646 THE NATURE OF ROMAN MYTHOLOGY
The early Roman historians also developed the legend of Aeneas. Around
200 B.c. Fabius Pictor, who wrote in Greek, described his arrival in Italy and the
founding of Alba Longa by Ascanius (lulus) thirty years later. In his Origines,
the founder of Latin historiography, Cato the Elder (who died in 149), brought
Aeneas to Italy, where he married Lavinia and founded the city of Laurolavinium
(which is evidently the same as Lavinium) in an area called the ager Laurens. In
this version, Latinus fought against Aeneas, while both Turnus and Aeneas per-
ished in a later battle, and the Etruscan warrior Mezentius was killed by Asca-
nius in a third battle. Ascanius then left Laurolavinium to found Alba. Finally,
Cato calculated that there were 432 years between the fall of Troy and the found-
ing of Rome by Romulus.
This is the basic version of Aeneas' myth, which is also told with some vari-
ations by Livy, Vergil's contemporary. All these stories make Aeneas fight with
the indigenous inhabitants (called Aborigines by Cato and Livy), marry a local
princess (Lavinia), found a city (Lavinium), die, become a god, and leave Asca-
nius, now called lulus, as his successor. Ascanius then founds Alba, and some
four hundred years later Romulus founds Rome itself from Alba.VERGIL'S AENEID
This was the material from which Vergil created his epic, the great national poem
of Rome, combining Homeric conventions, Greek mythology, and Roman ethi-
cal and historical insights. It records the events of a distant mythological past,
yet it has reference to the events and hopes of Vergil's own day, when Augus-
tus was rebuilding the Roman state after decades of civil war and instability. In
the prologue, Vergil links Roman history to the mythological tradition and fo-
cuses on the hero Aeneas, survivor of the fall of Troy and ancestor of Rome's
leaders (Aeneid 1. 1-7):Of war and a man I sing, who first from Troy's shores, an exile by the decree of
fate, came to Italy and Lavinium's shores. Much was he tossed on sea and land
by the violence of the gods, because of cruel Juno's unforgetting anger. Much,
too, did he endure in war as he sought to found a city and bring his gods to
Latium. From him are descended the Latin people, the elders of Alba, and the
walls of lofty Rome.According to Vergil, Aeneas sailed by way of Thrace and Delos to Crete,
where he stayed a year, believing that this was the place from which Dardanus
came and that therefore it was the future home foretold him by the oracle at De-
los. But a pestilence and a vision of the Penates led him to sail in search of Italy,
which proved to be Dardanus' original home. He sailed to Epirus, where He-
lenus and Andromache had settled. Here Helenus foretold some of his future
wanderings, and in particular told of their ending, which Aeneas would know
had come when he saw a white sow with thirty piglets on a river bank in Italy.
This prophecy complemented one that Aeneas received from the Harpy Celaeno,