This son was named ?neas, and he was not only a descendant of
Jupiter, but also a son of the beautiful goddess Venus. He did not take
an active part in the war at its beginning, but in the course of time
he and Hector, who was one of the sons of the king, became the most
prominent among the defenders of Troy. After the destruction of the
city, he went out of it, carrying on his shoulders his aged father,
Anchises, and leading by the hand his young son, Ascanius, or Iulus, as
he was also called. He bore in his hands his household gods, called the
Penates, and began his now celebrated wanderings over the earth. He
found a resting-place at last on the farther coast of the Italian
peninsula, and there one day he marvellously disappeared in a battle on
the banks of the little brook Numicius, where a monument was erected to
his memory as "The Father and the Native God." According to the best
accounts, the war of Troy took place nearly twelve hundred years before
Christ, and that is some three thousand years ago now. It was before
the time of the prophet Eli, of whom we read in the Bible, and long
before the ancient days of Samuel and Saul and David and Solomon, who
seem so very far removed from our times. There had been long lines of
kings and princes in China and India before that time, however, and in
the hoary land of Egypt as many as twenty dynasties of sovereigns had
reigned and passed away, and a certain sort of civilization had
flourished for two or three thousand years, so that the great world was
not so young at that time as one might at first think If only there had
been books and newspapers in those olden days, what revelations they
would make to us now! They would tell us exactly where Troy was, which
some of the learned think we do not know, and we might, by their help,
separate fact from fiction in the immortal poems and stories that are
now our only source of information.
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