus Antiquitates Romanae 1,65,1
  4. ↑ Homer Iliad 2,862; 13.790.
  5. ↑ Livy Ab urbe condita 1,3,2.
  6. ↑ Gnaeus Naevius fr. 25th
  7. ↑ Quintus Ennius in Maurus Servius Honoratius in Vergili Carmina Commentariorum 6,777.
  8. ↑ Livy 1,3,2f.
  9. ↑ Virgil Aeneid 8: 31-67.
  10. ^ Livy 1, 2.
  11. ↑ Dionysius of Halicarnassus Antiquitates Romanae 1.65.
  12. ^ Dionysius of Halicarnassus Antiquitates Romanae 1.67.
  13. ↑ Diodorus 7 Frag. 5.8.
predecessor Office successor
( Aeneas ) King of Alba Longa
1179 to 1141 BC Chr. 		Silvius