Ænăria, an island in the bay of Puteoli, abounding with cypress trees. It received its name from Æneas, who is supposed to have landed there on his way to Latium. It is called Pithecusa by the Greeks, and now Ischia, and was famous once for its mineral waters. Livy, bk. 8, ch. 22.—Pliny, bk. 3, ch. 6; bk. 31, ch. 2.—Statius, bk. 3, Sylvæ, poem 5, li. 104.
Ænarium, a forest near Olenos in Achaia, sacred to Jupiter.
Ænasius, one of the Ephori at Sparta. Thucydides, bk. 9, ch. 2.
Ænēa, or Æneia, a town of Macedonia, 15 miles from Thessalonica, founded by Æneas. Livy, bk. 40, ch. 4; bk. 44, ch. 10.
Æneădes, a town of Chersonesus, built by Æneas. Cassander destroyed it, and carried the inhabitants to Thessalonica, lately built. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, bk. 1.
Ænĕădæ, a name given to the friends and companions of Æneas by Virgil, Æneid, bk. 1, li. 161.
Ænēas, a Trojan prince, son of Anchises and the goddess Venus. The opinions of authors concerning his character are different. His infancy was intrusted to the care of a nymph, and at the age of five he was recalled to Troy. He afterwards improved himself in Thessaly under Chiron, a venerable sage whose house was frequented by the young princes and heroes of the age. Soon after his return home he married Creusa, Priam’s daughter by whom he had a son called Ascanius. During the Trojan war he behaved with great valour, in defence of his country, and came to an engagement with Diomedes and Achilles. Yet Strabo, Dictys of Crete, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Dares of Phrygia accuse him of betraying his country to the Greeks, with Antenor, and of preserving his life and fortune by this treacherous measure. He lived at variance with Priam, because he received not sufficient marks of distinction from the king and his family, as Homer, Iliad, bk. 13, says. This might have provoked him to seek revenge by perfidy. Authors of credit report, that when Troy was in flames, he carried away upon his shoulders his father Anchises, and the statues of his household gods, leading in his hand his son Ascanius, and leaving his wife to follow behind. Some say that he retired to mount Ida, where he built a fleet of 20 ships, and set sail in quest of a settlement. Strabo and others maintain that Æneas never left his country, but rebuilt Troy, where he reigned, and his posterity after him. Even Homer, who lived 400 years after the Trojan war, says, Iliad, bk. 20, li. 30, &c., that the gods destined Æneas and his posterity to reign over the Trojans. This passage Dionysius of Halicarnassus explained, by saying that Homer meant the Trojans who had gone over to Italy with Æneas, and not the actual inhabitants of Troy. According to Virgil and other Latin authors, who, to make their court to the Roman emperors, traced their origin up to Æneas, and described his arrival into Italy as indubitable, he with his fleet first came to the Thracian Chersonesus, where Polymnestor, one of his allies, reigned. After visiting Delos, the Strophades, and Crete, where he expected to find the empire promised him by the oracle, as in the place where his progenitors were born, he landed in Epirus, and Drepanum, the court of king Acestes, in Sicily, where he buried his father. From Sicily he sailed for Italy, but was driven on the coasts of Africa and kindly received by Dido queen of Carthage, to whom, on his first interview he gave one of the garments of the beautiful Helen. Dido, being enamoured of him, wished to marry him; but he left Carthage by order of the gods. In his voyage he was driven to Sicily, and from thence he passed to Cumæ, where the Sibyl conducted him to hell, that he might hear from his father the fates which attended him and all his posterity. After a voyage of seven years, and the loss of 13 ships, he came to the Tyber. Latinus, the king of the country, received him with hospitality, and promised him his daughter Lavinia, who had been before betrothed to king Turnus by her mother Amata. To prevent this marriage, Turnus made war against Æneas: and after many battles, the war was decided by a combat between the two rivals, in which Turnus was killed. Æneas married Lavinia, in whose honour he built the town of Lavinium, and succeeded his father-in-law. After a short reign Æneas was killed in a battle against the Etrurians. Some say that he was drowned in the Numicus, and his body weighed down by his armour; upon which the Latins, not finding their king, supposed that he had been taken up to heaven, and therefore offered him sacrifices as to a god. Dionysius of Halicarnassus fixes the arrival of Æneas in Italy in the 54th olympiad. Some authors suppose that Æneas after the siege of Troy, fell to the share of Neoptolemus, together with Andromache, and that he was carried to Thessaly, whence he escaped to Italy. Others say that, after he had come to Italy, he returned to Troy, leaving Ascanius king in Latium. Æneas has been praised for his piety, and submission to the will of the gods. Homer, Iliad, bks. 13 & 20; Hymn to Aphrodite.—Apollodorus, bk. 3, ch. 12.—Diodorus, bk. 3.—Pausanias, bk. 2, ch. 33; bk. 3, ch. 22; bk. 10, ch. 25.—Plutarch, Romulus & Coriolanus; Quæstiones Romanæ.—Valerius Maximus, bk. 1, ch. 8.—Florus, bk. 1, ch. 1.—Justin, bk. 20, ch. 1; bk. 31, ch. 8; bk. 43, ch. 1.—Dictys Cretensis, bk. 5.—Dares Phrygius, ch. 6.—Dionysius of Halicarnassus, bk. 1, ch. 11.—Strabo, bk. 13.—Livy, bk. 1, ch. 1.—Virgil, Æneid.—Aurelius Victor.—Ælian, Varia Historia, bk. 8, ch. 22.—Propertius, bk. 4, poem 1, li. 42.—Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 14, fable 3, &c.; Tristia, bk. 4, li. 798.——A son of Æneas and Lavinia, called Sylvius, because his mother retired with him into the woods after his father’s death. He succeeded Ascanius in Latium, though opposed by Julius the son of his predecessor. Virgil, Æneid, bk. 6, li. 770.—Livy, bk. 1, ch. 3.——An ambassador sent by the Lacedæmonians to Athens, to treat of peace, in the 8th year of the Peloponnesian war.——An ancient author who wrote on tactics, besides other treatises, which, according to Ælian, were epitomized by Cineas the friend of Pyrrhus.——A native of Gaza, who, from a Platonic philosopher, became a Christian, A.D. 485, and wrote a dialogue called Theophrastus, on the immortality of the soul and the resurrection.
Ænēia, or Ænia, a place near Rome, afterwards called Janiculum.——A city of Troas. Strabo, bk. 17.——A city of Macedonia. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, bk. 1.
Æneides, a patronymic given to Ascanius, as son of Æneas. Virgil, Æneid, bk. 9, li. 653.
Ænēis, a poem of Virgil, which has for its subject the settlement of Æneas in Italy. The great merit of this poem is well known. The author has imitated Homer, and, as some say, Homer is superior to him only because he is more ancient, and is an original. Virgil died before he had corrected it, and at his death desired it might be burnt. This was happily disobeyed, and Augustus saved from the flames a poem which proved his family to be descended from the kings of Troy. The Æneid had engaged the attention of the poet for 11 years, and in the first six books it seems that it was Virgil’s design to imitate Homer’s Odyssey, and in the last the Iliad. The action of the poem comprehends eight years, one of which only, the last, is really taken up by action, as the seven first are merely episodes, such as Juno’s attempts to destroy the Trojans, the loves of Æneas and Dido, the relation of the fall of Troy, &c. In the first book of the Æneid, the hero is introduced, in the seventh year of his expedition, sailing in the Mediterranean, and shipwrecked on the African coast, where he is received by Dido. In the second, Æneas, at the desire of the Phœnician queen, relates the fall of Troy, and his flight through the general conflagration to mount Ida. In the third, the hero continues his narration, by a minute account of the voyage through the Cyclades, the places where he landed, and the dreadful storm with the description of which the poem opened. Dido, in the fourth book, makes public her partiality to Æneas, which is slighted by the sailing of the Trojans from Carthage, and the book closes with the suicide of the disappointed queen. In the fifth book, Æneas sails to Sicily, where he celebrates the anniversary of his father’s death, and thence pursues his voyage to Italy. In the sixth, he visits the Elysian fields, and learns from his father the fate which attends him and his descendants, the Romans. In the seventh book, the hero reaches the destined land of Latium, and concludes a treaty with the king of the country, which is soon broken by the interference of Juno, who stimulates Turnus to war. The auxiliaries of the enemy are enumerated; and in the eighth book, Æneas is assisted by Evander, and receives from Venus a shield wrought by Vulcan, on which are represented the future glory and triumphs of the Roman nation. The reader is pleased, in the ninth book, with the account of battles between the rival armies, and the immortal friendship of Nisus and Euryalus. Jupiter, in the tenth, attempts a reconciliation between Venus and Juno, who patronized the opposite parties; the fight is renewed, Pallas killed, and Turnus saved from the avenging hand of Æneas, by the interposition of Juno. The eleventh book gives an account of the funeral of Pallas, and of the meditated reconciliation between Æneas and Latinus, which the sudden appearance of the enemy defeats. Camilla is slain, and the combatants separated by the night. In the last book, Juno prevents the single combat agreed upon by Turnus and Æneas. The Trojans are defeated in the absence of their king; but on the return of Æneas, the battle assumes a different turn, a single combat is fought by the rival leaders, and the poem is concluded by the death of king Turnus. Pliny, bk. 7, ch. 30, &c.