Ascanius

For other uses, see Ascanius (disambiguation).
The boy Ascanius weeps and Venus hovers nearby as the physician Iapyx treats the wound of Aeneas (wall painting from Pompeii, 1st century AD)

Ascanius (/əˈskeɪniəs/; Ancient Greek: Ἀσκάνιος)[1] was a legendary king of Alba Longa (1176-1138 BC) and the son of the Trojan hero Aeneas and Creusa, daughter of Priam. He is a significant figure in Roman mythology because of his genealogy: as the son of the Roman founding father Aeneas, himself the son of the goddess Venus and the Trojan prince Anchises, he was regarded as an ancestor of the Roman people. Under his additional name Iulus, he was claimed as the particular ancestor of the gens Iulia, the family of Julius Caesar, and therefore a progenitor of the first line of Roman emperors, the Julio-Claudian dynasty. In some Roman genealogies, he is also made to be an ancestor of Romulus and Remus. Together with his father, he is a major character in Virgil's Aeneid.

  1. ^ Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.65-1.70