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Aeneas in Roman mythology, the son of Anchises, a Trojan prince, and Venus, goddess of love. After the capture of Troy by the Greeks, Aeneas escaped from the fallen city with the help of his mother. Carrying his aged father on his back and leading his little son by the hand, Aeneas made his way to the seacoast. In the confusion of flight, his wife was left behind. A long, adventure-filled voyage took Aeneas to Thrace, Delos, Crete, and Sicily, where his father died. The goddess Juno, who had always hated Aeneas and wanted to prevent him from founding Rome, which she knew to be his destiny, tried to drown him in a violent storm. He and his crew were cast up on the African coast, where they were welcomed by Dido, the beautiful queen of Carthage. Dido fell in love with Aeneas and begged him to remain. When he refused and set sail, she took her own life in despair. After several years of wandering, Aeneas reached Italy and the mouth of the Tiber. There he was hospitably received by Latinus, king of Latium. He became betrothed to Lavinia, the daughter of Latinus, but before he could marry her, Juno caused Turnus, king of the Rutuli and a rejected suitor of Lavinia, to make war against Aeneas and Latinus. The war was resolved by hand-to-hand combat, in which Turnus was defeated and slain by Aeneas. Aeneas then ruled for several years in Latium and, by marrying Lavinia, accomplished the union of Trojans and Latins that would one day produce the Roman people. The great Roman epic the Aeneid, by Virgil, tells the story of Aeneas's perilous wanderings in detail and ends with the death of Turnus.
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