Aeneas carries Anchises from Troy: c. 520, from the Louvre.

A few practical things to know in Aeneid

• Gods
• Zeus > Jupiter
• Hera > Juno
• bitter hatred of Troy: mad because of the judgement of Paris: also, Juno loves Carthage (Rome's great enemy, conquered by Virgil's time)
  
• Athena > Minerva
• Artemis > Diana
  
• Hermes > Mercury
• Poseidon > Neptune
• Aphrodite > Venus (Aeneas' mother)
• Apollo > Apollo
  
• Heracles > Hercules
  
• Aeneas
• father is Anchises
• Trojan wife who died at Troy is Creusa
• son is Ascanius also known as Julus also known as Iulus
• Aeneid 1.260 says the name Iulus is from Ilus, which is the origin of Troy's alternative name Ilium (whence Iliad).
  
• ancestor of the Julian family in Rome: Julius Caesar and Octavian/Augustus' family
• Reflect hard as we read on how Virgil and the Aeneid depend on but differ from Homer
• Reflect hard  as we read on how Virgil and the Aeneid depend on but differ from tragedy
  
• Aeneas as founder of Rome
• Virgil's set task was not easy.
  
• It didn't really work as history or myth until Virgil settled all the various stories into the Aeneid.
  
• He couldn't have founded Rome itself, because traditional dating in antiquity dated Rome's founding to 753 BCE whereas traditional dating put the Trojan War in 1184 BCE
  
• So Aeneas gets to Italy and rules a place called Latium
  
• then Aeneas' son Ascanius founded Alba Longa, a town, and his successors, called the 'Alban kings,' fill the time between whenever Ascanius got to Alba Longa (12th c.?? BCE???) and 753 BCE.
• Aeneid 1.270 says it is 300 years between Ascanius and the twins  Romulus and Remus, one of whom founded Rome: the math is somewhat beside the point, however.
  
• Romulus and Remus were twin brothers. Romulus founded Rome. They were adults in 753 BCE, if they are taken as historical figures, and so they were maybe born in 770 BCE, maybe. BUT I don't take them as historical: the Romans, however, did.
• they were sons of Rhea Silvia and Mars or maybe Hercules
• There's another story, that Romos, son of Circe and Odysseus, founded Rome!
• That one Virgil left by the wayside.
• It would make Rome a descendant of Greece, not Troy
  
• What happened?
• historians and literary writers worked with the material they could find and it seems that both Aeneas and Romulus and Remus were there to be exploited.
• We have bits and pieces, fragments, short reports, that try to make sense of this, but no really good complete unified picture of what Virgil had to work with.
  
• Virgil wove it into a tapestry that is the Aeneid and that became canonical.
• Always remember that the Aeneid ends a long time before the founding of Rome: Aeneas laid groundwork that eventually lead to the founding of Rome.
• Why would Rome want Aeneas as founder?
• it works for where Rome was: it was an upstart younger civilization that was gaining power and coming up against the Greeks, Carthaginians, Etruscans, etc.
  
• claiming Trojan ancestry makes a somewhat tortuous sort of sense. It's within the culturual imaginarium of Greece, and it gives Rome a sort of mythological reason to be a rival of Greece.
• In case you don't know, Roman culture steadily and continuously adopted a great deal from the Greeks.
• The saying goes something like:
• Conquered Greece conquered Rome
• meaning that although Rome won the military wars against Greece militarily, Greece arguably won the intellectual rivalry both artistically and culturally.
• The Aeneid is part of that phenomenon:
• Virgil took the Greek hexameter and made it work brilliantly in Latin: efforts prior to Virgil are deemed less successful, although Lucretius is, to my mind, far more interesting than the Aeneid (that's because I am attracted to philosophy and Virgil has little of that).