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Historical person
Aeneas was a Trojan prince and legendary survivor of the fall of Troy. In the Iliad he fights among Troy’s defenders, while later Roman tradition makes him the leader of refugees who travel west and become ancestors of the Roman people.
In the wider mythic tradition, Aeneas escapes the fall of Troy carrying his father Anchises and leading survivors westward. Roman genealogies later made him an ancestor of Romulus and Remus, turning a Trojan hero into a figure of Roman national origins.
Virgil’s The Aeneid makes Aeneas its central hero, following his escape from Troy, his love affair with Dido and his journey to Italy, where war establishes the legendary ancestry of Rome. In Homer’s The Iliad he belongs to an earlier stage of the tradition as a Trojan prince and battlefield commander who survives encounters that kill many of Troy’s champions. David Gemmell’s Troy: Lord of the Silver Bow, Troy: Shield of Thunder and Troy: Fall of Kings recast Aeneas within a grittier Trojan War, developing him as a warrior and survivor whose fate is tied to the destruction of the city and the world that follows it.
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The Troy Trilogy is an epic retelling of the Trojan story that combines heroic fantasy, myth and large-scale adventure. Gemmell replaces distant legend with a crowded world of seafarers, traders, kings, raiders and rival families, while retaining the prophecies, passions and larger-than-life figures associated with Troy. Across Lord…
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Penguin Classics: Ancient World brings together foundational works of literature, history, philosophy, drama and poetry from the earliest civilisations through classical Greece and Rome. The wider Penguin Classics series began in 1946 with E. V. Rieu’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey, reflecting its original aim of making important texts…
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Standalone books
