Which goddess was the mother of Aeneas?

The goddess who was the mother of Aeneas was Aphrodite. In Greek mythology, Aeneas was the son of Aphrodite and Anchises, a Trojan prince descended from the royal house of Troy.

The story of Aeneas’s birth appears in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. Zeus causes Aphrodite to fall in love with the mortal Anchises, who is tending cattle near Mount Ida. Their son is Aeneas, whom Aphrodite entrusts to nymphs for part of his childhood before he is returned to his father.

Aeneas plays a supporting but important role in Homer’s Iliad. He leads the Dardanians, fights for Troy, and is repeatedly rescued by gods because he has a future destiny. Aphrodite protects him during a battlefield encounter with Diomedes, while Poseidon later saves him from Achilles.

A common mix-up comes from Roman mythology, where Aphrodite is known as Venus. Virgil’s Aeneid greatly expands Aeneas’s story and presents him as an ancestor of the Romans, but the goddess in his Greek family story remains Aphrodite.