The Prestigious Pedigree Of Aeneas, Descendant Of Dardanos
One hears of Aeneas’ pedigree for the first time from his own mouth, in the Iliad, as he stands facing his arch-foe, Achilles, on the battlefield before Troy: ‘Learn then my lineage if you will – and it is known to many – in the beginning Dardanos was the son of Zeus, and founded Dardania, for Troy was not yet established on the plain for men to dwell in, and her people still abode on the spurs of many-fountained Ida. Dardanos had a son, king Erichthonius, who was wealthiest of all men living; he had three thousand mares that fed by the water-meadows, they and their foals with them… Erichthonius begat Tros, king of the Trojans, and Tros had three noble sons, Ilos, Assaracus, and Ganymede who was comeliest of mortal men; wherefore the gods carried him off to be Zeus’s cupbearer, for his beauty’s sake, that he might dwell among the immortals. Ilos begat Laomedon, and Laomedon begat Tithonus, Priam, Lampus, Clytius, and Hiketaon… But Assaracus was father to Capys, and Capys to Anchises, who was my father.’
Aeneas, legendary ancestor of the Julii, with the god of the Tiber by Bartolomeo Pinelli (pre- 1835) (Public Domain)
This is one of the finest, if not the finest, pedigree in the world. It is one to which numerous dynasties have laid claim, by forging ancestral connections back to Aeneas or Priam. The Caesars did so, and later the kings of France and the Holy Roman Emperors. So, too, did the kings of Dark Age Gwynedd in north Wales, via a purely mythological great grandson of Aeneas, invented for them by their own bards and monks, called Brutus of Troy, and the Tudors later forged a link back to it to benefit from its prestige.
