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Standing before Bernini’s Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius in the Villa Borghese, a tangle of bodies becomes a city that once was an empire. Aeneas’ limbs emerge first; the strong arms, wrapped around his father, the central pillars of his legs shadowing his son trailing behind. Anchises clutches the sacred relics of Troy, Ascanius clings to his father’s leg — two vulnerable men and an entire civilisation, grasping desperately onto the hopes of our one man: Aeneas.
In sculpting the image of Aeneas carrying his father Anchises from the burning ruins of Troy — one of the most iconic images of ancient literature — Bernini captures not just a moment from Virgil’s Aeneid, but a visual manifesto of Roman identity—one that had been shaped and reshaped across centuries.
In the earliest depictions of Aeneas, he is an ordinary hero. The image of Aeneas carrying Anchises is one of a warrior, rooted in Homeric tradition — he appears as a minor character in both the Illiad and in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. In black figure pottery, the careful lines of Aeneas carrying Anchises trace around their elaborate armour; the shield Aeneas carries often dominates the silhouette, as does the plume of his helmet. As you would expect of a character of the Illiad, an epic where war is ever-present and heroism is the ultimate focus, Aeneas is a warrior first.
Aeneas Carrying Father Anchises, Goucher College Faculty
In the above depiction, Aeneas may be led by Hermes, explicitly displaying one of Homeric epic’s most important themes—the relationship between mortals and gods. The image of Aeneas carrying Anchises, while he remains considered only a Trojan warrior, is in itself a commentary on divine intervention: Anchises must be carried, because when bragging about his relations with Aphrodite, Zeus struck his foot with lightning. The misfortune of Anchises and his vulnerability is contrasted by the favour of the gods that consistently finds Aeneas; his mother Aphrodite, Apollo, and even the Greek-favouring Poseidon, rescue him from danger and intervene in the war for his sake. The two figures thus encapsulate Homer’s complex relationship with divinity, both destructive and merciful, and ultimately beholden to destiny, as the image of Aeneas and his father becomes an echo of a broader epic tradition.
There is a notable parallel between images of Aeneas carrying Anchises and other black figure depictions of Ajax carrying the body of Achilles. This combined visual tradition indicates a cultural link between the two warriors, and shifts the thematic focus to be less about the identity of the men being carried and more about the heroic act of their carrying.
British Museum, Item 301119001: black-figure amphora: Ajax carrying off the body of Achilles
The two stories are entirely different; Anchises is alive and vulnerable, Aeneas is saving him because he is his son, while Ajax fights to retrieve the corpse of his comrade. Their national identity is also completely lost; Aeneas is Trojan, and Ajax is one of the most acclaimed Greek warriors. This parallel across nations—a lack of nationalism one would never find in later Roman art—reveals another of Homer’s epic themes, evenly portraying the bloodshed and sacrifice of war as destructive to all it touches.
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