In Virgil’s Aeneid, Aeneas carries his father Anchises from burning Troy.
Aeneas escapes the city during its destruction with Anchises on his back, while leading his young son Ascanius by the hand. His wife Creusa is lost during the escape. This image became one of the defining scenes of Roman art and literature.
Virgil’s epic presents Aeneas as a Trojan survivor chosen to begin the ancestral line that eventually leads to Rome. The Aeneid is not a retelling of the Iliad’s entire war; it follows Aeneas after Troy’s fall and describes his difficult journey toward Italy.
Aeneas was already a character in Homeric epic, where he is a prominent Trojan warrior and son of the goddess Aphrodite. Virgil greatly expands his postwar story and gives it a Roman national purpose.