Anchises

• 1. Introduction

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  In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Cassius tries to talk Brutus into murdering Caesar by pointing to a famous rescue from a burning city. The man saved in that story is Anchises, a Trojan of royal blood from Greek and Roman mythology. He was a mortal who took a goddess as his lover. He fathered the hero Aeneas, and he plays a surprising role in Virgil's Aeneid, where he keeps giving advice long after he has died. Why would Zeus arrange for Aphrodite to desire a mortal herdsman? What was Anchises warned never to say? And what does a father's ghost show his son in the underworld?

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• 2. Royal Blood

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  Capys, king of Dardania, and Themiste were the parents of Anchises. Themiste was a daughter of Ilus, and Ilus was a son of Tros, so the family line ran straight into the royal house of Troy.

  Anchises had a brother named Acoetes. Acoetes in turn was the father of Laocoön, the priest.

  Homer's Iliad also mentions a second man named Anchises, a wealthy native of Sicyon in Greece. That Anchises was the father of Echepolus and has no connection to the Trojan prince. It is the Trojan Anchises who catches the eye of a goddess on Mount Ida.

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• 3. The Goddess and the Herdsman

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  The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, the principal early telling of this story, opens with a boast about the goddess's reach. Only three virgin goddesses are immune to her power: Athena, Artemis, and Hestia. She has made other gods and goddesses fall in love with mortals. Not even Zeus escaped her. To put her in her place, he made her lust after the handsome mortal Anchises.

  On the hills of Mount Ida, Anchises is grazing his cattle, and the hymn gives him the beauty of an immortal. Aphrodite travels to Cyprus and bathes. She then returns to the Troad disguised as a mortal and finds him alone in a hut. He is sure she must be a goddess, a grace, or a nymph. She tells him instead that she is a Phrygian princess, brought there by Hermes to marry him. Overcome with desire, he declares he must have her at once, and the two make love.

  Afterward Aphrodite puts Anchises into a deep sleep and dresses. She wakes him and reveals who she is. Terrified and full of regret, he says that no good comes from sleeping with a goddess. She comforts him with a promise of a son named Aeneas, who will be respected among the Trojans and whose offspring will prosper. She also tells him of two other pairings between an immortal and a mortal who lived on afterward: Zeus and Ganymede, and Eos and Tithonus. Nymphs will raise the boy until he is five years old, and then she will bring him to his father. Her parting warning is blunt. If Anchises tells anyone that she is the child's mother, Zeus will strike him down.

  Anchises did not keep the secret, and the thunderbolt came. Different versions disagree on the result. In some it blinds him, and in others it kills him.

  The myth gives him a larger family than one famous son. According to the Bibliotheca, Anchises and Aphrodite had another son, Lyrus, who died childless. The scholiasts say Anchises later had a mortal wife named Eriopis. Homer's Iliad names a daughter, Hippodamia, the eldest, whom it calls "the darling of her father and mother." She married her cousin Alcathous. The next chapter of his life begins when Troy burns.

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• 4. Carried from Troy

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  In Book 2 of the Aeneid, Aeneas is telling Queen Dido how Troy fell, and he describes running home to save his father. Anchises, his wife Creusa, and his young son Ascanius are all there. Anchises at first refuses to leave and tells his son to go without him. Aeneas answers that if his father stays, they will all die in Troy.

  Creusa argues with Aeneas over the decision. While they quarrel, a painless flame appears on Ascanius' head. Anchises notices it and prays to Jupiter for a sign that they must go. Thunder sounds and a falling star crosses the sky. That convinces him, and he agrees to leave willingly.

  Aeneas lifts his father onto his back. Anchises carries the household gods, and Ascanius walks at his father's side. Creusa follows behind them but is killed during the escape. Once outside the city, they meet other Trojans who are also fleeing.

  The scene became a favorite subject for painters. A famous version by Federico Barocci hangs in the Galleria Borghese in Rome. Out of the city, the refugees will need a leader, and they turn to the old man.

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• 5. Wrong Turns

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  Book 3 of the Aeneid, still narrated by Aeneas to Dido at Carthage, shows Anchises as leader and advisor to the refugees. They sail first to Thrace and then to Delos. There Apollo gives an order: they must make their new home in the original home of their ancestors.

  Anchises misreads the message and takes it to mean Crete. The Trojans sail there and found a city. A plague soon overwhelms them. Anchises tells Aeneas to seek out the oracle at Delos for clarification.

  Before Aeneas can go, the household gods visit him in a dream. They tell him the Trojans are in the wrong place and must go to Italy. Aeneas reports the dream to his father. Anchises then realizes Apollo must have meant Italy all along, and the Trojans set out again.

  Italy is far away, and the voyage requires many stops. Anchises, who steered them toward Crete by mistake, never reaches Italy himself.

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• 6. Games and a Ghost

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  A year after the death of Anchises, storms force the Trojans ashore in Sicily, and Aeneas remembers the date. He had buried his father there with great honor. Now he calls for a festival in the dead man's memory. Rituals are performed and sacrifices made at the tomb.

  On the ninth day, Aeneas holds funeral games. They include a boat race, a foot race, a mock battle, boxing, and archery.

  Trouble follows the celebration. The Trojan women, tired of traveling, set fire to the ships. Jupiter saves most of the fleet, but Aeneas loses heart and considers staying in Sicily for good.

  Then the ghost of Anchises appears. He says Jupiter sent him and that Jupiter was the one who saved the ships. His advice is to leave the weary behind in Sicily and take only the strongest to Italy. He also tells his son to come and find him in the underworld.

  Aeneas follows the advice. Before sailing, he arranges for a priest to tend the tomb and sets aside a tract of woodland for it. The meeting his father asked for takes place in Book 6.

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• 7. The River of Forgetting

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  In Book 6, Aeneas descends to the underworld and finds his father, and the reunion is tearful. Aeneas tries to embrace him, but cannot.

  Swarms of people are gathered around a river. Aeneas asks about the crowd, and Anchises explains. The river is Lethe. Souls meant to be reincarnated are first cleansed by suffering, and then they drink at Lethe to forget their memories before returning to life. The crowd by the water, he adds, is made up of Aeneas' own future descendants.

  Anchises points out some of them and discusses what they will do. First comes his grandson Silvius, who will be born to Aeneas and Lavinia after Aeneas is dead. Anchises then names Romulus, a descendant of Silvius, and speaks of a Caesarian line descended from Ascanius. He tells his son that the Romans will prosper.

  Aeneas spots another figure and asks who he is. Anchises says it is Marcellus, a young man of great promise whom the Romans will lose too soon, to their deep grief.

  Finally Anchises leads Aeneas through the gates of horn and ivory and out of the underworld. It is his last major appearance in the poem. The Roman poet Ovid later glimpsed him in smaller moments.

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• 8. Ovid's Glimpses

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  In Book 9 of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Hebe restores youth to Iolaus, and other gods and goddesses ask for the same gift for the people they love. Venus asks that youth be returned to Anchises. This is his first mention in the poem, and it is only a request.

  Book 13 follows the Trojan refugees through Antandros and Thrace to Delos. There Anchises asks Anius, the king of Delos and a priest of Apollo, about his children. Anius describes his daughters, who received the power to turn whatever they touched into grain, wine, and olive oil. The gift brought only misery, because the Greeks kidnapped them to exploit it. The daughters begged to be freed and were turned into white doves.

  Book 14 touches Anchises twice more. One passage has Aeneas returning to Eryx, home of his friend Acestes, to honor his father's tomb with gifts. That recalls the funeral games of the Aeneid. A later passage recalls the journey into the underworld, where Aeneas sees the shade of his father. The last view Ovid gives of Anchises is the same as Virgil's: a spirit among the dead, waiting for his son.

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