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longed to the Etruscans.” 330 Rather, we are dealing with a
genuinely Latial tradition, which radiated to south Etruria.
The earliest historical source connecting Aeneas with
the west is provided by the work of Stesikhoros (early 6th
century BC) as preserved for the Tabula Iliaca, which
shows Aeneas with his father Anchises (holding the cista
sacra) and son Ascanius bording a ship eis tn Hesperian.
331 Next, Hellanikos of Lesbos holds that Aeneas
came to Italy from the land of the Molossians, either with
Odysseus or after him, and founded the city of Rome,
which he named after a Trojan woman called Rm. 332
When the date of the foundation of Rome became fixed at
753 BC, however, chronographers and historians faced the
problem that one person could not possibly be staged as a
combattant in the Trojan war and at the same time be held
responsible for the foundation of Rome some five centuries
later. Hence, authors from the 4th century BC onwards
prefer to attribute the foundation of Rome to a descendant
of Aeneas (or of a woman from his Trojan followers), 333
culminating into Dionysios of Halikarnassos’ calculation
that Romulus is the 17th in descent from Aeneas! 334 This
process of filling up the time between the Late Bronze Age
and an advanced stage of the Early Iron Age is of doubtful
historical value: the Italic people had, for instance, no recollection
at all of the arrival of the ancestors of the Umbrians
and Oscans in Italy c. 1200 BC. Rather, therefore, we
should face the fact that, as noted above, Aeneas as a hero
and saint became associated in myth with widely separated
historical episodes.
Considering the aforesaid hero-shrine, the association
of Aeneas with Lavinium seems prior to the one with
Rome. According to the inscription reported by Dionysios
of Halikarnassos to belong to this hero-shrine, Aeneas was
worshipped here as a god. 335 Further evidence for an Aeneas
cult is provided by a cippus from Tor Tignosa, 5
miles inland from Lavinium, dated to the late 4th or early
330 Galinsky 1969: 131.
331 Galinsky 1969: 106-7; Figs. 85-6.
332 Dionysios of Halikarnassos, Roman Antiquities I, 72, 2; cf.
Galinski 1969: 103.
333 Galinsky 1969: 142-3; cf. Dionysios of Halikarnassos, Roman
Antiquities I, 72, 5.
334 Dionysios of Halikarnassos, Roman Antiquities I, 45, 3; see for
the discussion of the intervening kings ibid. I, 71 and cf. Livius,
History of Rome I, 3, 6-11: all very shadowy figures, indeed.
335 Roman Antiquities I, 64, 5.
91
3rd century BC, which carries the legend
Lare Aineia d(onum)
“Dedication to Lar Aineias”. 336
One of the outstanding deeds with which Aeneas is credited
concerns his introduction of the cult of the ancestral
Trojan gods, the Penates. 337 According to the imagery, he
is responsible for saving the sacra of the Penates, carried
either by his father Anchises in a cista338 or by his wife
Creusa in a doliolum, 339 from destruction at the time of the
fall of Troy. Now, Timaios (early 3rd century BC) informs
us that the holy objects of the sanctuary at Lavinium were
kept in a keramos Trikos “a Trojan earthen jar”. 340
Rightly, Galinsky connected this information with Livius’
account that during the Gallic invasion in 390 BC the sacra
of the Roman Penates were placed in two doliola,
earthen jars. 341 That the sanctuary of the Latin League at
Lavinium with its 13 altars, which, as we have noted
above, lies at a 100 metre distance of Aeneas’ heroon, was
indeed dedicated (at least partly) to the cult of the Penates
is confirmed by a 6th century BC inscription associated
with altar no. 8, reading
Castorei Podlouquei-que qurois
“to the kouroi Castor and Pollux”; 342
the Greek Dioskouroi, namely, were identified in literary
tradition with the Penates. 343 In Etruria, these were also
venerated as testified by an early 5th century BC inscription
from Tarquinia, reading
itun turuce Venel Atelinas Tinas cliniiaras
336 Galinsky 1969: 158.
337 See Dionysios of Halikarnassos, Roman Antiquities I, 69, 4 for
their identifcation with the Kabeiroi or Megaloi Theoi of Samothrace.
338 See note 326 above.
339 Galinsky 1969: Fig. 45.
340 Fragmente der griechischen Historiker 566 F 59; cf. Galinsky
1969: 155.
341 History of Rome V, 40, 7-8.
342 Gordon 1983: 76-7; cf. Galinsky 1969: 151; 154.
343 Cassius Hemina frg. 6 = Servius ad Aeneid I, 378; cf. Galinsky
1969: 154; Fig. 119 (Dioscuri) = Fig. 120 (Penates).