Ascanius

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For other uses, see Ascanius (disambiguation).

Ascanius Hunting the Stag of Silvia, by Claude Lorrain (1682).

In Greek and Roman mythology, Ascanius was a son of Aeneas and Creusa. After the Trojan War, Ascanius escaped to Latium in Italy with his father and fought in the Italian Wars. Virgil's Aeneid says he had a role in the founding of Rome as the first king of Alba Longa.

According to Livy, Ascanius may have been the son of Aeneas and Lavinia and thus may have been born in Latium. Thirty years after the founding of Lavinium Ascanius founded Alba Longa. Ascanius had a son called Aeneas Silvius.

He was also called Iulus or Julus. From this name comes the Gens Julia, the Julian family to which Julius Caesar belonged.

The name Iulus was popularised by Virgil in the Aeneid: replacing the Greek name Ascanius with Iulus linked the Julian family of Rome to earlier mythology. The emperor Augustus, who commissioned the work, was a great patron of the arts. As a member of the Julian family, he could claim to have three major Olympian gods in his family tree (Venus, Jupiter, and Mars), so he encouraged his many poets to present material on his direct descent from Aeneas.

Ascanius, in the Aeneid, first used the phrase "annue coeptis," the root phrase of what later became the motto of the United States of America.