Character List
Mortals
Aeneas - The protagonist of the Aeneid. Aeneas is a survivor of the siege of Troy, a city on the coast of Asia Minor. His destiny is to found the Roman race in Italy and he subordinates all other concerns to this mission. The Aeneid is about his journey from Troy to Italy.
Dido - The queen of Carthage, a city in northern Africa, in what is now Libya, and lover of Aeneas. Turnus - The ruler of the Rutulians in Italy and Aeneas’s major antagonist among mortals. He is
Lavinia’s leading suitor until Aeneas arrives.
Ascanius - (also called Iulus). Aeneas’s young son by his first wife, Creusa. Ascanius is most important as a symbol of Aeneas’s destiny.
Anchises - Aeneas’s father, and a symbol of Aeneas’s Trojan heritage. Although Anchises dies during the journey from Troy to Italy, he continues in spirit to help his son.
Creusa - Aeneas’s wife at Troy, and the mother of Ascanius.
Sinon - The young Greek spy who pretends to have been left behind at the end of the Trojan War Latinus - The king of the Latins, the people of what is now central Italy, around the Tiber River. Lavinia - Latinus’s daughter and a symbol of Latium in general.
Amata - Queen of Laurentum (a region of Latium, in Italy) and wife of Latinus.
Evander - King of Pallanteum (a region of Arcadia, in Italy) and father of Pallas. Evander is a sworn enemy of the Latins, and Aeneas befriends him and secures his assistance in the battles against Turnus.
Pallas - Son of Evander, whom Evander entrusts to Aeneas’s care and tutelage. Pallas eventually dies in battle at the hands of Turnus.
Drancës - A Latin leader who desires an end to the Trojan-Latin struggle. Camilla - The leader of the Volscians, a race of warrior maidens. Juturna - Turnus’s sister.
Achates - A Trojan and a personal friend of Aeneas.
Gods and Goddesses
Juno - (Hera in Greek mythology) The queen of the gods, the wife and sister of Jupiter, and the daughter of Saturn. Juno hates the Trojans because of the Trojan Paris’s judgment against her in a beauty contest.
Venus - (Aphrodite in Greek mythology) The goddess of love and the mother of Aeneas. Venus is a benefactor of the Trojans. She is also referred to as Cytherea, after Cythera, the island where she was born and where her shrine is located.
Jupiter - (also known as Jove, and called Zeus in Greek mythology) The king of the gods, and the son of Saturn.
Neptune - (Poseidon in Greek mythology) God of the sea is generally an ally of Venus and Aeneas. Mercury - (Hermes in Greek mythology) The messenger god. The other gods often send Mercury
on errands.
Aeolus - The god of the winds.
Cupid - (Eros in Greek mythology) A son of Venus and the god of erotic desire.
Allecto - One of the Furies, or deities who avenge sins, sent by Juno in Book IV to incite the Latin people to war against the Trojans.
Vulcan - (Hephaestus in Greek mythology) God of fire and the forge, and husband of Venus. Tiberinus - The river god associated with the Tiber River, where Rome will eventually be built
Saturn - (Chronos in Greek mythology) The father of the gods. Saturn was king of Olympus until his son Jupiter overthrew him.
Minerva - (Pallas Athena in Greek mythology) The goddess who protects the Greeks during the Trojan War and helps them conquer Troy.
Apollo - A son of Jupiter. Because he is often portrayed as an archer, many characters invoke his name before they fire a shaft in battle.
Relevant characters from Homer’s Iliad
Ulysses - (Latin name of Odysseus) The hero of Homer’s Odyssey, and one of the captains of the Greek army that takes Troy. Ulysses makes a long and treacherous voyage before he finds home again, and references to his whereabouts in the Aeneid help situate Aeneas’s wanderings.
Achilles - The greatest of the Greek warriors. Achilles slew the Trojan hero Hector during the war and is the tragic hero of the Iliad.
Hector - The greatest of the Trojan warriors, killed at Troy. Andromachë - Hector’s wife, who survives the siege of Troy.
Paris - A Trojan prince, son of Priam and Hecuba, and brother of Hector. Stealing Helen from her Greek husband, Menelaus, Paris provokes the Trojan War.
Helen - The most beautiful of mortal women and wife of Menelaus.
Menelaus - Greek king who wed Helen and made a pact with her other suitors to fight anyone who
tried to steal her.
Agamemnon - Leader of the Greek army at Troy, and the king of Argos, a city in Greece. Upon his return from the war, Agamemnon is killed by his adulterous wife, Clytemnestra.
Priam - The king of Troy, slain before Aeneas’s eyes during the Greeks’ sacking of Troy. Pyrrhus - The son of Achilles, also called Neoptolemus.