Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Aeneas.
The gallery
Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1618–1619
Early marble group by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, commissioned by Cardinal Scipione Borghese and still in the Galleria Borghese, Rome. Aeneas carries his aged father Anchises out of burning Troy while the boy Ascanius follows behind — three generations of the Trojan house stacked into a single spiralling column of flight.
Aeneas' Flight from Troy
Federico Barocci, 1598
Oil painting by Federico Barocci in the Galleria Borghese, Rome, a second version of a composition first painted for Emperor Rudolf II and now lost. Aeneas bears Anchises on his shoulders through the burning city, with his son Ascanius beside him and his wife Creusa behind — the family's desperate escape from the sack of Troy.
Aeneas Tells Dido of the Misfortunes of Troy
Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, c. 1815
Oil painting by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. In a scene from the opening books of Virgil's Aeneid, the Trojan hero recounts the fall of his city to Dido, queen of Carthage, as evening falls over her court — the telling that kindles the queen's fatal love.
On screen
Troy: Fall of a City
Owen Harris
The BBC/Netflix cycle keeps Aeneas in the burning city — Aphrodite's son gathering the remnant that will, offscreen, become Rome.
Helen of Troy
Robert Wise
Wise's epic gives Aeneas his Virgilian exit: the survivor who walks out of the sack carrying the future.
Troy
Wolfgang Petersen
Petersen's rewrite ends with Paris charging young Aeneas to carry Troy's sword west — the seed of Rome slipped into a Hollywood Iliad.
The Trojan Horse
Giorgio Ferroni
Steve Reeves' peplum puts Aeneas at the centre of Troy's last year — the Trojan hero as sword-and-sandal lead before the horse and the flight.
The Avenger
Giorgio Venturini
Reeves returns as Aeneas in Latium: the Trojan refugees, the local tribes, and the war that founds a new home after Carthage.
Eneide
Franco Rossi
The Italian RAI miniseries follows Virgil's epic end to end — from the burning city through Dido to the duel with Turnus.
In music & on stage
Dido and Aeneas
Henry Purcell
Purcell's chamber opera for a girls' school ends with Dido's lament as Aeneas sails for Italy — the Trojan's duty staged as the cruelest courtesy in English music.
Les Troyens
Hector Berlioz
Berlioz's vast Virgilian opera follows Aeneas from the fall of Troy to Dido's pyre — the hero of the Aeneid given a five-hour voice of brass and lament.
La Didone
Francesco Cavalli
Cavalli's early Venetian opera opens on Troy in flames and closes on Carthage — Aeneas as the lover who must leave so Rome can begin.
Didone abbandonata
Pietro Metastasio
Metastasio's libretto made Dido's abandonment a stock opera plot for a century — Aeneas forever the dutiful guest who sails at dawn.
In play
Lavinia
Ursula K. Le Guin
Le Guin retells the Aeneid's Italian books through the Latin bride Virgil barely named — Aeneas seen from the shore he comes to claim.
Dido, Queen of Carthage
Christopher Marlowe
Marlowe's early tragedy stages the Carthage books: Aeneas' storytelling, the gods' interference, and Dido's pyre after he sails.
A Total War Saga: Troy
Creative Assembly
The Trojan War strategy game fields Aeneas as epic fighter of Dardania — Venus' son as a playable faction in the Homeric sandbox.
A Thousand Ships
Natalie Haynes
Haynes' Trojan War mosaic keeps Creusa and the flight among the women's voices — Aeneas' escape retold from those who stay and those who leave.