Who He Is
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, and for that reason he considers himself long a man hated by the gods and useless. He is the counselor of the wandering: he reads the oracles, decides the course, prays in danger, and errs when he misreads them. What he wants is little, to stay and die where he is, but he ends up carried out of burning Troy with the household gods, and his is the image that the poem most associates with Pietas: the son who leaves the city with his father on his shoulders. He dies at Drepanum, in Sicily, before the voyage ends, and returns in a dream and then in Elysium, where he shows his son the future of Rome.
Trajectory
In Book II he refuses exile. He says that the young, of full blood, must flee, that the gods would have kept the house if they wanted him to live, and that he has already seen one destruction of Troy and survived it. Neither Aeneas's arguments nor the weeping of Creusa dissuade him. When a harmless flame appears over the head of his grandson Ascanius, he prays to Jupiter for a sign, thunder sounds on the left, and a star falls, streaking the sky toward Mount Ida, and then he gives way. His words are of obedience, not of persuasion. He leaves carried, taking the Penates, because Aeneas, stained with blood, may not touch them before he washes himself.
Vos o, quibus integer aevi / Sanguis, ait, solidaeque suo stant robore vires, / Vos, agitate fugam., you, O, in whom the blood of your age is whole and whose strength stands firm in its own vigor, you, he says, press on with flight.
Jam jam nulla mora est: sequor, et, qua ducitis, adsum. / Di patrii, servate domum, servate nepotem: / Vestrum hoc augurium, vestroque in numine Troja est. / Cedo equidem; nec, nate, tibi comes ire recuso., now, now there is no delay: I follow, and wherever you lead, I am there. Gods of my fathers, keep the house, keep the grandson: this augury is yours, and in your divinity Troy stands. I yield, indeed, and, my son, I do not refuse to go with you as your companion.
In Book III he is the one who directs. He has the sails entrusted to the fates at Antandros, and at Delos he interprets the oracle of Apollo, which orders them to seek "the ancient mother," according to ancestral tradition: he concludes it is Crete, from which Teucer came. The reading costs a city and a plague, until the Penates correct it in a dream, and Anchises admits the error, which he attributes to the Trojans' double ancestry, and recalls that only Cassandra spoke of Hesperia without being believed. Then he prays with hands raised before the Harpies, gives his hand to the Greek Achaemenides, and reads in the white horses of the Italian coast both war and the hope of peace. The book ends with his death at Drepanum.
Seque novo veterum deceptum errore locorum. / Tum memorat: Nate, Iliacis exercite fatis, / Sola mihi tales casus Cassandra canebat., and that he had been deceived by a new error about ancient places. Then he says: son, harried by the fates of Ilium, only Cassandra used to sing such events to me.
Et pater Anchises: Bellum, o terra hospita, portas: / Bello armantur equi: bellum haec armenta minantur. / Sed tamen idem olim curru succedere sueti / Quadrupedes, et frena jugo concordia ferre: / Spes et pacis, ait, and his father Anchises: "It is war, O hospitable land, that you bring: for war the horses arm themselves, war these herds threaten. But still, those same quadrupeds are used to draw the chariot and to bear the bridle in harmony under the yoke: there is hope of peace," he said.
Heu! genitorem, omnis curae casusque levamen, / Amitto Anchisen. Hic me, pater optime, fessum / Deseris, heu! tantis nequidquam erepte periclis!, alas! I lose my father Anchises, the solace of all care and misfortune. Here, best of fathers, you leave me exhausted, you who escaped so many dangers in vain!
In Book IV he is already dead, and yet he weighs on the decision. In answering Dido, Aeneas says that his father admonishes him in dreams every time night covers the earth, one of the reasons he does not stay in Carthage.
In Book V the Trojans celebrate the first anniversary of his death with games at the tomb, and a serpent comes out of the grave and tastes the offerings, without Aeneas knowing whether it is the genius of the place or a servant of his father. After the burning of the ships he appears in a dream, by Jupiter's order, approves the counsel of Nautes, announces the war against a hard people in Latium, and orders his son to go first to Avernus, correcting in passing the image his son has of him: he is not in Tartarus, he dwells among the pious.
Imperio Jovis huc venio, qui classibus ignem / Depulit, et coelo tandem miseratus ab alto est. / Consiliis pare quae nunc pulcherrima Nautes / Dat senior: lectos juvenes, fortissima corda, / Defer in Italiam. Gens dura atque aspera cultu / Debellanda tibi Latio est. Ditis tamen ante / Infernas accede domos, et Averna per alta / Congressus pete, nate, meos. Non me impia namque / Tartara habent tristesque umbrae; sed amoena piorum / Concilia Elysiumque colo. Huc casta Sibylla / Nigrantum multo pecudum te sanguine ducet., I come here by Jupiter's order, who drove the fire away from the ships and at last took pity from the high heavens. Obey the best counsels that old Nautes now gives you: take to Italy the chosen young men, the stoutest hearts. A hard people, rough in its customs, you must conquer in Latium. But first enter the infernal dwellings of Dis and, through the depths of Avernus, come, son, to meet me. For neither impious Tartarus nor the sad shades hold me; I dwell in the pleasant assemblies of the pious and in Elysium. There the chaste Sibyl will lead you, with the blood of many black beasts.
In Book VI it is he who waits for his son in Elysium, counting the days, and who receives him in tears. The embrace fails three times, because a shade cannot be grasped, and the gesture repeats almost in words what happened to Creusa in Book II. Before the river Lethe he explains that a single mind animates the universe, that souls pay after death for the stains of the body, and that, after a thousand years, a god calls them to forget and to want to return to a body. He then shows the line of future Romans down to Augustus, who will found the golden ages again, and dictates Rome's mission: to govern, to impose the custom of peace, to spare the submitted and to subdue the proud. He closes the procession with the young Marcellus, whom the fates will show to the earth and take early, and asks for flowers for him. At last he sends his son away through the gate of ivory.
Ter conatus ibi collo dare brachia circum; / Ter frustra comprensa manus effugit imago, / Par levibus ventis, volucrique simillima somno, three times there he tried to throw his arms around the neck; three times the image, grasped in vain, escaped his hands, like the light winds, most like a flying sleep.
Has omnes, ubi mille rotam volvere per annos, / Lethaeum ad fluvium deus evocat agmine magno, / Scilicet immemores supera ut convexa revisant, / Rursus et incipiant in corpora velle reverti, all of these, when they have turned the wheel for a thousand years, a god calls to the river Lethe in a great throng, so that, forgetful, they may revisit the vault above and begin again to wish to return to bodies.
Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento; / Hae tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere morem, / Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos, Roman, remember to rule the peoples with your power; these will be your arts: to impose the custom of peace, to spare the submitted, and to subdue the proud
In Book VII his word comes true in the mouth of a boy: Ascanius jokes that now they eat even the tables, and Aeneas recognizes the prophecy his father left him, that the hunger which would make them gnaw the tables would mark the end of the wandering. In Book VIII Evander recognizes in Aeneas the face and voice of Anchises, whom he knew when young, and it is through this bond that he accepts the alliance. In Book IX Apollo takes the form of Butes, Anchises's old squire, to order Ascanius to stop fighting. In Book X Aeneas invokes his father's shades to refuse Mago's ransom.
Argenti atque auri memoras quae multa talenta, / Gnatis parce tuis: belli commercia Turnus / Sustulit ista prior, jam tum Pallante perempto. / Hoc patris Anchisae Manes, hoc sentit Iulus, the silver and gold of which you speak in so many talents, keep it for your sons: Turnus was the first to abolish these dealings of war, when he killed Pallas. This is what the shades of my father Anchises and Iulus feel.
In Book XII, the name of Anchises is Turnus's last card, as he lies fallen: he asks Aeneas to remember that he too had such a father, and to take pity on the old age of Daunus.
Equidem merui, nec deprecor, inquit; / Utere sorte tua. Miseri te si qua parentis / Tangere cura potest, oro (fuit et tibi talis / Anchises genitor), Dauni miserere senectae; / Et me, seu corpus spoliatum lumine mavis, / Redde meis. Vicisti, et victum tendere palmas / Ausonii videre: tua est Lavinia conjux; / Ulterius ne tende odiis, I have earned it, and I do not plead, he said; use your fortune. If any care for a wretched father can touch you, I beg you (you too had such a father, Anchises): have pity on the old age of Daunus; and give me back to mine, or, if you prefer, my body stripped of its light. You have conquered, and the Ausonians have seen the vanquished stretch out his palms: Lavinia is your wife; do not carry hatred any further.
Themes Embodied
Anchises embodies filial and religious Duty: he obeys the gods when they speak through a sign, and it is his obedience that sets the fleet in motion, from Troy to Crete and from Crete to Italy. In him Fate and free will appear as a problem of reading, because the poem separates the divine source, which does not err, from human interpretation, which does, and his error at Delos shows that fate moves by trial and correction. Home, Exile, and Return is in the scene of the old man carried out with the household gods, and Empire and colonialism in the procession of Book VI, which shows the glory of Rome with two warnings inside it, the civil war of Caesar and Pompey and the death of Marcellus.
Anchises is the only character in the poem who crosses over to the other side and keeps leading. Alive, he refuses the voyage and then directs it; dead, he summons his son to Avernus and gives the journey its meaning. His authority never comes from force; it comes from knowing how to read what the gods command, and this is what the poem seems to ask of a leader of Rome: the son acts, the father interprets, and the future shows itself only when the two are together.
Relationships
- Aeneas: the son who carries him on his shoulders, who buries him at Drepanum, and who seeks him in Avernus.
- Ascanius: the grandson over whose head the sign appears that convinces him, and who in Book VII fulfills the prophecy without knowing it.
- Creusa: the daughter-in-law, who with Ascanius asks Aeneas to take the family along, and whose shade the embrace of Book VI repeats.
- Venus: the goddess who loved him and who protects his son throughout the poem.
- Evander: the Arcadian king who knew him as a young man and recognizes his face in Aeneas.
- Turnus: the rival who, defeated, appeals to Aeneas's father to beg for his life.
In Art
The flight from Troy with the father on the shoulders appears in the painting The Flight of Aeneas from Troy and in the sculpture Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius.