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Characters in Book VI of the Aeneid

  • Julius CaesarJulius Caesar was stabbed at least twenty-three times by some sixty conspirators.
  • AugustusAt nineteen, Augustus accepted a dead man's will and took Julius Caesar's name.
  • TheseusTheseus entered a maze with a hidden sword and a ball of thread. Inside waited the half-man, half-bull Minotaur.
  • TitansThe Titans, the gods who ruled Greek mythology before Zeus and his siblings, ended up behind gates of bronze. An old poem says it plainly: "They cannot get out, for Poseidon has set bronze gates upon it, and a wall is extended on both…
  • CerberusOne ancient Greek writer said Cerberus was not a dog at all, but a large venomous snake.
  • Musaeus of AthensSocrates listed Musaeus among the figures he most wished to meet in the afterlife. Homer was on the list too.
  • PasiphaëMinos broke a vow to Poseidon, but Queen Pasiphaë paid the price. Her curse led to the birth of the Minotaur.
  • Lucius Junius BrutusAt Delphi, Lucius Junius Brutus pretended to trip and kissed the ground. He read the oracle's "mother" as the earth.
  • IxionIxion, king of the Lapiths, ruled the most ancient tribe of Thessaly. In Greek mythology he became a byword for punishment without end. His ruin did not begin with a war or a curse. It began with a promise to a father-in-law that he never…
  • OrpheusOrpheus walked into the underworld to bring back his dead wife, Eurydice. He lost her when he looked back.
  • Phaedra (mythology)Phaedra, a princess of Crete in Greek mythology, carried a name that comes from the Greek word phaidros, meaning bright. Her story is anything but bright. It is a tale of forbidden longing for her own stepson, and of a royal household that…
  • Numa PompiliusNuma Pompilius, the legendary second king of Rome, was born on the very day the city itself began. So says Plutarch, who gives that day as the 21st of April 753 BC, the traditional date for the founding of Rome. By the same tradition, Numa…
  • Marcus Furius CamillusRome's hero Camillus may be almost as fictional as Romulus. Historian Mary Beard makes that case.

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