JJ-TWT-07 - Aeneas

Traditionally, the Trojan War arose from a sequence of events beginning with a quarrel between the goddesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite. Eris the goddess of discord, was not invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, and so arrived bearing a gift. A golden apple, inscribed “for the fairest”.

Each of the goddesses claimed to be the “fairest”, and the rightful owner of the apple. They submitted the judgement to a shepherd they encountered tending his flock. Each of the goddesses promised the young man a boon in return for his favour. Power, wisdom, or love. The youth, in fact Paris, a Trojan prince who had been raised in the countryside, chose love, and awarded the apple to Aphrodite.

As his reward, Aphrodite caused Helen, the Queen of Sparta, and the most beautiful of all women, to fall in love with Paris.
The judgement of Paris earned him the ire of both Hera and Athena, and when Helen left her husband, Menelaus, the Spartan king, for Paris of Troy, Menelaus called upon all the kings and princes of Greece to wage war upon Troy.

Menelaus’ brother Agamemnon King of Mycenae, led an expedition of Achaean troops to Troy and besieged the city for ten years because of Paris’ insult. After the death of many heroes, including the Achaeans, Achilles, Ajax and the Trojans Hector and Paris, the city fell to the ruse of the Trojan Horse.

The Achaeans slaughtered the Trojans, except for some of the women and children whom they kept or sold as slaves. They desecrated the temples, thus earning the wrath of the gods. Few of the Achaeans returned safely to their homes, and many founded colonies in distant shores. The Romans later traced their origin to Aeneas, Aphrodite’s son and one of the Trojans, who was said to have led the surviving Trojans to modern day Italy.

Aeneas

Aeneas is a character in the Iliad, where he is twice saved from death by the gods for an as yet unknown destiny, but is an honorable warrior in his own right. He is the leader of the Trojan’s Dardanian allies, as well as a second cousin and principal lieutenant of Hector, son and heir of the Trojan King Priam.

Having held back from the fighting, aggrieved with Priam because in spite of his brave deeds he was not given his due share of honour, he leads an attack against Idomeneus to recover the body of his brother-in-law Alcathous at the urging of Deiphobus.

The Aeneid explains that Aeneas is one of the few Trojans who were not killed or enslaved when Troy fell. Aeneas, after being commanded by the gods to flee, gathered a group, collectively known as the Aeneads, who then travelled to Italy, and became progenitors of the Romans. The Aeneads included Aeneas’s trumpeter Misenus, his father Anchises, his friends Achates, Sergestus and Acmon, the healer Lapyx, the helmsman Palinurus and his son Ascanius. They carried with them the Lares and Penates , the statues of the household gods of Troy, and transplanted them to Italy.

Scale: 1/30
Material: Pewter alloy and synthetic fibers
Released Date: April 2023