Aeneid

Characters

Character Map

Who is who, and who belongs to whom. Click a name to open the character page.

Aeneas Aeneas is the Trojan hero whom the poem follows from the night Troy falls to the final duel with Turnus, in Italy. He is the son of the goddess Venus and the mortal Anchises, and he leaves the burning city with his father on his shoulders, his son Ascanius by... Dido Dido, also called Elissa, is the queen who founded Carthage, a city she built on the North African coast. She was born a princess in Tyre, a Phoenician city, and fled her brother Pygmalion, who had killed her husband, Sychaeus, before the altar to seize his... Turnus Turnus is king of the Rutulians, son of Daunus and the nymph Venilia, brother of the nymph Juturna, and the antagonist of the second half of the Aeneid. He is neither an invader nor a tyrant: when Aeneas reaches the mouth of the Tiber, Turnus is already the... Anchises Anchises is the father of Aeneas, a Trojan prince already old when the poem begins. The goddess Venus loved him, and from that union Aeneas was born, which gives the son divine blood. In Book II he himself recounts that Jupiter struck him with a thunderbolt,... Ascanius Ascanius, also called Iulus, is the son of Aeneas and Creusa. When the poem begins he is a boy, and the poem treats him as the future that destiny pulls forward: Jupiter promises Venus that he will reign in Alba, and it is in his name that Mercury rebukes... Juno Juno is the queen of the gods, wife of Jupiter, and the pursuer of Aeneas throughout the poem. The reasons Book I gives are two: she loves Carthage, the city that fate promises will be destroyed by the hands of the Trojans' descendants, and she holds an old... Venus Venus is the goddess of love and the mother of Aeneas, a son she had with the mortal Anchises. In the poem she is the hero's protector and Juno's adversary, and what she wants is only this: that her son reach Italy alive. She does not command fate, and she... Camilla Camilla is the queen of the Volscians, a virgin consecrated to Diana and the great warrior of the Aeneid, who fights surrounded by armed companions. She runs faster than the wind, commands cavalry, and refuses the spinning and weaving that the poem assigns to... Latinus Latinus is the old king of Latium, the land where the Trojans arrive in the second half of the Aeneid, and the father of Lavinia. He has ruled in peace for a long time and no longer has a male heir, because the only son he had died young, and so the future of... Lavinia Lavinia is the only daughter of King Latinus and Queen Amata, and the bride in dispute in the second half of the Aeneid. Many men seek her in Latium and throughout Ausonia, her mother wants her married to Turnus, and fate reserves her for Aeneas. She barely... Amata Amata is the queen of Latium, wife of King Latinus and mother of Lavinia. She wants her daughter to marry Turnus, king of the Rutulians, and rejects the foreigner Aeneas as a son-in-law, calling him an exile who will carry the girl off in a ship. She is the... Evander Evander is the old king of the Arcadians, who lives, poor and at peace with the gods, on the hill where Rome will one day rise. He was expelled from his homeland, Arcadia, and founded there a small town of huts called Pallanteum, aided by his mother, the... Pallas Pallas is the son of Evander, king of the Arcadians, a youth too young for war and eager for it. He runs with a spear to meet Aeneas's ships before knowing who they are, because he does not want his father's rite interrupted, and then departs as an ally and... Nisus Nisus is a Trojan warrior, a guard at one of the gates of the camp, and the inseparable friend of Euryalus, the youngest and most handsome of the Trojans. He is older and more cautious than his companion, and the idea that leads the two to their deaths is... Euryalus Euryalus is a young Trojan warrior, the most handsome in the army, almost a boy, and Nisus's companion. Son of a father accustomed to wars, he followed Aeneas from Troy, and his mother was, among so many mothers, the only one who dared to follow him, without... Mezentius Mezentius is the Etruscan king of Agylla, a tyrant driven out by his own people, and one of Turnus's allies in the war against the Trojans. The poem presents him as one who scorns the gods and is cruel enough to kill by tying the dead to the living. He flees... Creusa Creusa is Aeneas's first wife and the mother of Ascanius. She appears in a single book, Book II, on the night Troy falls, and what she wants there is simple: that her husband not leave the family alone before the Greeks. The poem removes her from the scene... Anna Anna is the sister and confidante of Dido in Carthage. She appears only in Book IV of the Aeneid, but there in three moments that decide the tragedy: she is the first to whom Dido confesses her passion for Aeneas, the one who persuades her to yield to love,...

Other characters

Achates: Aeneas's faithful companion, who accompanies him shrouded in mist on his first entrance into Carthage and stands by his side in Latium.
Sinon: a Greek who lets himself be captured on purpose and convinces the Trojans that the horse is a sacred offering, until he opens the horse's belly at night.
Laocoön: priest of Neptune who warns the Trojans against the Greek gift and plants his spear in the horse, and dies, with his two sons, crushed by two sea serpents.
Priam: the old king of Troy, who dons the arms of his youth and is finally killed by Pyrrhus before the altar, in the scene that sums up the fall of the city.
Helenus: son of Priam and a seer, who rules in Buthrotum married to Andromache and teaches Aeneas what to avoid on the voyage and the sign of the white sow.
Andromache: widow of Hector, who offers rites at an empty tomb of her husband in Buthrotum and gives Ascanius embroidered garments because he reminds her of her lost son.
Palinurus: Aeneas's pilot, whom Sleep throws into the sea during the night and who reappears, unburied, on the bank of the river of the dead.
The Sibyl of Cumae: prophetess of Apollo who answers in riddles, teaches Aeneas to pick the golden bough and guides him on the descent to the world of the dead.
Charon: ferryman of the dead, who refuses passage to Aeneas for being alive until the Sibyl shows him the bough.
Iarbas: neighboring king whom Dido refused as a husband, and who prays to Jupiter when he learns of her love for Aeneas, which leads Mercury to Carthage.
Mercury: messenger of Jupiter, who descends twice to Carthage to remind Aeneas of his mission and to warn him, on the night of departure, of what Dido is preparing.
Allecto: Fury sent by Juno, who drives Amata and Turnus mad and opens the war in Latium.
Juturna: Turnus's sister and a nymph, who protects him as long as fate allows, diverts his chariot and breaks the pact of the last book.
Lausus: son of Mezentius, who hurls himself at Aeneas to save his wounded father and dies by his hand, and Aeneas mourns him on seeing the youth's piety.
Drances: an old enemy of Turnus, who in the Latin council proposes peace and an alliance with Aeneas and challenges the Rutulian to fight alone.
Aruns: Etruscan warrior who waits for the right moment and kills Camilla with a blow from afar, after praying to Apollo.
Neptune: god of the sea, who calms Aeolus's storm in Book I and promises Venus a safe crossing, at the cost of a single life.