Aeneas

A mural in Pompeii, Italy, dating from the 1st century, showing the Trojan hero Aeneas receiving treatment for a wound. His mother, the Greek goddess Aphrodite, looks on anxiously. But Aeneas was also a hero to the Romans, for in eventually becoming a prince of Latium (an ancient territory in Italy), he could be said to be Rome's earliest historical ruler.

In classical mythology, a Trojan prince who became the ancestral hero of the Romans. According to Homer, he was the son of Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite. During the Trojan War he owed his life to the frequent intervention of the gods. The legend on which Virgil's epic poem the Aeneid is based describes his escape from Troy and his eventual settlement in Latium, on the Italian peninsula.